Resume Builder

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Resume Builder

If you're looking for a way to build a resume, you're in luck. You've got access to a resume builder as long as you have access to the Internet and some spare space on your hard drive. In fact, you have access to a resume builder if you have a word processing application already installed on your computer.

Resume Builder and Word Processing

Most computers sold today already come with a word processing application pre-installed. That includes both Microsoft's Word and / or Corel's WordPerfect. And just in case you've never seen a resume builder, we're going to make this a complete how to build a professional resume article.

Additional Resources

For those of you that don't have a word processing application on your home computer and are looking for one, we've got some good news for you. There are high quality word processing applications that you can find online and download for free.

OpenOffice Word Processing

We realize that this is supposed to be a business publication and we should stick to the topic of building a resume, but in this situation a word processor facilitates the writing process. So we will first tell you how to get that free word processing application, then we will walk through the process with the application most of you have installed on your machines already - Word.

You've probably already heard of Linux, which is a UNIX type of operating system that someday might challenge Microsoft's Windows operating system. Linux is perhaps the single best known software put together by a growing community of programmers that want people to be able to have choice in the software they use on their personal computers. This community also believes that software should be free to those that need it. Even some of Microsoft's competitors have decided to make their software available for free to the public.

This is how OpenOffice came onto the scene. OpenOffice is a suite of tools that pretty much operate the same way Microsoft's office suite works. It contains applications for presentations, spreadsheets, drawing, writing and even a database engine. It runs on a variety of operating systems including Windows. You can download and find more helpful information on OpenOffice at http://www.Openoffice.org/.

Now that we are sure that everyone has a word processing application installed on their machines, it is much easier to walk through the process of explaining how a resume builder works.

Resume Builder versus Resume Templates

All word processing applications come with templates to help the user get started building a resume or other types of documents. These are put together by the manufacturers themselves and are very high quality templates, which frequently use some of the more progressive ideas on topics such as resumes.

In Word, you have a choice of building a resume using one of several templates or even using a resume wizard - which is essentially a "free" resume builder. The resume builder templates come preformatted with pre-built sections for a resume such as the objective statement and work history. The resume wizard even allows the user to pick the sections that they want to include in their resume.

Resume templates might be a good choice for some folks that need to build a simple resume and have a relatively "light" work history. The vast majorities of people are better served by taking the extra step in building their resume and using a resume wizard.

Resume Wizards

You can find the resume wizard by creating a new document through the command File then New commands. When you do this you should be presented with several options to choose from including templates. In the templates dialog box, you will likely find the resume templates in the Other Documents tab. Once you've chosen to build a resume using the resume wizard, you will be walked through a series of question and choices.

For example, you can choose the headers or sections to include in the resume, you can also pick the style of the resume - how it looks. You will also be presented with the option of creating a functional resume, a chronological resume or even what is called a professional resume. We've written about the best resumes to use in different situations in our article on How to Write a Resume.

After walking you through the style, type and headers to include in your resume, the resume builder creates the document for you. It is really that simple to build a resume using these built-in template wizards.

Free Resume Builder

You really don't need to buy a resume builder, because as we've already mentioned you've probably got a free resume builder as part of Microsoft Word. The down side of using this type of resume builder is that it doesn't help you to pick the correct resume format to use.

Before using any resume builder or wizard, you should familiarize yourself with the advantages and disadvantages of each type of resume format. You might save some time by looking through our articles on the functional resume, chronological resume and combination resume before starting to build a resume.

Free Resume Downloads

If you're interested in seeing what each of these resume types look like, we've got several free resume downloads that can help you get a better picture of each resume type. The following links will take you to three resume formats were built by our staff:

We've also got three more resume examples that we've pulled from Microsoft's website:

All of the above downloads are made available for free on this website and can be used as the basis for your own resume builder or template.

OpenOffice Resume Samples

If you're running OpenOffice and looking for resume samples, then you can still use the resume samples we've supplied above. OpenOffice has a document wizard that can be used to convert Word documents into the OpenOffice .odt file format. To build a resume in OpenOffice, just download one of our free resume templates above.

Once the file has been downloaded, the following instructions can be used to convert the documents or templates: