When It Comes to Your Resume, It's the Big Picture That Counts

These are perilous economic times, so anyone who has been laid off is likely worried about the immediate employment future.

Among other things, how do you make sure your resume looks the best it can? That's what this unemployed worker is wondering.

I have recently been laid off and was only at the job for four months. I've had the opportunity to explain this to possible future employers, but still feel I am being disqualified from most because of the short time at my last job. I feel a resume doctor might help at least reassure me. How do you know your resume is up to snuff?

Palmer Suk, who runs the Snelling Personnel job placement office in Northern Virginia, says the first thing this worker needs to shed his worry about the length of his last job and might even consider not listing it on his resume because it was so short.

"One four-month job should not be of concern to this person," Suk says. "The big picture is more important." He says most workers have a short-term job somewhere in their past and that longer-term jobs are more important in understanding just what any particular applicant might bring to a prospective employer.

But he said if the recent job is mentioned in an interview, the applicant can easily explain it in terms any employer understands these days, that the previous company's financial fortunes eroded and it felt forced to eliminate jobs.

As for the resume, Suk says job seekers should look at it as a marketing tool, one that hopefully gets them an interview and eventually a job.

He says too many workers spell out in too great detail what their jobs entailed when it would behoove them instead to "show evidence of achievement and quantify it. They already know what you did [by the job title], so tell them how you made money for your employers or achieved some objective.

"They're looking for what makes you stand out," he says, "and it tells them your thinking process."

Kenneth Bredemeier has six years of experience writing about the workplace. On the Job, a column addressing real worker questions about office relationships, corporate policies and workplace law, is written exclusively for washingtonpost.com.