Wondering what is a resume? The word resume is a french word and it means ‘summary’. Did you know? Leonardo da Vinci is credited with the first ever resume. Way back in 1481 Leonardo wrote a letter to an employer, Ludovico Sforza. This was the first ever resume!
For the next roughly 450 years or so, the resume continued to just be a description of a person, it only included their skills and past employment. In the early 1900s, resumes started to list things like weight, height, marital status, and religion.
It wasn’t until 1950 that the humble resume turned into something a bit more than words written on bits of paper. By then, resumes were thought to be very much mandatory, and began to include stuff like personal interests and hobbies. It wasn’t until the 1970s, the start of the Digital Age, that resumes proceeded with more professional look in terms of presentation and content.
The 10 things that make up the modern resume
1. Name and job title
Each resume these days need to have your name, and your job title.
2. Contact details
Your resume should also include your contact details, including email, telephone number and social media accounts like LinkedIn and Twitter if you wish. It’s not necessary to include your home address on your resume.
3. Profile or summary
Next your resume should include a brief summary about you, giving employers a little introduction. It would only be a sentence or two at the most.
4. Professional skills
Your resume should include your professional skills, for example touch typing.
5. Software Skills
Your resume should also include a section for software skills in you use software in your career. An example would be Microsoft Word.
6. Personal Skills
Some employers like to see personal skills listed on your resume. It’s especially a good idea to list your personal skills if it’s relevant to the job you’re applying for. For example you could list a personal skill as, fluent in Spanish.
7. Work experience
You resume should list your work experience. You should list your last job first and work back to your first job. You should include your job title, location, date, summary and main responsibilities.
8. Education
You should also list your education on your resume. Under the education section you should list what you studied, where you studied, when you studied and possibly what you majored in.
9. Honours, awards and achievements
It’s also good to any particular awards, honours or special achievements on your resume. List the name, date and summary of your achievement.
10. References
Lastly, it’s also an option, but not mandatory to list professional references on your resume. They don’t have to be long detailed references, they can just include the employers name and job title with a brief recommendation. If you don’t want to show references on your resume you can always write ‘references on request’.
So there you have it, if you were ever wondering what is a resume? This is what a resume is and the 10 things you need to include on it.
Need a resume template with all of the above stuff included? Click here to download one of our professional resume templates.
