HHS Careers

Resume Tips

HHS Careers can accept up to 16,000 characters in your resumé. That's about five pages of average text.
The system does not recognize most of the formatting styles and tools that most of us are accustomed to using. Don't use bold, underlining, italics, bullets or any indenting or centering of lines or text. They will not transfer over into HHS Careers.
If you already have a resumé prepared, you can load it into QuickHire by selecting the document text, copying and pasting your resumé into the specified text box. You are still limited to 16,000 characters and plain text formatting. Type information in small, plain text paragraphs, separating paragraphs or sections with blank lines.
Plain fonts, such as Times New Roman or Arial, work best.
Learn the mission of the organization are applying to and reflect it in your resumé.
State your career goals clearly.
Describe your accomplishments, not just your responsibilities. Committees served on. Process improvements. Successful negotiations. Policies developed and implemented. Solutions recommended.
Quantify your accomplishments wherever possible. How many? Any cost or manpower savings? Percentage of time spent on specific items.
When applying for a specific vacancy, pull the Duties and Responsibilities portion of the announcement and look for key phrases you can use to relate your experience to the job.
If you choose not to change your resumé when submitting it to HHS Careers, your resumé may be unreadable.

If you have other questions about HHS Careers or submitting your resumé, see HHS Careers FAQs.

Last revised: June 14, 2004