by Robin Mayhall

Created on: March 08, 2007   Last Updated: April 17, 2007

I've had the chance to learn about resume best practices through a number of experiences. I've been a member of the Public Relations Society of America for 17 years, and as a senior member, I often review and critique PR students' resumes either as a formal exercise with the PRSA group or informally just to help out an individual student.

In my job, I have the chance to see resumes weekly, if not daily. I also chair a committee of volunteer resume reviewers for a job-seekers' newsletter and forum called Ned's Job of the Week a great resource for communications specialists.

Last but not least, I recently had the chance to interview several hiring managers at a range of companies about what they look for in a resume. I received one comment over and over from this diverse group of managers. Their single most important piece of advice was this: the job seeker should "personalize" his resume and cover letter for the specific job he's applying for and the specific employer at hand.

What does this mean? Change the wording in both your resume and cover letter to emphasize certain parts of your background based on your best information on what this particular employer is looking for. It's surprising how many job-seekers don't do this. For example, if you have a lot of experience in magazine layout and in copyediting, your resume might reflect a lot of information on your background in both of those skills. A lot of people have one "general" resume that describes almost everything they've done, up to and including the proverbial kitchen sink. You might submit this recipe if you don't know a lot about a job opening if you are having to shoot in the dark. (I don't suggest you do shoot in the dark, by the way; try to find out anything you can about the prospective job and the employer.)

With that said, if you decide to apply for a job as, let's say, a copyeditor for a textbook publishing company, you would certainly emphasize your copyediting training and accomplishments in your cover letter. The tweaks of your resume might be very minor; you might just rearrange some bullet points so that copyediting points are higher than anything else.

Hiring managers also want to see concrete accomplishments, including specific numbers for cost savings, sales increases and the like. Instead of writing, "Managed corporate public relations campaign," write: "Earned more than $25,000 in free media for company in my first year on the job through effective public relations."

If you don't have

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