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How To Build Your Resume: Tips from a Recent College GradDec 18 '02 Write an essay on this topic.The Bottom Line Take what you have and make it look as good as possible. Avoid lying and stretching the truth because you will get caught. I graduated from college in May and I have sent my resume to many prospective employers. The economy is not the best, but with hard work and persistence, you can also get a job by making your resume stand out from the crowd. When you write your first resume, you are not expected to have a boatload of experience but you are expected to have work experience. You don't have to begin working in high school, but get a job in college if at all possible. Not only will a job provide you with a reference attesting to your work ethic, but you will also be provided with valuable experience. Secondly, spend your summers doing something- internship, camp counselor, retail job, etc. I know someone who graduated a couple of years ahead of me who had virtually no work experience. He indignantly said that if summer jobs were that important, the career office should have said something. Don't be that kid. Get a job. Your tan can wait until your days off. Onto the resume-making! The resume is divided into four parts: personal information, education, skills and work experience. I'll talk about each part individually. Keep in mind that I am only offering suggestions and you can tweak your resume to suit your personal needs as you see fit. Also, you should try to keep your resume as concise as possible. My resume is exactly a page long, and so is my husband's. It's not that we haven't done that much, it's that we've removed some of the college stuff as we gain experience. We went out to dinner with a friend last week and she said that she found it difficult to keep her resume to two pages. My one concern with a long resume is that if you are e-mailing your resume to a prospective employer, either in response to an online ad on monster.com or after sending an inquiry letter, the two pages might become separated. I would try to keep the resume to a page long, but that's just me. Speaking of monster.com, from what I have heard, it is very difficult to get a job there because it is online. Although numbers vary according to the type of job and location, the bottom line is that you have to make your resume stand out. You can even go so far as to snail mail or fax your resume to separate yourself from the emailing masses. In any case, regardless of how many other applicants there are or where you found the job, you should make your resume stand out. Personal Information You should put your name and information at the top of the page like this: Jane R. Smith 123 Main Street Marlborough, MA, 02456 (508) 893-1756 jsmith@yahoo.com The above information is made-up, so please don't try to call the phone number or send an e-mail, etc. I centered the information at the top of the page and placed it in a larger font (14 or 16 point). If you are sending your resume in response to an ad, this will help your information stand out and your prospective employer will see exactly how to get in touch with you. Education Start with the most recent institution you attended. You should include your college and your high school. You should include your GPA from college but you do not need to include your high school GPA. North Central State University, Marlborough, MA Candidate for B.A. in Linguistics and Canadian Studies GPA: 3.23 Canadian Studies GPA: 3.65 Honors and Awards Received: Dean's List Fall 2000, Spring 2002, Marlborough Prize (awarded for excellence in Canadian Studies) Spring 2002. Pleasant Valley Academy, New Canaan, CT Graduated Spring 1998 Honors and Awards Received: Headmaster's Cup (awarded to the student who exemplifies Pleasant Valley standards of high academic achievement, sportsmanship and determination) Spring 1998 I'm not sure if it's clear, but you need to put "Honors and Awards Received" before listing them. I'm pretty sure that since resumes vary widely, so you should clearly state what you're going to say before you say it. Skills You might have more skills than you realize. Do you speak a foreign language? Even if you are not fluent, you can always list your knowledge as "competency in German." Computer skills are always helpful, but don't list what you don't know really well. Pretty much, you can put any skill that you have that would be valuable in obtaining the job you want. For example, if you can include college coursework if it is relevant to the position you're trying to get. Otherwise, the information is superfluous and you will look like a resume padder, which is exactly the same as a review padder- your resume does not need to be a deluxe super feast. If anything has piqued the interest of prospective employers, they will ask you about it. Computer Software: MS Word, MS Excel, MS Frontpage, Quark Xpress, Foreign Languages: Dutch (fluency), German (competency) Canadian Studies: Coursework in the history, economy, culture and traditions and anthropology of Canada. Work Experience Since you are just starting out in the real world, you probably don't have much work experience but you can stress the experience you do have by listing your job description first. For example: Camp Counselor (Summers 1999, 2000) Blue Lake Camp, Happy Hills, MA Responsibilities Included: Supervised groups of 7-10 year old campers. Assisted specialty counselors in running activities and organized camp-wide programs and events. You only need a couple sentences to describe what sort of job you have. This really ought to be a teaser- things that will summarize what your position is all about but will also pique the interest of those looking at your resume. Also, you can substitute fancier words: for example, if you did a lot of typing, then you "processed data" and so on. Wrapping it All Up One thing that you should never do is put false information on your resume. Prospective employers will find out and they will not be amused. If you are caught lying, you will not get the job. Instead of fabricating experience or skills, etc, you should take what you have and make it look as good as possible. You don't need to embellish- for example, if you worked at Subway as a Sandwich Artist, you can say that you had "direct interaction with customers" and that you "provided customers with made-to-order sandwiches." If you worked at Subway, you probably fielded a lot of questions about which sandwiches were nutritious, so you also "assisted customers in designing nutritious sandwiches." You don't even have to twist words but you can definitely make a boring job sound fun and exciting. Also, you want to make your resume stand out, but you should avoid pretty colored paper. Sure, it helped Elle in Legally Blonde, but that was a movie. You should also use an easy to read font. I love silly fonts, but my resume is in Times New Roman because I want to be taken seriously. My default e-mail font is one of those fonts that looks like a kid's handwriting, but if I am sending a cover letter, I'll change my font so that prospective employers will take me seriously. Good luck! Getting a job after college is not always easy, but with a well written resume, your chances are improved immensely.  |
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