Are you just embarking on a new career? Are you thinking of looking for a different job? Then you know there are a few things you need to do to start your job search.

One of the must-dos is to create your resume – or update the one you may already have. 

While you could hire someone to do this for you, there’s really no reason you can’t do it yourself. There are lots of online resources and some good books out there that can help.

• Ladders Resume Guide: Best Practices & Advice from the Leaders in $100K + Careers – Marc Cenedella
  • Now in its third edition and optimized to advance careers in 2021, this best-selling resume guide gives you all you need to know in a quick 90 minute read. From the author of America’s largest career advice newsletter, Ladders Resume Guide shares best practices and expert advice for writing a great resume without overthinking it. Informed by the millions of members at Ladders $100K+ community, and the recruiters and hiring managers who hire them, this guide makes it easy to greatly improve your resume in a single day.
• Modernize Your Resume: Get Noticed…Get Hired (Modernize Your Career) – Wendy Enelow and Louise Kursmark
  • Based on today’s real-world job search trends, MODERNIZE YOUR RESUME shows you how to craft a winning resume to meet the complexities of today’s highly competitive and technologically driven employment market. The 2nd edition has been updated with new resume samples, new designs, and new ATS and e-resume guidelines, along with new chapters for jobseekers with special circumstances – career change, military transition, and return to work.
  • The entire job search process is evolving at a remarkably rapid pace, and your resume is at the foundation of it all. In this book, you’ll learn to:
    • Write tight, lean, clean, and laser-focused content that allows you to tell your whole career story in half the words to keep your reader engaged. Focus on information that is relevant to your target market and integrate keywords that are vital to being found online.
    • Present important information quickly in a resume format that prominently displays your skills, experience, education, and other credentials as they support your current career objectives.
    • Create a distinctive design to make your resume stand out and capture attention. Getting noticed is step #1, so make that happen and you’re on your way.
    • Adopt a new mindset and deeper understanding of how to use today’s modern resume for both person-to-person job search as well as electronic, digital, and mobile search technologies.The 100+ resume samples demonstrate these strategies in action for real-life job seekers who’ve excelled in their search campaigns. The samples showcase the resume writing work of Enelow, Kursmark, and many of their colleagues who are also well respected for their expertise in resume strategy, writing, format, and design.
  • Clear guidelines and easy-to-follow examples give you practical know-how for building your own powerful resume that will serve all of your job search needs. You’ll learn what works, why it works, and how you can make it work for you.
  • Authors and Master Resume Writers Wendy Enelow and Louise Kursmark have each spent more than 30 years writing resumes, training professional resume writers, speaking to job search audiences, and writing about evolving trends in job search.
  • The latest in their library of more than 30 books is MODERNIZE YOUR RESUME, an up-to-the minute resource for every job seeker to guide you to career success. Follow the recommendations of this book and you’ll find yourself a more competent and competitive job seeker!
• What Color Is Your Parachute? Guide to Rethinking Resumes: Write a Winning Resume and Cover Letter and Land Your Dream Interview – Richard N. Bolles
  • Resumes get an average of eight seconds of attention before going in the trash—or getting on the shortlist. That’s just one of the findings reported here, as legendary career expert Richard N. Bolles presents new research about resumes in a guide that summarizes everything job-hunters and career-changers need to know about this essential tool.
  • This timely resource features the latest research on important resume topics such as key words, soft skills, scanning software, social media, and online posting. Bolles argues that on the basis of what we now know, we need to rethink what a resume is—and how it should be written. He details the words that must be avoided, and the words that must be used, on a resume that wins you interviews. 
  • This slim volume distills a huge amount of information down to its very essence. Armed with tips and shortcuts based on the author’s decades of experience, you can craft a resume and cover letter that will stand out to your dream employers—and increase your chances of getting interviews and landing jobs.
• Your Guide to a Stand Out Modern Resume: Make Your Resume the One That Stops the 6-Second Scroll and Puts You at the Top of the “Must Interview” List – Rebecca Morgan
  • It’s time to make your resume reflect how AWESOME you are in real life.
  • If your resume suffers from:
    • An outdated format that you’ve used since high school (a LOT has changed!)
    • Generic one-size-fits-all-isms (to avoid redoing it for each job)
    • Buzzword and cliche overload (this isn’t making you sound smarter – trust me)
    • Job description cuts and pastes (just…. don’t)
  • It’s time to unborify your resume and stand out from the pile.
  • If you have ever wondered how to make your resume stand out and get seen in the sea of resumes, this is the guide for you.
  • Make your resume the one that stands out in the sea of sameness and puts you at the top of the “must interview” list.

Don’t send out a ho-hum resume that ends up in a pile and never gets you called for an interview. Instead, create a resume that makes you stand out in a crowd and shares all of your skills – so you’ll find a job sooner rather than later. 

(*All book descriptions courtesy of Amazon)