Want to know how to write a resume? Realistically you have two main options open to you – find a company who specialize in resume writing or learn how to write a resume yourself.

The problem with using an external resume writing service provider is that you won’t really know how good they are until you part with your money – and some of them can be very expensive. The problem with choosing to learn how to write a resume yourself is that it can be very intimidating. Knowing what to include and what to leave out can keep you up all night worrying about it – I know, I’ve been through it several times myself.

Then you need to know how to make a resume stand out from the crowd. The people in charge of hiring new recruits receive hundreds of resumes for every application they promote, so it’s crucial that when they get to yours, there’s something about it that makes it stick in their mind enough to want to call you in for a job interview.

Your resume will have between 10 and 30 seconds to make an impression on the reader before it gets dumped in the pile of “maybes” or “definitely nots”.

Learning how to write a resume means knowing how to pull together all the relevant information needed for the position, and organizing it in a manner that is relevant for the job. On top of that your resume has to look professional and be eye catching to make the reader want to know more about you.

If you decide to take the do-it-yourself resume writing route, and personally I would recommend you do, as knowing how to write a resume is a powerful skill that you can call upon time and again, a great place to start is to look over some professional resume tips and by reading over some free resume examples.

Get hold of a free downloadable resume template that you can load into Microsoft Word and start putting some ideas together about the resume objectives you want to cover.

Your most important resume objective is to get yourself an interview, or to the next step in the recruitment process. Basically your resume is your own personal marketing tool.

Your resume needs to be clear, easy to understand, concise and to the point. Only include professional content that is relevant to the position you are applying for. The best resume help I can give is to put yourself in the position of the person who will be reading it. Imagine you are the interviewer – what would you want to see in a resume in relation to the job you are recruiting for?

Formatting is crucial – your resume writing style should make it very easy on the eye. Use bullet points to highlight headlines or important pieces of information. Keep sentences and paragraphs short If your resume looks like one long page of words, there’s a high risk it will be winging its way straight for the bin.

Don’t go into too much detail – one of the key skills in learning how to write a resume is in keeping it to as few a pages as possible – 2 or 3 pages is about right. Just highlight your achievements – you will get the opportunity to go into more detail at the interview.

Don’t expect to master how to write a resume in your first sitting – even with the best resume tips good resume writing takes some time to build and format for that professional touch. Create a few sample resumes and have your peers look over them to give you feedback. It may also be worth your while to have some recruitment agents look over them too to give you some professional feedback.