The Self-Employed Resume

You may think you have no need for a resume as a self-employed business owner, but that is not always the case. In fact, there are several situations when you may find that a resume is necessary. For example:

• You are going back to work for someone else.
• You are applying for membership in a professional organization.
• You are applying for an industry-specific certification.
• You are applying as a presenter or exhibitor at a conference.
• You are bidding on a job with a large company or organization.

Those are just a few reasons a business owner may need a resume; read this post for more.

Self-Employed Resume Template

OK, so you are ready to dust off your resume and modify it for your entrepreneurial experience. The main difference between a traditional resume and a resume for a business owner is that the latter focuses more on proven experience, relevant achievements, and expert skills than career history.

All other resume rules remain the same, including:

• Make your contact information easy to find
• Use standard fonts in standard sizes
• Aim for no more than two pages
• Use headers and bullets to make it easy to scan
• Skip the fancy formatting and graphics
• Keep it brief and to the point

Of course, you can ignore as many of these rules as you’d like, depending on the type of audience you are preparing your resume for and what the expectations are.

To get you started with developing your own business owner resume, we have created this self-employed resume template and provided some tips for creating an effective business owner resume. Please feel free to download, modify, share and use this template however you’d like.

Click to download the Self-Employed Resume Template Word document: 
Self-Employed Resume Template (doc)

Want more free downloads?
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Alyssa Gregory

Alyssa is a digital strategist, content marketer, freelance writer and founder of the Small Business Bonfire. She's a team player, a team builder and not a bad leader, either. You can often find her on various social networks looking for remarkable people to collaborate with.