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Resumes

Resume Services for Students
Resume Workshops Resume Critiques Career Counseling UWT's Optimal Resume

What is a Resume?

A resume is a focused summary of the qualifications, skills, and background you have to offer a potential employer. It forms the first impression an employer will have of you. The primary purpose of a resume is to obtain an interview. Properly prepared, a resume is a written picture of how you see yourself and how you want an employer to see you. Allow it to reflect you, your personality, your creativity, and your ability to express yourself. For guidance, attend a resume workshop at the Career Development Center and/or have your resume critiqued by a Career Peer Adviser at the Center.

Resume Guidelines

Start Strong

Employers often draw conclusions based on the first paragraph or first third of a resume. Grab the reader's focus at once. Provide a three or four sentence paragraph that gives an overview of your background or synopsis of your qualifications. Your resume probably has less than thirty seconds to make an initial impression. Check to make sure that the paragraph conveys your strengths and accomplishments. Does it sing with lively, clear verbs and nouns?

Audience

Use your research skills to gather as much information about the employer as possible. Use your contacts. Try to talk to someone who works for the organization to determine culture. For example, a financial institution vs. an art museum may indicate a different style resume.

Tailor Your Resume to the Job

The trick is to think as your potential employer. Imagine what they consider to be most important in the job. Your thorough research will shine through here. Employers read scores of resumes. Critical information about your suitability for the job must be easy for them to locate. Put the most relevant information first. A resume should detail what specific ways your qualifications match the needs of the employer.

Accomplishments (Quantify)

Employers want specifics. Stress your results. Elaborate on how you contributed to past employers. Accomplishments must be quantifiable and demonstrate a high level of activity and initiative. Did you increase sales, reduce costs, improve productivity, implement a new program or procedure, develop a new idea? Were you promoted?

Slant your accomplishments toward the type of position you hope to obtain. Do you hope to supervise people? Specify how many and performing what function.

Coach

Use a friend, spouse, teacher, etc. to brainstorm your job experience. Start by talking to your coach and tell them what you have done in each job or volunteer experience. Try tape recording it. You may discover things that you may have overlooked in your written self-assessment.

Write, re-write and polish

Time spent in careful planning and preparation will be needed to make each job convey your strengths. Have it proofread for mistakes. Read it out loud. When you have a final draft, ask others i.e., teachers, friends, career or writing specialists to review it to see if it clearly sells you.

Steps for Writing a Resume

Define Your Goal

• What type of work are you interested in?
• Are you interested in using your interpersonal skills in a sales or customer service position?
• Do you want to use your math background in a computer programming or accounting position?
• Would you like to be involved in working to clean our land and air?
• An effective resume will have a focus.
• It's helpful to have a resume that focuses on a specific job goal.
• Your focus can be outlined in your Objective, possibly in a Skills section, and in the experiences you choose to highlight.

Brainstorm Your Experience

• Think through the skills and experience gained at paid and volunteer positions.
• Think about classes taken, research completed, and extra-curricular activities.
• Choose the experiences and skills most closely related to the job goal, and highlight those on your resume using "accomplishment statements."
• If you have more than one area of interest it is recommended that you write a different resume for each one that emphasizes the different experiences and skills.

Use the Appropriate Format

• Reverse chronological
• functional
• combination

Accomplishment Statements

Accomplishments illustrate our skills and our marketability to a future employer. They can come from any area of our life, not just from paid employment. Accomplishment statements are the basis of a strong resume and help in interviewing, letter writing, and all aspects of the job search.

Three guidelines to follow in writing accomplishment statements are:

• Accomplishments should be brief and action oriented.
• Statements should specify results and include measurement in numerical terms.
• Avoid being too general without supplying a quantified measurement.

Examples of Accomplishment statements:

• Organized filing system that resulted in 50% faster retrieval time.
• Coordinated weekend retreat enhancing leadership and communication skills.
• Conducted research of existing software program to help staff determine new applications.
• Wrote and designed new company brochure.

Format

Use the format that works for YOU - be brief but concise; one or two pages.

Employers most commonly suggest a reverse chronological resume. It focuses on your past employment experiences, starting with the most recent and ending with the oldest. Include job title, employer, date of employment and brief description of duties and accomplishments. This format works well if you have past employment experiences including internships, practicums, part-time, or work-study jobs.

A functional resume highlights and categorizes your skills rather than your work history. This format allows you to stress your skills and abilities and downplay a lack of experience or chronological gaps in past work experience. Use three or four separate sections, each focusing on a particular area of expertise or involvement i.e., management, communication, or program development. Within each functional area, list your most effective accomplishments and the results produced. List your work experience at the bottom using job title, employer, and dates.

