By:  John Holmgren,  TheExpertResumeWriter.com

The first aim is to not be eliminated by bad resume presentation.

Suppose your resume is in a stack of resumes for a position you would like to have.

How do you give yourself the best chance that your resume will even be read, much less chosen for further consideration?

One secret is that resume readers, whether the Human Resources rep or the hiring manager, aren’t reading to select an All Star.  They are reading to ELIMINATE all those that don’t qualify for the position.

Read that paragraph again.  It is critically important!

Now, you would think that if you have the qualifications for the job, you would get into the “selected” pile.  Not necessarily.  Not if your qualifications are buried in the text.

Please believe that this is the most important thing I can tell you about your resume.

You MUST state an OBJECTIVE at the very outset of you resume.

Information you provide the reader at the top of page 1 of your resume is critical.

Here’s why:

Suppose I want to hire a Customer Service Representative (I don’t!).  If your resume doesn’t state in the Objective section at the top of page 1 that you want to be a Customer Service Representative, your resume will go in the waste basket.

I will eliminate all whose resume doesn’t state that clearly.  It makes my job easier and, in this economy, I get many, many applications.  I’m too busy to try to study your paper.

It is just as simple as that.  Information “above the fold” as the newspaper people say, is where the business is done.

John