This post is part of our series on free resume help. Learn why the format of your resume (and cover letter) is important.

If you’re a consultant, graphic designer, advertising or marketing guru, or other service provider, your roster of happy clients is likely one of your biggest accomplishments. But what happens when your client list grows to unwieldy proportions? On your resume, you want to convey the breadth and depth of your experience; but you don’t want to overwhelm readers with information that doesn’t pack a powerful punch.

Keep these tips in mind when choosing what clients to list and how to handle them on your resume:

• Providing a long list of clients won’t necessary add value. If you want to list some of your happiest clients, choose ~5 and select those that are most relevant to your target job.
• Use phrases like “including” and “and others” to indicate that you’re providing only a sampling of your client list.
• Numbers are powerful. Employ sentences like “Devised strategic marketing plans for 20+ multi-industry clients.”
• Offer a complete list to interested readers: “Complete client list available upon request.” Be sure to format the list to match your resume.
• Provide not just client names but also brief descriptions of successful projects as bullets in an accomplishments section.

And remember: A CleanTechies resume writer is skilled at teasing out a manageable number of clients and background information to aptly demonstrate the scope of your expertise — without taking up valuable “real estate” on the page with facts that don’t add to your career narrative and personal branding.

Let an expert write you a job-winning green resume and cover letter.

photo: marchorowitz

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• Free Resume Help: How To Write Older Experience & Early Position

This post is part of our series on free resume help. Learn why the format of your resume (and cover letter) is important. You can’t judge a book by its cover — but you can, and will, judge a resume (and cover letter!) by its appearance. A recruiter’s first glimpse at your resume can make or break your chances of getting that resume read — and seriously considered. A professional resume writer is skilled at formatting your resume to maximize three things: Scannability (hook readers in) Readability (transmit information) Clarity (avoid confusion and obfuscation)

You’d be surprised at how small tweaks — changing font, borders, headings, and so forth — can transform your resume into an eye-catching, easily comprehensible personal marketing document to show off your career.

A professional resume writer does something else, too: He or she maximizes the amount of information your resume is able to contain. With tricks like character spacing, margin adjustments, and strategic text editing, a professional resume writer can eliminate wasted resume “real estate” and ensure that your experience and achievements are fully represented.

Let an expert write you a job-winning green resume and cover letter.

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The rule of thumb for resumes today is to spend valuable resume space on no more than 10 years of your career history, whether that involves 1 position or 5 or more. Professionals with longer careers can indicate their older roles and companies briefly at the end of the resume in an “Additional Roles” section, and offer details on request. But what should you do if one of those older roles is relevant to your current job search? Perhaps that role was in an industry you’re currently targeting, or involved tasks you’d like to pick up again in a new position. Here are 3 strategies for how to highlight that role on your resume — without bogging down your most current information.

1. Add an “Early Career” section.

The “Professional Experience” section that makes up the bulk of your resume likely includes the company name, the dates during which you were employed, a brief company description, your job title, a detailed job summary, and major accomplishments. Trying to include 2 or 3 additional entries here to ensure inclusion of an important role further back in your career will result in a bloated resume with too much outdated information.

To sneak in additional roles without bloating your resume, add an “Early Career” section. Here, each job entry can include simply the company name, your job title, a very brief summary of your duties, and an accomplishment or two.

2. Add a “Selected Early Career” section.

Let’s say the relevant older role is from the 1980s — significantly far back in your career — and you don’t want to include the many roles that came after it. Instead of summarizing your entire early career, simply use this section to highlight the role that’s relevant to your current search. Once again, the entry can be as brief as you’d like, including some or all of the information found within the “Professional Experience” section. This is a good way to ensure that a relevant role has enough resume “real estate” without filling your resume with irrelevant information. Any additional roles can be summarized in an “Additional Roles” section at the end of your resume.

3. Maximize the “Additional Roles” section.

If a few key details from your early career are relevant but you don’t feel the need to devote too much space to them, you can maximize the “Additional Roles” section while conserving valuable resume space.

