Your resume is your first interview. Most personnel directors will look at your resume before they meet you. They will form an opinion of your competency and your personality based on your resume. Based on our work helping clients prepare resumes, we have created a list of 8 words your resume needs, words that will create a favorable impression of you.

1. Successfully
Companies want to hire winners. Use this word to describe your accomplishments in a prior responsibility.
Example: I successfully negotiated a new contract for services.

2. Leadership
Companies want to hire leaders. Use this word to describe your involvement with task and project teams.
Example: Under my leadership, the customer service unit managed all client records.

3. Team
Companies want to hire people who can cooperate with others to accomplish company goals. Use this word to describe your involvement with colleagues.
Example: Our team was responsible for answering customers’ questions about products.

4. Created
Companies want to hire innovators. Use this word to describe new ideas and processes you developed.
Example: I created a checklist to track daily service tasks.

5. Expanded/Increased (the verb, not the adjective)
Companies want to hire people that will help them grow. Use this word to describe your participation in company growth.
Example: During this time, the company expanded the product line to include 2 new models.

6. Support (the verb, not the noun)
Companies want to hire people who will assist the management team. Use this word to describe your relationship with your former supervisors.
Example: I supported the division director by compiling financial data.

7. Will
Companies want to hire people who are confident about their ability to deliver what they promise. Use this word to describe what you will do if hired.
Example: I will solve customer software and hardware problems.

Some of these words may not apply to your resume. However, if you think carefully about your prior experiences, you will find that you can use most of them. Using these words does not guarantee that you will get the job you want, but they will help you make a good impression.

Effective writing and the correct use of writing mechanics are very important. Once you have developed the draft of your resume and cover letter, you will need to edit it carefully. Editing guides will help, as will daily writing instruction.

Good luck in your job search. [link “Editing guides” to the training manual page. Link “daily writing instruction” to the writing tips page.] Read Precise Edit's new article and optimize your resume.

The first title of Etched Press Bright, Burning Fuse a chapbook by Melanie Faith is now available.

Read an excerpt from the chapbook

Bright, Burning Fuse deals with the conflict of living a conventional life and wishing to run free. At moments, it aches for freedom, at others, it wishes to be confined, but through it all, it asks if there is a compromise. These poems are examinations of the results of cataclysmic and common events that inhibit and spark desires for our entire lives.

Melanie Faith holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Queens University of Charlotte, NC (2007). She was featured reader in Wilson College’s 2005 Visiting Writers Series and received the 2006 Outstanding Young Alumnae Award. Her poetry and landscape and architectural photography recently appeared in The Binnacle (University of Maine), Emprise Review, Heavyglow, Six Little Things, Mo: Writings From The River (Montana State University), and more. Her instructional article about creative writing critique groups is forthcoming from The Writer magazine (January 2009). Etched Press will publish her poetry chapbook, Bright Burning Fuse, which was also a finalist in the 2008 Keyhole Magazine Chapbook contest, in December 2008. The opening poem from the collection (along with landscape photos taken by the author) is featured in the online literary magazine, Shape of a Box by Folded Word Press, http://www.youtube.com/shapeofabox. For more information, or to order a copy, contact the author at writer@pa.net. She lives and writes in rural Pennsylvania, where she educates young minds as an English, history, and SAT tutor at a college preparatory high school.

I'm very excited about this publication and it is the beginning of a long life for the press.

www.etchedpress.com