We all have resumes, right? But do we give them the love and attention they deserve? After all, a good resume is your differentiating factor, your ace in the hole. Your resume serves as your personal power manifesto, the most influential piece of personal marketing in your arsenal.
Perhaps you’re wondering if your resume is as effective as you’d like it to be. If so, take a moment and ask yourself three questions:
- Does my resume really reflect what I am and what I am capable of?
- Does my resume pop?
- Would I hire me based on what is in my resume?
Be honest, how did you do? Don’t beat yourself up if you didn’t get three out of three. It’s really easy to rush to get a resume out to meet a job application deadline, especially if you haven’t visited it in a long time. We’ve all been there. And if this is your first time writing a technical writer resume, you might not quite know what a potential employer wants to see.
Whatever your situation, we’re here to help you create/update your resume so that it doesn’t go unnoticed or unappreciated. We include handy checklists, specific to each segment of your resume, that you can use and reuse every time you want to write or update your content.
So, let’s get to it!
Cover letter/email
I know this is basic and somewhat old-school, but a cover letter/email is still in our wishlist for every new resume that falls on our desks.
It is difficult to be convivial and to make a human-to-human connection within the bulleted, rigid confines of the resume framework. A cover letter/email helps you to make this connection. And take it from me, hiring managers like it when an applicant takes the time to humanize their application. This shouldn’t be an essay, just a short piece that demonstrates that you understand what it is the company is about, and why you are the right person for the job.
At a glance
A hiring manager should be able to open your resume and quickly determine the following:
- What types of content you produced, in what capacity, and to what effect.
- The types of content audience you have written for.
- Your area of specialization, if any.
- How many customers you have helped throughout the course of your work.
- What business goals you achieved.
Remember, quickly is the key word here.Hiring managers can get frustrated if they have to spend time hunting for the information they need to know.. When you make your resume easily navigable, with quantitative, demonstrated evidence of your work, you’re already ahead of the game. Your examples and matrices lend your resume credibility, so don’t hold back in this area.
Aesthetics
Don’t make your reader squint. You know this one in your soul, yet it is easy to forget when trying to squeeze all your myriad skills and experience into as short a document as possible. As technical writers, we know how important the visuals are. The aesthetics of your resume actually demonstrates your visual communication skills; so don’t scrimp on this area.
Things to check:
- Font size – not too small but not so large as to make your resume look unprofessional
- Font type – always sans serif. Aim for common font styles, applicant tracking systems can have difficulty with uncommon fonts
- Font color – nothing hard on the eyes or with poor contrast
- Adequate white-space – don’t push the margins of your document to the edge
- Correctly-sized and employed bullets/numbered lists
- Appealing but not imposing template/style (if you choose to use one)
Top tip: Resist the temptation to use bold or a different font or font color for your name and address, etc. This is not the information a hiring manager wants to focus on and may reduce valuable real estate, better filled with your skills and abilities.
Layout
Ensure that you have clear, specific section headings. Your resume should include these sections (change the names as you see fit, but ensure the content covers these topics):
- Personal information box
- Summary
- Skills
- Experience
- Education and certifications
Let’s take a closer look at these sections.
Personal Information
As we mentioned earlier, we are not fans of wasted real estate, especially when this relates to personal information displayed in elaborate, enlarged styles, with non-essential detail. That said, there is value in making your personal information easy to find. Aim to include your name, all contact details, your current designation, and perhaps even a summary of some of your certification (only if it doesn’t take up much space), in the form of meaningful acronyms, within one, discernible section at the top of your resume. If you must have more than one page, include a header with just you name, and a numbered footer. Remember, the key word here is brevity.
Don’t add any non-essential information here or information that doesn’t make life easier for the hiring manager assessing your application.
Professional Summary
This section relies on restraint but when done properly, it provides an example of your skill as a writer. Provide just a few short lines that synopsize your strengths, abilities and experience. That’s easier said than done, but, trust us, any hiring manager worth their salt will thank you for this condensed overview, earning you an easy brownie point.
Focus on results here. Don’t waffle about what you can do, but point to what you’ve actually done.Give numbers, such as the number of blogs you wrote and for whom, the number of help manuals you created, and so on. Since potential employers often ask for samples of your writing, be proactive and provide a link to your portfolio here. More easy kudos points! And if you don’t have a portfolio, you should assemble one right away!
Professional Experience
This is the meat and bones of your resume. Provide the key information related to your industry experience here, moving backwards from your most recent employment. Use succinct bulleted lists of achievements and roles, along with a very brief description of your employer’s business.
Once you finish listing your roles, take a step back and ask yourself the following questions:
- Have I listed all initiatives and projects I have been part of and the output produced?
- Have I listed all available statistics that underpin the success of my work?
- Are my examples relevant to the position for which I am applying?
- Have I explained any gaps in my employment history?
- Are my list items brief, tightly written, and easily understandable?
Top tip: if you are new to technical writing and worried that you don’t have sufficient experience to wow your potential employers, start writing a blog on a variety of technical and technical writing topics.
Skills
All you need is a brief introduction to this section before listing your documentation-related skills.
The following checklist should help you compile a comprehensive list of your skills:
The following checklist should help you compile a comprehensive list of your skills:
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Education
Technical writing is an unusual discipline in that it is composed of a large number of writers whose professional background is not specifically related to technical writing or, in fact, any type of writing.
We tech writers often take the scenic route to our ultimate calling in life, but this is not a hindrance. Indeed we celebrate this because it means that we’ve acquired a well-rounded and eclectic skill set that suits the nuanced myriad dimensions of technical communications.
Consequently, we don’t need to spend too much time highlighting education not obviously relevant to the positions for which we apply. Just mention your most illustrious educational achievements briefly as you wrap up your resume.
Final Resume Checklist
Now that you have completed your resume, it is best to step back and take it in afresh. If you have someone you can trust to do a quality copy edit for you, great, if not, ask yourself the following questions:
- Have you read the job listing thoroughly and provided skills, experience, and educational attainments that are immediately appropriate to it?
- Have you used appropriate terminology throughout? Don’t let the ATS software, which many recruiters and employers use to track candidates through the recruiting and hiring process, miss something important because you have misspelled or mislabeled something important.
- Have you revised your application since the last position you applied for?
- Is your writing style concise but engaging throughout? This is an opportunity to show how well you can write so vary your sentence structure and use current, lively terminology. Don’t veer into slang or jargon, but keep your writing professional and fresh.
- Have you kept the document brief? Aim for one strong, clear, concise page of relevant content – two max!
- Have you read and reread your content, searching for typos, grammatical errors, structural errors, tonal errors, and omissions? The last things you want in a technical writer resume are writing errors – your resume must be flawless!
Top tip: It is a good idea to keep a master list of all your skills and experience, which you should update regularly to keep it fresh. This makes updating your resume a breeze
Conclusion
So now you have it, that’s everything you need in a technical writer resume. If you follow these tips, remembering to check off each section every time you update your resume, you are sure to get ahead of the competition.
If you want to find more information on recruitment and resume building, as well as industry chat and support, why not join our social media channels, where we are always delighted to help support you along your career path.