March 2011 Resume Review

For the past eight years, once a month I have reviewed a [redacted and anonymized] resume for the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin.   http://www.chicagolawbulletin.com/  I am on a panel of six other qualified and esteemed resume reviewers.  To see the resume I am reviewing below, click on the title line of this post, above.   Since we comment on lawyer and paralegal resumes, we use a scale of Five Gavels, instead of stars for movies.  Here is a reprint of my March 2011 resume review:

Let us title this review The Case of the Missing Enter Key.  Besides some other basic document formatting inconsistencies, the bulk of this review will focus on a key skills that, as it turns out, is also lacking from many of the other hundred or so resumes I see each month. That skill is, for lack of a better phrase, "hitting the Enter key twice." More on that later.

Here is a quick overview of what else is wrong with this resume. Yes - all of this is wrong: Double formatting text - that is setting text in BOLD and ALL CAP AND ITALICS.  Pick one text modification - not all three.  The right side page margin is set unnecessarily tiny, at one half inch - but with his tab settings, it is narrower than that.  The bullet points are circles not solid black dots and that looks odd. The text in the Summary section paragraph (which, by the way I DO like) is centered and that is hard to read.  It should be set justified left.  The text in the address section and other contact information is set justified right, flush to that side.  Again - odd.

Now on to today's lesson. Resume writers need to do a better job of line spacing.  Line spacing is the amount (or lack) of space - vertically - between lines.  Looking at this resume - he does a fine job of this under his Employment section.  That is - hitting the Enter key an extra time at the end of a line and that creates a blank space line - which helps the title stand out better for the reader.  But, the author fails to employ that same technique (hitting the Enter key an extra time) under his Education title.

Be consistent - if nothing else.  For all of this - and probably a few more nits I could pick - this is a Two Gavel resume on our Five Gavel scale. Fix a few things and it is at least a Four.