I’m looking to improve my resume, but I am stumped…
Here is one of my narratives:
In my department I respond on a daily basis to taxpayer’s inquiries they have with their withholding. To do this I must answer their correspondence or their phone call to our service center. I must inform them of the program and how it works. I answer questions they may have and guide them to a resolution.
I will compute their withholding by analyzing their tax return for non wage income, adjustments to income, and itemized deductions. After the taxpayer understands how I come up with the equation, I must issue a letter of modification to them through the database.
Before all that happens my fellow tax examiners and I, will have to issue letters that tell their employer to lower the taxpayer’s withholding down to zero, causing them to call or send in correspondence. These letters are also issued through our computer system.
I noticed this system is a bit outdated and took it upon myself to build a new program from software that comes standard on our computers. This system is a simple system with the capabilities of handling the largest tasks. I designed a system that can manipulate any data screen as well as compute the information given or received. This program I created sends the withholding letters with less typing and is faster then systems already built to send letter.
I must research an account before sending a letter. To do this through our database we must analyze the taxpayers wage income and see if they are withholding adiquatly. We also need to check their account to make sure a previous letter was not issued to keep from sending letters is a repetitive nature.
Recognized there must be an easier way to handle these procedures. One task that others said could not be done was to combine a link to two different databases within the same technology. This tool will extract the data from our database and place it into the proper places in our own other database. This will create a consistency throughout the department.
I have hired several hundred people for my company, and I can tell you if this came across my desk, I would not have gotten past the first paragraph. If this is from your resume, then you need to make major, major, major changes.
DO NOT use narratives. Use bullet points. For the purposes of your resume, this entire narrative can be boiled down to the following:
Responsibilities
* Answer inquiries from tax payers via phone or mail
*Compute proper withholding
*Interface with taxpayer’s employer if necessary
Accomplishments:
*Streamlined the system using existing software resulting in time savings and increased accuracy in answering correspondence.
*Linked two separate databases to eliminate errors and double entries.
Remember, a resume is like an advertisement in the paper: you want to generate interest. Your goal at this point is to get an interview, not get the job.
Unless you are applying for the job of CEO, then your resume should be no longer than one page with lots of white space. (It can be two pages, but all the important information needs to be on the top half of the first page.)
Also, you did not ask, but it is my personal pet peeve, your name, phone number and email should be on every page and the cover letter.
20 years of hiring experience
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