Building your Resume:
Your resume is a unique advertisement about you that provides an opportunity for the prospective employer to learn about your qualifications, skills, and background. Your resume must be a concise and persuasive presentation of your qualifications for the job. Your resume is one of the most important elements in a successful job search. A poorly written one may eliminate you from consideration even though the job may perfectly match your skills and interests. Therefore, take the time to write, edit and rewrite for each job opportunity. For a complete indepth guide for resume writing, click here [.pdf].
Resume Basics -
- Be Brief & Easy to Read. Use bullets, short words and concise action fragments. One page is ideal.
- Be Specific & Focused. Remember your audience and stress the value delivered. Use numbers to qualify and quantify your work experiences (“supervised 10 staff members”) and mention ways that you made a difference (“increased sales by 10%.”)
- Be Active. Use strong active words that create positive image. Carefully choose your verbs (Ex. Administered, Constructed, Organized, Interpreted, etc.)
- Be Selective. Resume does not have to be everything you’ve ever done. Highlight information targeted toward your goals.
- Appearance. Balanced use of blank space and margins. Well-organized headings. Boldface, capital letters, and italics selectively used to highlight important parts of your resume.
- Some No-No’s – Information such as height, weight, age, race, religious affiliation, health, family size, or marital status should not be included. References also should not be included on your resume.
Sections of a Resume -
Heading: Should include your name, address (both current & permanent), phone number, and email.
Objective: Objective sentence is optional. Usually left out if you have a cover letter.
Education: If you do not have related work experience, list “Education” before “Experience". Begin with most recent educational experience and work backward. Include the following:
- Degree(s) or certificates and date received, major, minor or concentration, name of degree-granting institution and grade point average (if over 3.2.) Also, don’t include high school information.
- Include study abroad, language study, and relevant coursework (if work experience is limited.)
Experience: Must list dates, employer name, location, position title, and description of duties.
- If you have related experience in a field, you may be chose to have two sections – “Related Work Experience” and “Other Work Experience.”
- All work experiences may be important. Don’t omit jobs like waiting tables, babysitting, etc.
Other Skills: Any skills that relate to the desired job can be listed here. Examples: computer applications, technical skills, foreign languages.
Activities & Honors: This section shows that you have had to successfully budget your time, you possess a wide variety of interests, that you have leadership potential, and that you actively invest your time and energy into your community. Rank activities according to those that best support your job objective.
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