It depends on what you're actually going to do.
After graduation, I've written my resume in a very simple way; I've removed the following things:
- Educational periods, now only the school's name is listed
- Multiple schools, only the relevant one + the latest high school is listed
- Irrelevant (or barely relevant) work experience, now every mention of sidejobs, community work and the like is gone except for my two internships.
- More then half of my "etheral" abilities (like "good under pressure" and "thinks in solutions" and all that crap), all that's left now are a few practical abilities
- Most of my character properties and hobby's.
That made my resume from a full A4 sized paper to barely 1/3rd. And that's good; now there's a lot of whitespace (makes it more readable) and more room to be creative. But I might have it easier then you in that department, I'm a webdesigner, so I can dabble in print design as well.
I've asked a few managers in my branche on their opinions, and had very positive reactions on it. They especially like that fact that irrelevant data has been withheld -- they can look at my portfolio for an idea about my abilities, most of my character they'll notice when they're actually interviewing me and in the same interview they realize I actually know what I'm talking about. They also say the absence of irrelevant data makes for a much more applicable resumé; they feel it's specially written for them, and not as if there are 60 identical copies floating around at the desks of their competitors.
Now I just have to finish my portfolio, put the damn thing online (instead of this 3 yr old crap I have now) and I can start looking. But with a clean resume like this, I'm very hopeful.
I don't feel easy posting my resume online yet, so I'll give an example of somebody else:
This is a great resume for a designer, if a bit busy. But again, I don't know how easy it is in your branche. If you're not a designer, you obviously have no business graphically designing your resume. But if you're, for example, in the food branche (is that the correct term?), you might want make it look like a menu card or something. The resume should reflect the branche you want to work in; look at the letterheads of big companies, for example; that'll give you an idea.
As far as I know, the most important thing is that you be selective with what you put on there; your boy scout diplomas or your swimming diplomas are certainly irrelevant. Another big no-no is a full-size A4 picture of yourself; unless you want to be the laughing stock of the entire business. And putting lots of "etheral" terms, like "good under pressure", "works hard" and crap like that is a sure way of not being taken seriously, I experienced that firsthand.
You also, as I've said before, will have to give them the feeling that you actually want to work for
them, not
some business in that branche. Read up on the company; what, exactly, are they looking for? Adapt your resume to that, if needed. Also, find out what is preferable; writing or calling. Usually, companies that prefer one over the other actually very much dislike the other. So if it's a small company, who'd rather be called, your letter will end up in the trashbin. Or the other way around. And if they prefer to be called, call them one time, and one time only. After that, you have one (1) followup call after a week or so. After that, consider that job taken by somebody else.
