Before you can begin to design your resume on paper, you need to have the words. Use the following 12-step writing process to help clarify your experience, accomplishments, skills, education, and other background information, which will make the job condensing your life onto a sheet of paper a little easier.

Step 1: Focus
The first step in writing the perfect resume is to know what kind of job you will be applying for.

Step 2: Education
The second step in writing your resume is to think about your education. That means all of your training and not just normal for education (college, university, or trade school).

Step 3: Job Descriptions
Get your hands on a written description of the ob you wish to obtain and for any jobs you have held in the past, as well as for your current job. If you are presently employed, your human resource department is the first place to look.

Step 4: Keywords
In today’s world of computerized applicant tracking systems, make sure you know the buzzwords of your industry and incorporate them into the sentences you are about to write. Keywords are the nouns, adjectives, and sometimes verbs and short phrases that describe your experience and education that might be used to find your resume in a keyword search of a resume database. They are the essential knowledge, abilities, and skills required to do your job.

Step 5: Your Jobs
Now that you have the basic information for your resume, you need to create a list of jobs and write basic sentences to describe your duties. Start by using a separate “Experience” form (you will find them in the appendix) for each job you have held for the past 10 to 15 years. You can generally stop there unless there is something in your previous work history that is particularly relevant to the new job you are seeking.

Step 6: Duties
Under each job on its separate page, make a list of your duties, incorporating phrases from the job description wherever they apply. You don’t have to worry about making great sentences yet or narrowing down your list. Just get the information on paper.

Step 7: Accomplishments
When you are finished with your work history, go back to each job and think about what you might have done above and beyond the call of duty. What did you contribute to each of your jobs? How did you measure your success

Step 8: Delete
Now that you have the words on paper, make a copy of each sheet. It pays to be a packrat if you decide to change careers in the future. Store the original worksheets in the same file you created for your performance evaluations and job descriptions. Use the copies for this step.

Step 9: Sentences
It’s time to do some serous writing now. You must make dynamic, attention-generating sentences of the duties and accomplishments you have listed under each job, combining related items to avoid short choppy phrases.

Step 10: Rearrange
You are almost done! Now, go back to the sentences you have written and think about their order of presentation. Put a number 1 by the most important description of what you did for each job. Then place a number 2 by the next most important duty or accomplishment, and so on until you have numbered each sentence.

Step 11: Related Qualifications
At the bottom of your resume (or sometimes toward the top), you can add anything else that might qualify you for your job objective.

Step 12: Done!
You’re done…well almost! Now it’s time to put all of this information together into the perfect resume. You have qualifications summary, your education, experience, and other relevant information. The only thing you lack is your contact information.