Before a prospective employer ever gets to shake your hand they will already have formed somewhat of an opinion about you. How? By looking at you is your resume.

A resume has to tell this prospective employer why they should call you and grant you the opportunity to meet with them for the chance of gaining employment. Ah, and you thought it was just to tell where you went to school and what jobs you’ve held in the past. Because your resume will be a direct reflection of you, make sure that it is clean, symmetric, and to the point.

Remember that along with your resume, the prospective employer will be viewing many others so yours must stand out. I don’t mean to put it on pink card stock or even to dress it in a binder, but there should be a certain amount of flare to it. Try using some, but not tons of, italics, bold, bullet points, and other font magic to dress your resume up.

Make sure that you are giving an accurate description of yourself, but don’t write a book. Too much information will have them thinking you are a blow-hard that is full yourself, not good. A good rule of thumb is keeping each section of writing to six lines, or less. I could personally write about six pages of information about the college I attended, but my perspective employer isn’t really going to care about who my favorite professor was and where I ate my lunch.

Most importantly, you need to make sure there are no grammatical or spelling errors in your resume. If you are like I am with spelling, there will be plenty of corrections that will need to be made. Use your spell checker, that’s what it is there for!

Getting your foot in the door at the workplace of your dreams is sometimes a very difficult task. This can be made just a bit easier by ensuring that your resume is not only worthy of you, but also worthy of being read in the first place.

Jason Kay is a professional resume writer and regular contributor to JobGoRound.com, which provides job search tips, interview advice, and resume service reviews.