Here’s a typical “Additional Roles” example:

ADDITIONAL ROLES: Project Lead, XLM Services; Project Manager, Ubersoft; PMO Director, ALT Corp. Details available on request.

If you have enough space, you can add a relevant detail to each listing:

ADDITIONAL ROLES: Project Lead, XLM Services (Built 5-person project team for $200K initiative); Project Manager, Ubersoft (Delivered $500K project on-time/on-budget); PMO Director, ALT Corp. (Played key role in growing revenue $650K in 2 years).  Details available on request.

CleanTechies offers professional resume writing services specifically targeting green positions.

[photo credit: Flickr]

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For entry-level job seekers, resume writing seems like a catch-22: You need a resume to get a job, but you need experience to put on a resume. How are you supposed to show that despite your lack of professional experience you’re ready to jump in and make an impact? Entry-level resumes do look different from resumes for professionals with extensive experience, but many of the same resume-writing principles apply. Here are a few tips for how to package yourself effectively as you start your job search.

1. Emphasize your education.

On resumes for established professionals, educational details are generally presented as the final section, after the details on career history. The reason for this is that once you’ve been out of school for a while, your professional track record matters more in defining what you’ve done and what you’re capable of doing in the future. If you’ve just graduated, however, it makes more sense to highlight your education up front, including the date of graduation. This positions you as a promising new candidate ready to go out and make a difference.

2. Include extracurricular activities and involvement.

If you’re a new (or newish) graduate, including your extracurricular activities can be a good way to show what you’ve accomplished even as a student. This is particularly important if you’ve held any leadership roles. Such details are considered irrelevant on resumes for more experienced professionals, but for new job seekers, it makes sense to include them.

3. Focus on the groundwork.

If the only jobs you’ve had so far involve administrative work in the admissions office, don’t despair. When describing these sorts of jobs on your resume, focus on what you delivered, and on what you learned. Did you take the initiative with a project? improve a process? provide exceptional service to university staff? earn Employee of the Month recognition at the bookstore? Think about the skills and experiences that show the kind of person you are and what you’re capable of—the things that “lay the groundwork” for future success.

4. Keep it short.

Entry-level job seekers will almost always need no more than a one-page resume that clearly communicates your objective, your education, your background, and your key skills. If you’ve been in school for a very long time and have ten part-time jobs behind you, there’s no need to spend two pages detailing every one of them. Focus on what’s most relevant for your search, and simply mention the others in a note at the end of your resume. (“Previous experience also includes roles as…”)

5. Use dynamic language and a good positioning statement.

Starting each sentence on your resume with a strong action verb will demonstrate your professionalism and clearly communicate your skills and experiences thus far. A positioning statement at the beginning of your resume, which encapsulates your skills, achievements, and objectives in a concise, attention-getting paragraph, will help readers see what your education and experience add up to—and why they make you such a promising candidate.

CleanTechies offers professional resume writing services specifically targeting green positions. Certified expert resume writers with years of experience and almost thousand of resumes written help job seekers at any career stage craft professional resumes. CleanTechies writes resumes targeting roles in renewable energy, resource efficiency, green building, and sustainable transportation as well as other environmental and sustainable positions. CleanTechies is dedicated to helping green job seekers pursue their dream careers.

[photo credit: Flickr]

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There’s a good reason why people decide to invest in a professionally written resume: it stands out from the pack. A professionally written resume doesn’t carry a headline — “WRITTEN BY A PROFESSIONAL!” — but it clearly conveys a unique tone and approach that makes it effective and, most importantly, gets it noticed. So what can you expect a professionally written resume to include? In other words, what makes it so great? Here are 5 characteristics of a professionally written resume:

1. It begins with an at-a-glance objective and client profile.

The first thing a reader of your resume will see is your objective — the position you’re targeting — as well as a series of quick, strong key words that immediately communicate who you are, what your core strengths entail, or what you’ve achieved. For example, this portion of the resume might look like this:

2. It includes a dynamic, branded positioning statement.

Also called an “executive profile,” this section encompasses 3-5 sentences that encapsulate who you are and what you bring to the table. It includes a blend of your key skills, experience, and accomplishments. If you’re changing careers, this section also includes a statement highlighting how your background translates into or applies to your new field.

