Creating a resume — made easy

A well-written resume can get you in the door and ultimately land you your dream job.

The 15-second test

But here's the thing. Your resume has about 15 seconds to impress, according to experts at Monster.com. That means it needs to be thought out, organized and have just the right amount of wow.

Looking for your Easy Button? These proven tips will help you pull together a well-written, compelling resume.

Let's start at the very beginning

At the top of every resume, list your contact information. That includes name, address, phone number and email address. You may want to set up a new email account solely for job searching.

Next comes the body of the resume and the good news is, building it is easier than you think.

1. Job objective. Let employers know what kind of position interests you.
2. Flaunt your pedigree. Put your education right under your job objective. It's likely your greatest achievement yet. If your GPA is 3.0 or higher, include it as well.
3. Experience is everything. Here's where details really count. Include concrete information about your experience, including your responsibilities, roles and achievements. Include experiences from volunteer work and extracurricular activities. Attaching quantitative results to this experience helps and can make even unglamorous tasks seem pretty important. Try a sentence like "Responded to incoming phone and email inquiries from a direct mail campaign that resulted in $10,000 of new business."
4. In good company. Take a sentence to describe the company if you worked for a small business that may not be widely known.
5. Three's a charm. Include a minimum of three bullets for each work experience.
6. Talk the talk. Sprinkle some powerful buzzwords throughout your resume. Which ones? Review a sampling of the job descriptions for which you plan to apply. Let's say the descriptions use phrases such as strategic fit, brokering of resources, and program facilitation. Incorporate similar ones into your resume.
7. In your free time. If you have some extraordinary extracurricular activities, say you are the chair of an important campus charity, an award-winning writer or amateur athlete, you may include this information at the end of your resume within a section called "Achievements."
8. Format counts. Be consistent with formatting throughout your resume, if you create bullets for one section of work experience, don't skip to a straight paragraph for the next one. Also, limit use of bold and italics. Finally, when submitting a resume online, the simpler the formatting the better.
9. Past, present, future. Use verb tenses consistently.
10. Proof it. Spellcheck your resume. Then proof it carefully for typos and grammatical errors. Then have someone else proof it.

And a couple for the road

Before sending out even one resume, listen to the message on your voicemail with a critical ear. If you miss an employer's call, you want your voicemail message to sound professional and polished.

Your resume should be an honest and accurate snapshot of your education and work experience.

Here at Staples, once we receive your resume, we will contact you if you have the appropriate qualifications for the job.