Southern California Job Market : Surviving in the 90’s : Marketing Yourself: The Art of the ‘90s Resume : Your employment biography should be tailored to the job you want. Plan on writing several versions.

Once upon a time, job applicants needed a curriculum vitae, a professional and personal history, often complete with photo. That long and involved biography has evolved into today’s tight, targeted resume.

How targeted? Definitely for an industry, sometimes for a specific job at a specific company. “Don’t settle for one resume,” said Tom Jackson, author of “The Perfect Resume,” (Doubleday, $10.95). “You ought to be able to tailor your resume to the job you’re going after. You need different resumes for different jobs.”

Jackson noted that the widespread use of personal computers makes tailoring a resume fairly simple because several modified versions can be easily produced.

“Without a target you dump everything into a resume and hope the right stuff floats to the surface,” Jackson said.

How do you tailor a resume, especially if you’ve been out of the work force for a while or in the same job for years?

First, pick your job.

A narrow, focused search is of the utmost importance, said Yana Parker, author of “The Damn Good Resume Guide” (Ten Speed Press, $6.95).

Once you know what job you’re going for, Parker recommends translating your experience for your chosen field. “(You) have to make (your) experience coherent to another field,” she said. “That’s a significant piece of work to do.”

Parker points out that the resume must use the terminology of the new job and that skills from an old job must be put into that terminology.

How do you learn it?

Parker recommends spending some time in the library to look up information on the job you’ve chosen. For example, the U.S. Labor Department’s Directory of Occupations has detailed information on all types of jobs. Trade journals or books on specific fields can also be helpful. “You might look up your old job too, and correlate that to the jobs you’re interested in,” she said.

And, she emphasizes, “You need to be working really hard on networking outside your industry and actually be talking directly to people who have the job you want. You need to demystify the world of work out there.”

Jackson recommends identifying what people in that new field are looking for.

“Say you wanted to go into publishing,” Jackson said. “You need to identify what are the areas that are the hottest: cost containment, graphics, marketing segments. Get a sense of what people are looking for. What are the needs of the marketplace? Then you emphasize things that you’ve done that go in that . . . direction.”

That’s a lot of homework, but once you’ve finished you can start writing the resume.

For most applicants, a functional, rather than chronological, resume is a better bet. The difference is that functional resumes list accomplishments while chronological resumes go from your most recent job backward.

“You need to do a functional resume whenever you’re making a big change,” said Parker. Why? Functional resumes talk about skills. “You can extract the important stuff from your past experience, translate it and present it.”

“The advantage of a functional resume,” said Jackson, “is that it is organized based on where you’re headed rather than where you’ve been.”

In addition, chronological resumes tend to deteriorate into lists of duties, a definite no-no on the modern resume.

“It is much more interesting to talk about what a person has done rather than what they were supposed have done,” said Jackson.

So what are potential employers looking for in a resume?

Brevity and honesty, mostly.

“The purpose of a resume is to get someone in the door, not to get them the job,” said Robert Rollo, managing director of Southern California for Korn/Ferry International. “It’s a method to package yourself.”

Rollo said that, in terms of format, it is very important to include education and to make sure that your name, address and telephone number are very visible and right at the top.

In addition, Rollo said, “our clients prefer bullet format--one statement right after another. Stay away from paragraphs.”

But the most important thing, he said, is honesty. “People have a tendency to ‘round up’ and end up doing themselves worse rather than better. People do try to cover up or inflate their accomplishments or compensation,” Rollo said.

For example, Rollo said, someone who was at Walt Disney Co. in the mid-80s can’t claim that company’s success on his or her own. “It’s quite obvious just one person didn’t do that,” Rollo said. “A wise executive would understand it just wasn’t true. Someone has to be honest about their portion of the accomplishments.”

RESOURCE: RESUME TIPS

Here are some pointers from the experts about what should and shouldn’t be included in a resume:

* Make it brief. Keeping it to one page isn’t necessary, but four or five pages may be excessive.

* Include all relevant work information, including companies and dates of employment. These can be at the bottom of a functional resume.

* Speak in terms of specifics and accomplishments, rather than generalized duties and responsibilities. Saying you saved the company a certain amount of money on a program is much more effective than saying you were responsible for the program’s budget.

* Don’t include any personal information. Professional affiliations or being on the board of a charitable organization is fine to mention, but not that you’re a Boy Scout volunteer--save that for the interview. Don’t ever list hobbies or marital status.

* Leave references off the resume.

* And, finally, remember that a resume is a self-marketing tool. Its main goal is to get you an interview. It won’t get you the job.