3. It features a key word section.

A key word section serves two functions. First, it provides an at-a-glance summary of your areas of expertise. Second, it leverages industry-standard language to maximize the chances of your resume popping up when a recruiter searches an online resume database. For a busy recruiter, the executive profile and key word section are easily scannable — and provide compelling reasons why he or she should keep reading.

4. It clearly separates job descriptions from accomplishments.

A professionally written resume caters to busy readers who have little time or inclination to slog through large paragraphs of text. By pulling out your accomplishments into scannable bullet points, a professionally written resume highlights your achievements immediately; and these, after all, are what will ultimately set you apart from other applicants.

5. It uses concise, strong language to provide the greatest possible impact.

A professionally written resume is free from spelling, grammar, and usage errors — but that should go without saying for any resume. What sets it apart is its usage of strong language, rich with action verbs, key words, and dynamic phrasing. Take a look at this before and after of an accomplishment:

BEFORE:
I helped the company earn $4,000,000 in new revenue.

AFTER:
Played instrumental role in generating $4M new revenue by driving business development initiatives.

The “after” version, which is representative of what you’d find in a professionally written resume, starts with a strong action verb, avoids first-person pronouns, and clearly communicates both the result ($4 million in new revenue) and the cause (the business development initiatives). It’s dynamic, concise, and gets a reader’s attention.

CleanTechies offers professional resume writing services specifically targeting green positions. Certified expert resume writers with years of experience and almost thousand of resumes written help job seekers at any career stage craft professional resumes. CleanTechies writes resumes targeting roles in renewable energy, resource efficiency, green building, and sustainable transportation as well as other environmental and sustainable positions. CleanTechies is dedicated to helping green job seekers pursue their dream careers.

[photo credit: Flickr]

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Spend money on your resume — a simple one- or two-page document? How could a stranger possible write about your background and achievements? For many people, the idea of having a resume professionally written seems like a waste of money — or, at best, an expense that will get you a questionable product. If you’re among these naysayers, we’ll be blunt — you couldn’t be more wrong. A professionally written resume is one of the very best investments you can make in your job search. Here are a few things a professional resume writer can do for you:

1. Provide outstanding writing skills

Though a resume isn’t supposed to be a work of literary merit, it’s essential that your resume is grammatically correct, free from spelling and punctuation errors, and written in a dynamic, compelling style. A professional resume writer is not only a grammar expert — he or she is also highly skilled in selecting exciting language and phrasing that will make you stand out from the pack. Don’t mistake such skills for lying or exaggerating — a professional resume writer never fabricates or aggrandizes your work. Instead, he or she takes what you’ve done and writes about it in the most effective possible way.

2. Approach your experience with an objective eye

You may think your 15 years of tech experience warrants a 5-page resume — after all, each and every one of your 25 bullet points is essential, right? Wrong. One of the benefits of having a “stranger” write your resume is that he or she is able to look at your experience and achievements from an objective point of view, selecting those details that are most essential for an effective document. With hundreds and hundreds of resumes under their belts, professional resume writers are adept at ruthlessly cutting unnecessary information to ensure that your documents are concise and attention-grabbing.

3. Create a coherent message — a professional “brand”

Is your resume simply a collection of previous jobs and tasks, or does it tell a story — a professional story, that is? One of the hallmarks of a professionally written resume is the presence of a clear, compelling message that shows clear career progression, highlights your frequently used skills, and portrays your personal brand. If you’re changing careers, a coherent message is a vital way of communicating to potential employers how your previous roles have prepared you for a shift.

4. Design an attractive package

Professional resume writers select the most attractive, effective font and format to convey your skills. There’s no need to go overboard with formatting, of course, and a professional resume is, above all, designed for clarity. A recruiter facing a stack of resumes (or an inbox full of them) needs to be able to tell at a glance who you are and what you bring to the table. The right format can make or break you at this crucial moment.