A combination resume lists both functional skills and past work experience. This type works when you are starting out in a new profession without a lot of directly related experience, or if you are making a career change, and your experience does not fit easily into your new field.

Categories

Categories you may want to include in your resume:

Contact information

name, address, telephone number

Objective

a brief statement indicating the position or type of position being sought.

Summary of Skills and/or Qualifications or Career Overview

A synopsis of your career and education to date. The statement is three to five sentences long in bullet form or written in paragraph form. It says something that other components of your resume do not.

Reviewers can glean in a very short time whether you are a viable candidate. Properly written, a summary statement draws a reviewer into the body of your resume. It makes them want to know more about you.

Education

List all universities and colleges in reverse chronological order. Include name, city, state, your degree, major/emphasis/focus, and graduation date. You may want to list just BA/BS/ MA or you may want to include your concentration or major and area of focus. Grade point is optional. List any academic awards, honors or scholarships.

Experience

Call this section whatever you like. If you call it "Work Experience", "Professional Experience", or "Employment/Professional Background", you are limited to documenting only paid experience. Consider using "Relevant Experience" or "Related Experience", or add a separate section on Volunteer Experience.

Describe the position, responsibilities, and variety of duties performed.

Job experience should convey accomplishments rather than just a job description or list of duties.

How did you make the job unique to your skills and strengths?

Related Experience/Volunteer Experience

Include internships, summer jobs, volunteer work, class projects, extra-curricular activities and leadership.

Special Skills

Include computer experience, technical skills, and foreign languages.

Professional Memberships

Name of organization, offices held, dates.

References

(Optional) "Available upon request"

Advice & You

There are many opinions, books, etc., on how to write a resume. Ignore what you like, including the advice right here!! Your resume should reflect you. Use it to distinguish yourself and show your creativity. Show how the employer would be mad to hire anyone else. It is your tool to market yourself. You will receive all kinds of suggestions and advice, but you are the one who must stand behind your work. It is recommended that you attend a Resume Workshop at the Career Development Center.

Picture Perfect

Make your resume visually pleasing. Do not let it look crowded. Use Underlining, Bold, CAPITAL LETTERS and different fonts for emphasis.

• Use a laser printer, 8 1/2 x 11 high quality bond white or light colored paper. Watch your usage of tense. Use present tense when referring to current experience/activities and past tense for previous experience.
• When mailing, always include a cover letter.

Resume "No's"

• Stating reasons for leaving previous jobs are best discussed at the time of the interview unless this is specifically asked for in the job announcement.
• Including personal data such as race, age, sex, religion, and marital status.
• Enclosing a picture.
• Salary information should not be stated unless requested in the job announcement.
• If you are currently unemployed, make this fact as small as possible. "Self-employed" or "free-lancing" is better than "unemployed."
• Avoid repeating yourself.

Action Words

Start accomplishment statements with an action word. The following list may help.

• achieved
• addressed
• advised
• advocated
• allocated
• approved
• arranged
• assigned
• assisted
• authored
• authorized
• budgeted
• built
• clarified
• compared
• completed
• conducted
• consolidated
• contracted
• contributed
• controlled
• coordinated
• counseled
• created
• decreased
• delivered
• demonstrated
• determined
• developed
• directed
• documented
• edited
• eliminated
• encouraged
• established
• evaluated
• examined
• expedited
• financed
• formulated
• furnished
• generated
• grossed
• grouped
• hired
• implemented
• increased
• influenced
• informed
• innovated
• instructed
• integrated
• introduced
• interviewed
• lectured
• located
• managed
• marketed
• motivated
• negotiated
• obtained
• operated
• organized
• participated
• performed
• piloted
• predicted
• prepared
• presided
• produced
• programmed
• proposed
• received
• recommended
• reconciled
• recorded
• recruited
• refined
• represented
• researched
• resolved
• revised
• screened
• served
• shipped
• solved
• specified
• strengthened
• straightened
• supervised
• summarized
• taught
• trained
• transferred
• tutored
• used
• utilized
• wrote

Links

UWT's Optimal Resume

Use this interactive tool to construct a strong resume. Learn tips and use examples to help you along the way.

Damn Good Resume Books Yana Parker Homepage

General information on resume writing and writing scannable resumes.

Princeton Review

Articles on negotiating salary, networking, informational interviewing, searching for a job on line, resume and cover letter advice, and internship search.

ResumeTutor

An interactive workbook that will teach you a lot about how to write a resume.

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