It’s very hard to write your own resume because a resume is a macro view of your life, but you live your life at the micro level, obsessing about daily details that have no bearing on your resume. So I recommend to a lot of people that they hire someone to help them. After all, spending money on a resume writer is one of the few expenditures that will have good return right away.

But some of you will be able to do a decent job rewriting your resume on your own. The first thing you’ll have to do is make some mental shifts. You need to rethink the goals of a resume, and rethink the rules of a resume in order to approach the project like the best of the resume professionals.

Here are three ideas that guide professional resume writers and should guide you as well:

1. Don’t focus on your responsibilities, focus on what you achieved.
A resume is not your life story. No one cares. If your life story were so interesting, you’d have a book deal. The only things that should be on your resume are achievements. Anyone can do their job, but only a small percentage of the population can do their job well, wherever they go.

The best way to show that you did your job well is from achievements. The best achievement is a promotion. It is an objective way to show that you impressed the people you work for. The next best way to show objective measures is to present quantified achievements.

Most people do not think in terms of quantified achievements when they are in the job, but on the resume, that’s the only part of the job that matters. No one can see that you were a “good team player” on your resume unless you can say “established a team to solve problem x and increased sales x%” or “joined under-performing team and helped that team beat production delivery dates by three weeks.”

If you are only putting achievements on your resume, you are going to be hard-pressed to fill a whole page. That’s okay. Anything on your resume that is not an achievement is wasting space. Because you don’t know what a hiring manager will look at first—and if you have ten good achievements and three mediocre lines about your life story, the hiring manager may only read those three lines—so remove them.

2. Don’t make your resume a moral statement; it’s a marketing document.
Think about when a company announced the launch of their product. First of all, the product is not done. Second of all, it has bugs. And third, the company is probably showing photos of prototypes and the real thing will look different.

All this stuff is fine. It’s accepted practice for marketing. The company will tell you that they are doing their best to get you the information you want in the way they think is best for letting you know what your consumer options are.

You need to take the same approach with your resume, because a resume is a marketing document. The best marketing documents show the product in the very best light, which means using whatever most outrageous tactics possible to make you look good. As long as you are not lying, you will be fine.

Here’s an example: You join a software company that just launched a product and the product had so many problems that they had to hire someone to handle the calls. You start doing the tech support, and you work tons of overtime because the calls are so backed up. You clean up the phone queue and then you start taking long lunches because there’s not a lot to do, and then you start job hunting because the job is boring.

Here’s how you summarize this job on your resume: Assumed management responsibility for tech support and decreased call volume 20%.

How do you know 20%? Who knows? It was probably more. But you can’t quantify exactly, so err on the safe side. But if you just say “Did tech support for a software company” no one knows you did a good job.

There is a fine art of almost-lying-but-not-lying on a resume. You need to talk about it a lot in order to know where you fall on the spectrum. Here is a sample of my own family discussions about what is lying and what isn’t.

3. Don’t give everything away in the resume.
The idea of a resume is to get someone to call you. Talk with you on the phone. Offer you an interview. So a resume is like a first date. You only show your best stuff and you don’t show it all.

Some people dump everything they can think of onto their resume, but a resume is not the only chance you’ll have to sell yourself. In fact the interview is where the hard-core selling takes place. So you only put your very best achievements on the resume. Sure, there will be other questions people will want answers to, but that will make them call you. And that’s good, right?

For those of you who can’t bear to take off the twenty extra lines on your resume because you think the interviewer has to see every single thing about you right away, consider that we have statistics to show that people don’t want to know everything up front. It does not make for a good match. Of people who got married, only 3% had sex on the first date.