5. Ask the right questions

When it’s time to write your resume, a professional resume writer will know the right questions to ask to draw out the most pertinent information. He or she will know at a glance what’s missing from your current resume — and the sort of information required to fill the gaps. While you may feel overwhelmed at the prospect of distilling years of experience into a suitable resume format, or of figuring out just how to transition into a brand-new field, a professional resume writer has seen it all before. He or she is equipped to efficiently address your unique resume challenges and produce a document that will get you the results you want.

CleanTechies offers professional resume writing services specifically targeting green positions. Certified expert resume writers with years of experience and almost thousand of resumes written help job seekers at any career stage craft professional resumes. CleanTechies writes resumes targeting roles in renewable energy, resource efficiency, green building, and sustainable transportation as well as other environmental and sustainable positions. CleanTechies is dedicated to helping green job seekers pursue their dream careers.

[photo credit: flickr]

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As a recruiter, I’ve had countless conversations with excited, motivated and very eager people that are looking to break into Clean-Tech. Like many, they are looking to do something more meaningful at work and something that transcends and has a deep impact. Another group of job seekers, and they are not necessarily mutually exclusive, are those eying the Clean-Tech space as a potential island in a very tumultuous economic sea.

Unfortunately, it is hard to assess just how much value you can provide to a sector that you know very little about. I will put forth that for a cash constrained company, it is difficult to project how success in an unrelated industry might translate to success in the industry they operate in.

My suggestion is that you need to do research;  lots and lots of it.  While the CleanTechies website provides some helpful resources (→Blog, Job Board, Resume Writing Services), there are fundamental skills that an employer is seeking and the job seeker must have in order to add value to the organization – especially in this economic environment where headcounts are being cut, not grown.  For example as a sales person, you will add value through your understanding of the management of a sales process.

That said, I don’t mean to suggest that a job seeker should not expect that he can project his past success in selling software as an ability to sell solar panels.  Before you go running off thinking about how to develop Clean-Tech credentials, it is much more meaningful to find a directly co-related skill set that is going to be needed in the industry you are seeking employment – and then develop relationships to capitalize on them, for example develop relationships and some market awareness.

What makes a good hire?
To demonstrate what I mean, I would like to introduce you to someone that I think is a very viable candidate for the right company in the Geothermal energy value chain, let’s call him Chuck to protect his identity. He is now keen on working in Clean-Tech, but before coming to that realization he has done some things that give him situational awareness and an ability to add value to the organization he may eventually join from day one.

As a high school student on Student Council he began to develop environmental health safety interests.  Professionally, he did not really do much more from that point on that would be related to saving the environment – but what he did do was to get a PhD in Marine Geophysics from the University of California at Santa Barbara in 1996.

With the idea of becoming a professor, Chuck began to do work with 3D animation to allow students to have virtual tours into the deep. Then he took a job at Standford as a data center project manager to run systems that would allow students to have a simulated experience using GIS and more.  Given this experience, in 2003 he was pulled onto a team to do earthquake research – with the idea that he would help cope with the data that was going to be collected from the research.  The reality was that before the data could be collected, there was an immense amount of site preparation that needed to come together.  Given his Geophysics background, he was able to be a competent project manager for the tasks at hand and began dealing with the entire drilling process: finance, permitting, engineering and project management.

Chuck is now interested in applying his project management background to Clean-Tech.  Given his exposure to the entire drilling process since 2003 and his educational background, it is clear that he has a tremendous profile for any Geothermal company.  It is a value proposition borne of education, experience and a passion and interest early in his career that now has an application in Clean-Tech.  My advice to career seekers is that they find a niche within the value chain of some of the technologies classified as Clean-Tech that have a direct correlation with their work history.

Chuck has a background that will allow him to have meaningful conversations with potential Geothermal employers because he understands what their needs are and appreciates the constraints they likely face on at least some level of the company’s operations.  He might find the need to learn about the finer aspects of Geothermal electricity, but he understands some of the fundamentals of what needs to happen to get a project done and he can learn the rest on the job.

Capice?

[photo credit: MichaelMarlatt]

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