The role of your resume is to simply get you the initial interview. No church or ministry will hire you solely based on the information presented in your resume; however, your resume can potentially be a stumbling block to keep you from getting that first initial interview.
Here are a few steps to ensuring that your resume accurately and concisely portrays your background, education and experience in an engaging way that draws the reader in and entices them to pick up the phone to call you and find out more about you:
1. Begin with a template.
There are literally millions of templates on the internet that you can use as a basic framework (both structurally and graphically) to build your resume with. Try to select a template that is aesthetically appealing without being overly distracting. You want the reader to choose your resume out of the stack because it STANDS OUT FROM THE NORM.
Note that it's simple, graphically-appealing and only one page long (with tear-off references on page 2).
While there are numerous other templates on the internet that are probably much more attention-grabbing, this one has historically proved itself to be different enough from the norm that it causes a first-glance reading.
Once the reader selects your resume to read, you only have 8 seconds to communicate your information in a way that gets them to select you for further inquiry.
2. Get the facts right!
Nothing will destroy your credibility more than lying or exaggerating on your resume. Should you move far enough in the interview process, all of your references will most likely be called. All of your background, experience and education will probably be fact-checked for accuracy. As you are refreshing your resume, double-check your statistics with reality. If your student ministry only had 30 students, don't say that it had 170. You will be shooting yourself in the foot... and lying as well.
3. Present RELEVANT work/ministry experience in order of relevance.
You don't need to list that you worked at McDonald's during high school 15 years ago. It takes up valuable space on the first page of your resume that could be used instead to describe what you accomplished during your previous ministries.
Also, when listing work experience, don't list it chronologically. List your most relevant experience FIRST.
4. Keep the whole thing to one-page.
Unless you are applying for an academic position, your resume should only be one page. That's it. In the resume world, brevity wins over long-windedness every time. Again, you only have 8 seconds to make your point. Use the second page of your resume to list references.
If you missed the first post in this series, here is the list of the 10 Essentials to Getting Hired as a Youth Pastor.
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