Goal: Clearly Demonstrate Your Ability To Solve The Employer’s Problems
“This Is Just What We’re Looking For!”
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Overview
- Understand the problem – Be a problem solver
- Analyze the job description
- Imagine the situation
- Be able to do most of the job
- Take the employer’s point of view
- Show problem-solving ability:
- Education
- Experience
- Personality
- Skills
- Make it easy to find what’s important – know what’s important to whom
- Understand the problem – Be a problem solver
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Basic Guidelines
- Be accurate
- PROOFREAD! Spellcheck does not count
- Maximum impact, minimum words
- Guide the reader with formatting
- List everything in order of your strengths
- Do not include personal information or references
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Style Notes
- Make sure grammar is consistent and correct
- Use keywords throughout your resume
- Quantify when possible
- Be crisp and succinct
- omit needless words
- omit first person pronouns (I, we)
- omit articles (the, a)
- Use action verbs
- omit helping and being verbs (have, had, might, is, am, are, were)
- Omit items that:
- don’t count or could be used against you
- have negative connotations
- are just for your ego
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Resume Construction
CONTACT INFORMATION- Name as you wish to be addressed
- Mailing address
- Phone number where a message can be left
SUMMARY/PROFILE
- This is the opening argument; the rest is the “proof”
- List your strengths for the position in 4 bullets or less
- Be mindful of overt and implied meanings
- Do not repeat what you said in the cover letter
EDUCATION
- List month/year of graduation; use clear English notations (“with distinction”, etc.) instead of Latin praise (“cum laude”, etc.)
- List relevant coursework when you have a strategic reason
- Indicate if you worked fulltime while attending school
- Use bolding to highlight areas of focus
- Include meaningful honors and affiliations
- Don’t include High School unless you have a specific reason
- Beyond a few years past graduation, leave off the year of graduation and your GPA
- Include professional development if appropriate (software training, etc.)
EXPERIENCE
- Put things in order of importance to the employer!
- State accomplishments and evidence of problem-solving as well as tasks
- Create separate sections to allow you to group what you want to highlight first
- Include both paid and unpaid experience, if relevant
- Be strategic in what you highlight – title, company, etc.
- Explain what the organization does if necessary
- Don’t include irrelevant tasks or things you don’t want to do
- Reword job titles to make them more descriptive of what you did
- Quantify results when possible: “improved overall office efficiency”, “improved volunteer loyalty”, “reduced customer response time”
OTHER:
- Skills: List in order of importance to the employer; omit those that are clearly irrelevant or outdated
- Honors: Include relevant honors (can also put in education section instead)
- Leadership: Volunteer, community service and college extracurriculars; list leadership roles;
if substantial, list under experience - Misc: If not a US citizen, state here, and specifically state you are authorized to work in the US
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Some Words about Words
- Use the language of your target industry – don’t confuse them with jargon they will not know or care about.
- Use exciting words! Work to find the right word for each sentence.
- Borrow words and phrases that say what you want to say, but take care not to mimic others’ resumes.
- Think of words the prospective employer would use to describe your accomplishments.
- Read the company website and articles written by people that work in the company you are targeting to find words.
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Formatting Tips
- White space makes the resume easier to read – don’t cram!
- Use bullets, not large blocks of texts – employers first skim then read – they will skip over blocks
- Max 3-4 bullets in a section with 1-2 lines each; create sub-sections if you need more
- Create sub-sections based on job description requirements
- Create Section Heading titles that allow you to put the most important information first
(International Experience, Engineering Experience, Additional Experience) - Be consistent in headings, dates and spacing; be sparing if you mix fonts
- Pick a typeface that is easy to read
- A serif font can sometimes be easier to read than a san serif font
- Use between 10-12 font size; never less than 10
- For printed copy
- If you have two pages, at the top right of pg. 2, include your name and “page 2 of 2” in a smaller font
- Use regular white paper
- Use black ink
- Never staple your resume
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Submission Tips
- Attach as .pdf unless directions state otherwise
- Do not use special characters or italics (just bold) for formatting if you think your resume will be scanned
- Add your cover letter as page one of the resume if you want to attach only one document and it will not be scanned