International Resume Choices

The brief one to two-page North American resume communicates the wrong messages to many international employers who either feel you have little in-depth experience or you are not interested enough in the position to take the time to detail your qualifications and experience. Many international employers expect to receive a five to eight-page resume -- commonly referred to as a curriculum vitae (CV) -- from serious candidates. After all, shouldn't a big job be the object of a big resume from those who have big experience and skills? Don't argue with this logic -- just use it to your advantage.

We prefer the improved chronological or combination resume for international jobs. These resumes have the best potential to meet the expectations of international employers as well as clearly communicate your international experience and qualifications to them. The functional resume is too vague for most serious international jobs. It often says little or nothing about work-content skills and qualifications other than provide some highly generalized and somewhat "canned" resume statements about experiences that anyone can include on a resume regardless of their particular work experience.

Since many international employers prefer lengthy resumes or curriculum vitaes which list numerous positions, duties, responsibilities, names, dates, locations, professional memberships, and references, you can provide such information in the improved chronological and combination resume. However, we recommend that you write these resumes in a nontraditional manner. Rather than just provide an eight-page resume with long listings of experience, job titles, and skills, write a one to two-page improved chronological or combination resume that essentially synthesizes the information or documentation found on the remaining pages of the resume. Consequently, your resume may be seven pages long but the first-page actually functions like an "executive summary" for a report; it synthesizes for the reader all of the back-up information provided in the remaining five or six pages.

These other pages should be well organized by functional information categories that summarize and list important accomplishments relevant to your education and experience. These might include the actual titles and dates of speeches and presentations you gave or articles you published; the formal duties and responsibilities of your past jobs along with a listing of actual accomplishments and any special recognition received for your performance; a listing of honours and awards, complete with dates and a summary of their significance; information on your professional memberships; and contact information on three or four references. In the process of doing such a resume, you are permitted to include many of the prohibitions normally associated with the brief one or two-page Canadian resume. Yes, in many cases it's okay to list publications, speeches, memberships, references, hobbies, interests, family data, age, sex, religion, and health.

Remember, international employers want to know a lot more about you than just your skills. They are interested in looking at you as an individual with many characteristics which may or may not qualify you for both the job and the international living situation.

Excerpted from The Complete Guide to International Jobs and Careers by Ron and Caryl Krannich, Ph.D.s. Impact Publications. Reproduced with permission from Impact Publications.