做一份個人簡歷非常不易，因為一份簡歷就是你的生平的宏觀體現，而你的生活卻是處在微觀層面的，幾乎包含了你所有的日常生活細節，而它們與你的簡歷根本無關。所以我向很多人建議他們可以雇人來幫他們。（譯者注：作者在這里有一個相關鏈接）畢竟，花錢請人來寫一份簡歷是為數不多、卻很快就有回報的支出啊！

但是你們當中的有些人會有足夠的能力自己來重寫一份簡歷。你首先要做的就是在腦子里過一下“電影”。你需要重新思考一份簡歷的目的，重新思考寫簡歷的規則，這樣就能像最好的職業簡歷寫手那樣來完成這項工程了。

以下是三個指導專業簡歷寫手的要訣，你也應當用它們作為指導哦！

1、不要著眼于你的責任，而要著眼于你的成績。

一份簡歷不是你的生活故事。沒有人會關注這個。你要把你的人生故事寫的那么有趣，那你得寫成一本書。你在簡歷里應該僅僅寫上你的成績！任何人都能完成本職工作，但只有一小部分人無論到何處，都能把工作做得出色。

證明你工作出色的最好方式就是你的成績。最好的成績是一種自我推銷。它是一種客觀的方式，能表明你給為之工作的人留下深刻印象。第一個最好的表明客觀尺度的方式便是陳述經過量化的成績。

大多數人在做簡歷時并不考慮量化成績，但是在簡歷上，這卻是惟一至關重要的部分。沒有人能在簡歷上看出你是一個"良好的團隊成員" ，除非你能說出“成立了一個團隊來解決X問題，增加了百分之X的銷售額”或者是“加入一個績效欠佳的團隊，并幫助團隊提前三周完成產品交付。”

如果你把各項成績寫進簡歷，你要把它們壓縮到一整頁紙里。這沒有問題。任何與成績無關的內容都是在浪費你的簡歷空間。因為你不知道招聘負責人首先會看什么--如果你寫了十個良好的業績，而用了三行字寫你平庸的人生故事，招聘負責人可能只看那三行字--所以請把它們去掉！

2 、不要把你的簡歷寫成道義上的陳述；這是一份自我推銷資料。

想想某家公司在宣布推出自身產品時的實情吧。首先，該產品尚未完成。其次，它有缺陷 。第三，該公司所顯示的產品原型照片和實際產品看起來會有所不同。

所有這一切都沒錯。這是公認的市場營銷做法。該公司會告訴你，他們是在盡其最大努力提供給你想要的信息，并用最好的方式讓你知道你應該選擇何種消費。

你寫簡歷時必須采取同樣的做法，因為一份簡歷就是一個推銷資料。最好的推銷資料只顯示該產品的最好一面，這意味著，無論如何，你要不擇手段讓自己光彩奪目！只要你不說謊，那就沒有問題。

下面是一個例子：你加入了一個軟件公司，它剛剛推出一個產品，而這個產品有很多問題，他們不得不雇用專人處理來電。你開始做技術支持，而且你的工作嚴重超時，因為有那么多來電。你理順了來電業務，然后你開始慢吞吞地吃午餐，因為現在沒有很多工作要做了，然后你開始找工作，因為這項工作太乏味了。

下面就是你該如何在簡歷上總結這項工作：負責技術支持的管理，使來電量減少了20 ％ 。

你怎么知道就是20 ％ ？誰知道呢？它也可能是更多。但你不能精確量化，所以寧可為了保險而不求準確。但是，如果你只說：“為某家軟件公司做了技術支持” ，沒有人會知道你的工作做得很好。

這就是做簡歷時的幾近撒謊卻又未撒謊的技巧。你需要好好與人討論，以便確認你能做的恰如其分。以下有一個典型例子，是我和家人討論什么是說謊，什么不是。（譯者注：作者在這里有一個相關鏈接。）

3、不要把所有信息都寫進簡歷。

一份簡歷的主題是讓別人打電話給你。讓他們和你通過電話交談。給你一次面談機會。所以一份簡歷就像第一次約會。你只能顯示你最好的東西，而不能一覽無余。

有些人把所想到的一切都寫進簡歷，但簡歷并非是你唯一推銷自己的機會。事實上，面試時你才開始實質性推銷自己。所以你只能把你的最好成績寫進簡歷。當然，人們還有其他想知道答案的問題，但這正好讓他們打電話給你。那正中你的下懷，對不對？

你們當中有些人認為必須讓負責面試的人立刻知道自己的一切，所以無法承受劃掉簡歷上那多余的二十行字，請他們想一想：我們有數據表明人們并不想在一開始就知道一切。精彩的比賽肯定不是這樣的。在已婚人群中，只有3 ％的人在第一次約會時就發生性關系。