Resume 101:
What goes into a resume?

The main sections usually found in a resume are listed below, with suggestions for what to put in each. For a given resume, you will probably not use all of these. Remember, your resume should not be more than two pages long, unless you have a lot of really remarkable experience - and you're better off to try for one page, especially in the early stages of your career. So, with this warning in mind, here are some of the ingredients used in cooking up a resume:

1. The Basics - Your name should appear at the top of your resume, and your contact information (phone number, email address, fax number, and mailing address) should, generally, be right under your name. Both are usually centered at the top of your resume.
2. Objective - Some people include a heading for their "Goal", "Goals", or "Objective" - but many others do not. If you do, keep it simple, avoid cliches, and place the "Objective" section right after your name and contact information. Your "Objective" should in some way match up with the type of jobs you will be applying for with this resume.
3. Education - Some people put education first, followed by experience and accomplishments; others put education after those sections. It is best to put whatever is strongest first, though you should also ask around to see which order is more common in your field. In your education section, list all postsecondary schooling and training you have had, starting with the most recent. Unless you do not have any education past high school, or had some remarkable achievements as a teenager (such as discovering cold fusion), do not include your high school education or anything else from your younger years.
4. Experience - In the Experience section, you need to balance two goals. First, you want potential employers to know what you have done and accomplished. Second, you need to keep your resume as brief as possible, which may mean leaving some of the details of your experience and accomplishments out of your resume. How do you balance these two goals? Carefully! Remember that in writing a resume you are allowed to use a "telegraphic" style - this means that you can leave "unessential" words out, just as if you were sending a telegram. So, for example, if you worked in a warehouse setting up an Excel spreadsheet for the dispatchers to use in planning how to handle incoming and outgoing shipments, and making sure that there were loading docks available for each truck, and so on, you wouldn't say "I worked in a warehouse where I set up a spreadsheet to ..." Instead, you might say something like "Wrote planning tool for coordinating incoming, outgoing shipments and dock usage, using Excel." This is bad writing, but fine for a resume. Keep in mind that "experience" can inclde volunteer work, internships, work done through school projects, or anything else, paid or unpaid, that was relevantly similar to the kind of work you want to do. If possible, you should emphasize "real" jobs, but if you have done significant bookkeeping work as a volunteer for your church or temple, for example, this certainly makes you a better candidate for a bookkeeping job.
5. Accomplishments - If you have won awards, citations, or scholarships, or been voted to honorary offices, you may want to include these in your resume, particularly if you feel that people in your field of work would be impressed. Any success that you have had, in any area of life, may be of interest, depending on what sort of work you are applying for. Be open-mided at first - you can always edit out the excess later. Often, when writing a resume, people forget all that they have done in their lives, and the recognition they have received. Try to remember everything you can - you may be pleasantly surprised to find that you have accomplished more than you thought you had!
6. Credentials, Memberships, Affiliations - In some cases, professional affiliatons may be relevant. If you are applying for a job teahing engineering classes, your membership in engineers' professional societies shows that you are involved in the field, and you may have a better understanding of what students need to know to become professional engineers than someone with a similar degree, but no such affiliation.
7. Skills, Languages, Interests, Activities - Sometimes you may have skills that are very relevant to the jobs you are applying for, but which do not show up anywhere on your resume. In this case you should list them separately in a "Skills" section. The same section may include languages you know. "Interests" or "Activities" sections are sometimes included by some resume writers, but they should probably only be included if you can use them to add specifically to your appeal as a job candidate. Some people feel that they should try to show that they are "well-rounded" by documenting their hobbies and so forth, but, if you think about it, aren't we all basically "well-rounded"? Now, in some cases, your photography hobby may indicate that you have a good eye for design work, or your training as a long-distance runner may show that you are in good physical condition. Depending on the jobs you are applying for, these may be good virtues to have, and so including these hobbies may be a very good idea. But use careful judgement - everything on your resume that doesn't help you get a job is a waste of the small precious space you have available in which to show why you should be hired, above all other candidates