Susan Ireland - Top Resume Tips
Susan Joyce recently spoke with Susan Ireland, author of "The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Perfect Resume". Following is an edited transcript of that conversation. You may also listen to the original interview here, or visit our Career Strategy Center to get additional career-related information.
![]()
Hi. I'm Susan Joyce, Editor and Publisher of Job-Hunt.org, a website recently selected by US News and World Report Magazine as one of the top sites for finding work. Today we're talking with another Susan, Susan Ireland. Among Susan Ireland's many accomplishments, she's the author of The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Perfect Resume, and she's also the person behind the excellent resume website www.susanireland.com. Susan has been a professional resume writer since 1989 with literally thousands of happily employed clients.
Susan, in the introduction to your latest edition of Perfect Resumes, you tell your readers, welcome to the world of marketing. What did you mean by that?
Susan Ireland: First of all, thank you for asking me to be interviewed by you. And I want to talk about marketing because that is exactly what resume writing is. A lot of people think of their resume as a document, kind of a historical document about their past. But I think if we take a different approach to it and think of it as a marketing piece that's going to launch you into the future, the resume writing process itself can be much more interesting and the results of that resume will be much more productive. So if we think of this as a marketing project where we're going to present you, the job seeker, to the employer, it is very likely that the resume is going to be the first piece of marketing that will come before the reader's eyes. And so therefore, the resume is a marketing piece that will represent you and it's something that we want to create with the idea of creating your future. So when we think of the resume as a document, we want to think of it as a document about your future, not about your past. Even though you'll be writing about your past, you're going to be very careful to write about your past in such a way that it creates the future that you want. In that way it becomes a marketing piece for you.
Susan Joyce: I can see how people get caught up very much in the historical aspect of it, and they write down every job they've ever had. And that's really not appropriate for a marketing document.
Sign up for ITworld's Daily newsletter
Follow ITworld on Twitter @IT_world
Brian Proffitt
Microsoft/Novell: Breaking Down the Coupon Numbers
Esther Schindler
Drupal's Dries Buytaert on Building the Next Drupal
Tom Henderson
Top Ten General Operating Systems Rants
pasmith
PS3 motion controller delayed; goes up against Project Natal
sjvn
Neolithic Windows security hole alive and well in Windows 7
claird
Perl source code comparison makes for good reading
James Gaskin
Learn How To Print Pages In Order with Ink Jet Printers
mikelgan
Cell phones don't create stress or interrupt much
Sandra Henry-Stocker
How to: The Unix Interview
Where Google Chrome security fails: the password
I heard mention that the Chrome OS will have some sort of encryption available a la bitlocker. If it's possible to encrypt personal data using another password or key, then it may have potential for very secure data.... And Ubuntu has an 'encrypt home directory' option, perhaps google should follow suit.
- Dann
Join the conversation here
Quick, practical advice for IT pros. Made fresh daily.
- Ubuntu advances: Why Ubuntu server installations will surge in 2010
- Social media marketing: How to make friends with benefits
- More...
Want to cash in on your IT savvy? Send your tip to tips@itworld.com. If we post it, we'll send you a $25 Amazon e-gift card.






