Sample Resumes Basics

Sample resumes provide a strong foundation for career success

By Kristen McClung
In today's competitive job market, a professional resume sample can make or break your future career success. Most job candidates will be chosen or rejected for an interview based solely on the quality of their resume. Before spending hours laboring over your resume, check out the myriad of sample resumes available.

Resume examples are excellent resources for today's savvy job candidates. While there are many different types of sample business resume websites available showcasing thousands of resume samples, it is important to follow some basic rules for resumes. Before you customize an example resume, keep in mind these sample resumes basics:

1. Look for an attractive, easy to read sample job resume with a design that invites reader interest.

2. Select effective example resumes that accurately reflect your industry experience.

3. Customize a general resume sample with action verbs and powerful sentences that highlight your skills, talents and abilities.

 

Choose a visually appealing and professional resume sample design

Your resume should reflect your personal style, whether traditional and elegant or contemporary and edgy. Sample resume providers offer an assortment of attractive sample resume designs and formats to simplify your resume preparation. Be sure to use quality paper and an easy to read font; and for professional results, print your resume using a laser printer.
Try: Quintessential Careers offers several tasteful sample job resume designs, including the cosmopolitan, creative, classic, conservative, corinthian, modular and clean line formats. BlueSkyResumes features professionally and creatively designed resumes, with before and after samples illustrating their resume design work. WorkBloom.com provides 16 attractive resume design samples to reflect your personal style, ranging from elegant to edgy.

Select a sample job resume that is appropriate to your career and industry

A great advantage to utilizing the services of sample resume providers is access to industry-specific resumes. For best results, look for resumes that best reflect your industry and career. Industry focused resume examples will include helpful sample objectives, accomplishments and descriptions relevant to your career field.
Try: CareerPerfect.com offers resume examples for executives, sales management, information technology, banking, healthcare, graphic design and recent grads. Best Sample Resume features examples of resume formats for a variety of industries, ranging from agriculture and computer programming to hotel management and education. Aroj.com provides a sample of resume templates for several types of jobs, including accounting, art, computers, engineering, management, healthcare, legal, marketing, sales, science and social services.

Tailor a general resume sample to showcase your talents, skills and abilities

While the design of a resume is important, content is the key to getting an interview. When writing your resume, use action verbs (no passive tense!), specific, descriptive nouns and avoid the use of adjective and adverbs. Describe your career accomplishments -- not just your job responsibilities -- and use numbers to define success whenever possible.
Try: Pongo Resume generates effective sample resume phrases based on your career experience. Women For Hire outlines a standard resume template and offers helpful suggestions on how to effectively focus resume content. Top7Business offers seven sample resumes basics words and phrases to enhance your resume.