Five resume boosters | Business

A photographer candidate recently submitted his resume to my chief photographer.

The rag was riddled with typos, grammatical errors and misspellings. It looked like the guy had never heard of the "spell check" feature on his laptop.

Shoot! Score! In the waste basket!

Those are the obvious resume mistakes. Author and career coach Ford R. Myers suggested these five ways to tidy your resume, including some that aren't so obvious:

* BE BRIEF. Myers said there are basically five parts of a resume:  Header/Contact Information, Career Summary, Professional Experience, Education & Affiliations and Professional Development. Out of those, Myers said Career Summary should be the tightest.

"The summary is a brief statement of who you are, where you're 'coming from' and what skills and expertise you have to contribute to an organization," said Myers. "All you'll need to grab the reader's attention are five or six lines of text highlighting the benefits and contributions you offer as a professional."

* BE SPECIFIC. Share real, tangible results. Myers said if possible, quantify your claims with attributable statistics and hard numbers.

* BE ACTIVE. Use active verbs like "lead," "launch," "direct" and "manage." They sound a lot better than passive "to be" verbs and verb phrases, like "was responsible for."

* BE SELECTIVE. Which is to say focus on what's relevant. "There is no need to focus on your high school achievements or volunteer work if they are not relevant to the career you are looking for or if they are in your distant past," Myers said.

* BE HONEST. Avoid exaggerated experiences and, of course, outright lies. You will get caught.

Search more of Myers' helpful career tips at www.getthejobbook.com.