Hi Will,

Resume writing is no fun but super important. I’ve been meaning to update my own resume for a little while now so your post caught my eye. Before I give my advice, let me say that I’m not a expert at this but have had some resume writing training in business school and also have looked through several resumes at my job. Also, I’m not a designer but am in general IT.

With some careful care you should be able to translate your pastoral work into design related experiences. Most pastors I know have excellent communication and people skills. You should be able to sell these to a potential employer by explaining how you are able to relate to and understand clients.

The first thing I’d say is not to use an objective in your profile section. Those seem outdated and always seem weird to read from an employers perspective. I don’t see how they add much value and they take up valuable space (a resume should just be one page, two if you’ve got a ton of experience).

Next, its very important to stress your accomplishments and not just what you’ve worked on. For example, you might say you created user centered web sites. However, it would be better to provide evidence that you created good user center web designed sites. You might say that after the launch of your user centered web designed site traffic, sales, whatever, increased 20%. It’s hard to come up with good figures but if you’ve got hard evidence for any of your abilities than incorporate them. Remember, management likes numbers and hard data. I’d also give examples of how your Self-Starting Always Learning.

For your skill sets, something one of my professors recommended was to provide some indication of your level of expertise with each item. Like if you’re really good at one language you could put expert in parenthesis and if you’re only familiar with another language you could put familiar, etc. That way, if you get called to an interview and they start asking you to write some PHP code from memory you have it own your resume you can point out that you’re just familiar with it but could easily become an expert based on your experiences with other languages.

You might also consider making several different versions of your resume based on the positions your applying for. Unfortunately, one resume doesn’t fit all jobs so its a good idea to tailor the resume for each job you’re applying for.

Lastly, this should be a given, but don’t forget to have your grammar checked and re-checked. I’m sure you will since you’re asking for advice already but so many people make dumb mistakes on their resume.

Also, be sure to spend the same amount of attention and focus on your portfolio and own website since you’re pointing this out in the resume. This is extra important since you’re a designer. If you own site doesn’t look absolutely amazing then people will be less likely to hire you for design work assuming that your site exemplifies your capabilities. I have not seen your site so this is just a general comment. For all I know, you have the best looking site on the net.

Good luck!!

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