Breaking Your Resume

There’s no one right way to write your resume.

Helpful formats and guides (we have one, too!) may give the impression that success comes from slotting the correct information into the correct place. 

It doesn’t work like that. 

The conventions of how to do a resume “right” exist to compress your life experience into a page that conveys your relevant experience and skills to a particular audience (usually an employer).

There are a lot of employers out there and a lot of occasions in your life requiring a resume. Producing resumes that communicate to these audiences will require regularly breaking your existing resume and rebuilding it in new ways.  

Here are things most employers want to see

• Evidence that you have the have the qualities they need on a team: problem-solving abilities, a strong work ethic, the ability to communicate well, experience in working with others. These terms may sound like white noise when you read them in a job ad, but they are vital to your success in a workplace.
  • How to put these qualities on your resume: look carefully at the job/internship posting to see which of these essential skills the employer emphasizes, and then work on creating bullet points for your work experience, leadership activities, and projects that emphasize where you have already relied on these abilities to make things happen. Use strong verbs at the start of each bullet point to give your experience specificity and convey your agency.
• Evidence that you have the specific technical skills the job requires: job/internship ads will specify if successful candidates should have experience reading Arabic, analyzing data with SQL, designing graphics with Adobe, coding in Java, managing data in Excel, using PCR, and the like.
  • How to put these skills on your resume: a “skills” section, either at the top or bottom of your resume makes your specific qualifications for a position visible at first glance. Bullet points within your work/leadership/projects sections can further emphasize how you have honed those skills. Avoid using the skills section for so-called “soft” skills or skills that are unrelated to the position.
• The specific information they have requested: If employers ask for a GPA, specific software abilities (including things like Word, PowerPoint, Excel), particular coursework, narrowly relevant experience, evidence of your commitment to their mission, and you have it, then that information should be impossible to miss. Don’t expect employers to intuit that, as a college student you of course know Word, or that the organization where you volunteer matches their purpose.
  • How to make sure the most important information is prominent: customize your headers instead of using the generic “Work” and “Activities” categories. If projects (independent or for classes) are where you have honed the skills an employer needs, start with a “Projects” section that describes those experiences in detail. If you have a relevant background (for, say, a museum position) that’s scattered across last summer’s internship and some volunteering, then start with a “Museum Experience” section that brings those experiences together prominently. More recent (but unrelated) service jobs or leadership roles can go under a “Other Experience” heading. Just keep everything under each heading in reverse chronological order.

Here are things that help employers recognize your value

• A sense of what motivates/excites/interests you: Bullet points that emphasize your agency, your ability to set and meet goals, your curiosity, or your commitment can convey your fit for an organization that connects with those aspects of your experience.
• Specific, quantified details: Resist the urge to speak in generalities. The specifics of what you’ve done (even if it sounds trivially small-scale to you) communicates your value more powerfully than vague language. “Contributed to club’s membership drive by organizing events” is bland and uninformative. “Increased membership 15% by planning and executing a dance exhibition/lesson on the Quad” shows someone making things happen.

Here are some things that take up space without communicating your strengths

• Evidence that you are good at being a student: Employers who value academic achievement will ask for a GPA or mention specific experience/knowledge related to what you’ve studied. Long lists of awards, scholarships, years on the Dean’s List, and the like can make you seem more deeply invested in your success as a student than in your future as a professional.
• Things you did in high school: Once past your sophomore year, an abundance of high school experiences (including the fact that you went to high school) can make employers wonder how you’re using your time in college. Talk to the Peer Mentors in LAS Lisnek Hub about ways to gain more experience now that you’re in college.

Putting it all together

• Start with job or internship postings that interest you.
• Look closely at the “Requirements” (sometimes “Qualifications” or “Desired Abilities” or “You Will Have…”), usually a bulleted list towards the bottom of the ad. Use that list to identify what is most relevant or important in your experience for that employer.
• Use the resume format to make it as obvious and unmistakable as possible that you have those specific qualifications and abilities.
• Note that you do not need to meet all the requirements for a job to be a viable candidate for it!
• You may need several different versions of your resume to communicate how your experience fits with the needs of different employers. That’s okay.
• It can be helpful to develop a mega, multipage, detailed, all-encompassing version of your resume that you draw from to make the one-page resumes you submit for specific positions.
• Get feedback. Find out if your resume communicates what you want it to by asking smart, knowledgeable people to read it. Ask for help from
  • the Peer Mentors in the LAS Lisnek Hub (they are particularly helpful if you’re building out a resume from scratch),
  • staff in LAS Career Services,
  • the campus Career Center,
  • the Writer’s Workshop.
  • employers (look for employer-hosted resume-review events on Handshake; these can be particularly helpful if you are interested in that employer or their industry. 
  • professional contacts (“Would you be willing to review my resume?” can be a good way to build a networking relationship with someone who has offered to help).

 

For more ideas on navigating your future career path, visit our LAS Career Services Blog.