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Your resume is a critical marketing tool. Your resume has to entice a prospective employer enough – through its focus, content, and style – to first consider your qualifications for the job at hand and then to invite you for a job interview. A resume is a statement of your unique mix of experiences, education, and skills. You must not lie on your resume, but you must always remember its goal.

I think the most important thing any job-seeker should do before attempting to write a resume is to first sit down and make a list of your skills and accomplishments from all your previous experiences (work, volunteer, school, etc.) because you will take from this list those critical skills and accomplishments – not your duties and responsibilities – that highlight your fit for the next job you are seeking.

The next step is researching and identifying the job – and all the requirements of that job – that you are seeking because it is critical that your resume is focused on specifics. You should also research the potential employers that may have jobs that you seek so that you can incorporate some of their keywords into your resume.

Wait! Does this advice suggest that job-seekers need to have a specifically tailored resume for every single job they apply for? Yes! There is absolutely no reason for you not to develop a different resume for each job and employer. For most job-seekers, this task will simply mean tweaking small parts of your resume for similar jobs.

Once you have the content down, you should focus on the style and look of your resume. Do not use a template; design your own. Follow a consistent style. Use normal fonts and sizes. Use bullets rather than paragraphs. Do not use personal pronouns. Consider using a career/job objective or profile section. Always list education and experience in reverse chronological order (starting with the most recent stuff). Do not list any personal information (such as age, marital status, weight). Do not include controversial information. And ALWAYS, ALWAYS, spell-check and carefully proofread your resume for any and all errors. Read our newest articles published on Quintessential Careers: The Scoop on Resume Length: How Many Pages Should Your Resume Be? and 10 Resume Mistakes to Avoid.

You can gets lots more advice, including resume samples, resume-writing tutorial, and more, in this section of Quintessential Careers: Resume and CV Resources.

A salary history for you seems kind of moot since you don’t have any salary history in your field. Still, if you want the job, it makes sense to comply with the request.

When writing your salary history, use the same letterhead as for your cover letter and references list. Simply list job titles, employers (including location), dates of employment, and starting and ending salaries – in reverse chronological order (with most recent job first).

You could also have a short paragraph on your salary history sheet and/or on the cover letter with which you send the salary history that explains why you feel these salaries are not important – and that makes a case for a better salary in your new career field.

And whatever you do, never lie about your salary history.

Read more – and see some sample salary histories – in this article published on Quintessential Careers: Responding to Requests for Salary Requirements or Salary Histories: Strategies and Suggestions.

But job-seekers with disabilities always find it tough, so the current situation only exasperates the issue. Even though there are laws protecting and promoting job-seekers with disabilities, you still need to seek out employers that have it in their corporate culture to hire the best candidate – based on skills and experience and nothing more.

First, to identify prospective employers, I recommend using your network of contacts. If there is a local deaf agency or deaf college, I would ask for their assistance in finding opportunities. You should also have your references prepared to discuss how your hearing impairment did not affect your work.

Finally, in the interview, your best strategy (and not just for you, but for all job-seekers) is to make the interviewer feel at ease. You don’t have to, but you could be the first to mention how there are multiple ways to communicate, and that you are open to all of them, followed quickly by a statement about the strength of your skills and positive reviews/evaluations from previous employers. Find more resources (including articles and job sites) specifically for disabled job-seekers in this section of Quintessential Careers: Career and Job Resources for Disabled-American Job-Seekers.

Dr. Randall S. Hansen is currently Webmaster of Quintessential Careers.

Dr. Hansen is an associate professor of marketing at the School of Business Administration, Stetson University. He has been a published career expert for the last 10 years and an employer and consultant with hiring/firing decisions for the past 15 years.

Through his experience as a professor of marketing, Dr. Hansen uses proven marketing techniques and applies them to job-hunting. He is currently working on such a book. Some of his work can be seen at his personal Web site.

He and Katharine Hansen co-wrote the very successful job-hunting book, Dynamic Cover Letters, published by Ten Speed Press. You can order copies from Barnes and Noble of this cover letter bible. He is also author of several career-related magazine and journal articles.

Finally, Dr. Hansen has been an employer and has firsthand experience in the hiring process. He also stays active in the field by reading magazine and journal articles and by talking with employers on a regular basis.