For me, one of the scariest things about job hunting is the horror stories about resume fielding. We’ve all read about employers who throw out resumes because they’re stapled wrong, they use Times New Roman font, etc. While I wish I could say these stories are false, there’s some merit to them.
The competition is fierce out there. It’s not crazy to assume that a company gets multiple resumes a week, or even multiple per day – often without any positions being advertised/available. It’s a big effort to field these, contact applicants, have interviews, etc. so it makes sense to eliminate as many as possible before this stage.
The good news is most (decent) employers won’t just dismiss a resume for something petty like fonts, staple fails, weird signatures, etc. So while most advice focuses on making your resume stand out, my advice is to make it strong, and make sure there’s no reason for it to get thrown aside.*
There’s a million websites that’ll tell you how to write a good resume, so I’ll skip a lot of the gory details and focus on seven things that I think are important – and how they apply to a Planning/urban design position.**
