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Graduate Students
Resume Basics
Preparing a resume is one of the most important steps in the job
hunting process. A resume is not an autobiography. It summarizes
your qualifications, experience, and education as they relate
to your career goals. A resume highlights skills and accomplishments
which support your candidacy for particular jobs. Its primary
purpose is to win you a job interview.
Getting Started - Self Assessment | Resume Content| Format Guidelines
Self-Assessment: What do you want
the reader to recognize?
This requires some serious thinking on your part. You are not
just your degree, major or a job title. You are a unique individual,
with skills, interests, and personal attributes. You also have
a number of accomplishments, whether they are college or high
school activities, course projects, or paid employment. These
are your basic resume building blocks, regardless of what jobs
you apply for. Until you can profile these and identify which
ones will be of specific interest to the employers you mean to
approach, a resume will be difficult to compose. Need help? Speak
with one of the Center's career consultants about assessing your
skills, interests and temperament.
Skills: How have you produced successes in the past?
You have basic skills (e.g., reading, writing) and specific skills
(organizing data or supervising others). These are abilities not
to be taken for granted. What are your skills? Examine assignments,
projects, and activities you've been involved in. Analyze job
functions you've performed, and other experiences in which you
have worked for some goal. Look for the skills, traits and attitudes
that were necessary for success. Write them down - these words
will become part of your resume.
Interests: What sparks action from you?
Interests are activities that excite, challenge and motivate you
from within.. What do you really enjoy doing? What activities
motivate you? What end results are worth your efforts? You may
not recognize your interests as being work-related, but the world
of work can be viewed as an opportunity to expand those interests.
Employers seek out persons who act on their interests and produce
results.
Personal Qualities: When are you most comfortable, least
stressed?
There are special qualities within yourself which you may take
for granted that make you comfortable or uncomfortable, productive
or unproductive, when faced with a set of tasks to perform in
a certain environment. Examples are working with a group versus
working alone on a task or project, having expectations spelled
out in detail versus just general guidelines, or having a set
schedule for a period of time versus working without a structure
and adapting to things as they arise. Employers favor persons
who can articulate why positions will make full use of their natural
traits.
Accomplishments: What results have you produced?
Oftentimes, accomplishments are the result of your focused time
and energy spent moving toward a goal. Accomplishments result
from resolving problems or overcoming a perceived or real obstacle.
Examine leisure time activities, extracurricular involvement,
and work experience to determine tangible results you have produced.
When you've identified accomplishments, you can formulate PAR
statements (Problem - Action - Results) that you can use in resumes
and interviews. If you want individual assistance with your self-assessment,
you can set up an appointment to receive advice and suggestions.
Researching Careers and Employers: It's time to look around
you at people and jobs.
The best resumes are those that reflect knowledge about your chosen
career field. This necessitates gathering information about job
responsibilities, career advancement, and work environments. Researching
job alternatives within your field permits greater ease of career
transitions and advancements in the future. In essence, knowing
what types of jobs you're applying for and their typical duties
and demands empowers you to link your selling points to employers.
Ideally, you could design a different resume for each job you
apply for, targeted to the job's responsibilities and the employer's
needs. This could be an insurmountable task if you went after
drastically different types of jobs! But you won't! Your self
assessment will lead to gathering more specific information about
employers and their work structures, therefore enabling you to
design a resume that will suit employers' needs. You need to know
what employers are looking for in applicants and how you might
fit into their organization. Our Career Resource Center provides
literature about a wide variety of companies, organizations, and
career fields.
Resume Content
Every resume includes certain kinds of specific information. The
specific information depends on your particular background and
experience. Target your skills and accomplishments to the positions
you are seeking. Make sure there is a justifiable reason for the
data you put on your resume. Eliminate unnecessary information.
Leave out personal data like height, weight, race, religion, age,
or desired salary.
Contact Information
Generally an employer wants to know your name and contact information
such as your address, and telephone number. Also, you should include
an e-mail address, since employer usage of this contact method
is increasing. If you are job hunting while still in college,
you will want to include your temporary and permanent addresses.
By providing this information, you become more accessible to potential
employers.
Career/Professional Objectives
The most common error made by job seekers is that they are not
specific what kind of employment they desire. FACT: Employers
want to know your immediate and future career directions. Clear
objectives show an employer that you have given considerable thought
to your future career goals. A career objective can be viewed
as a job target. Hence, you might need more than one resume if
you have multiple targets. With clear job targets, you are in
charge of your employment search, and your resume reflects this
clarity. If you do not include a specific career objective on
your resume, you should specify career objectives in your cover
letter.
Educational Background
You should list, in reverse chronological order, the institution(s)
attended, their locations, degree(s) received, academic major(s),
and/or areas of concentration. Only month and year of graduation
date are necessary. You may also wish to include information about
a high GPA, academic honors, scholarships, Dean's List, etc. If
your work experience is limited, consider stressing curriculum
highlights, such as course work or projects, which relate to your
career field and show off your skills.
Related Experience
This is probably the most important category in your resume. You
should take some time and analyze how your work experiences relate
to your career choice. Remember, employers will interpret your
experiences in terms of how your skills, abilities, and acheivements
can meet their needs. Your experience comes from many different
sources. Consider any of the following: full-time, summer, or
part-time work experience, internships, assistantships, field
work, special research projects, volunteer work, and extracurricular
activities. The following information should be included in your
work experiences:
Description of what you accomplished, not just what you were supposed
to do
Skills used or acquired from the experience
Add figures wherever you can, to show the job's magnitude
Dates are less important than experiences. They can go after the
description of the experience. Month or semester and year are
adequate.
Special Skills
Consider special sections devoted to the skills and traits employers
say they need, i.e. communication skills, motivation/initiative,
teamwork skills, leadership, academic achievements/GPA, interpersonal
skills, flexibility/adaptability, technical skills, honesty/integrity,
work ethic, and analytical/problem solving skills.
Optional Categories
You may want to include information concerning your activities,
military background, publications, professional memberships, hobbies,
and interests.
Keywords and Scanning
Employers scan resumes and look for keywords to help them decide
what type of position you can fill in their organization. Use
as many nouns as you can that pertain to the field you want to
work in. This increases the likelihood of your resume being chosen
by the employer's search after it is scanned.
Format Guidelines
Having done the appropriate research, you are now ready to begin
writing your resume. Listed below are some guidelines you should
follow in preparing a resume.
Format
Be simple, concise, and well-organized. Use clear English, avoid
misspellings and check for poor grammar. Review Chronological
Resumes and Functional Resumes for more information about these
two commonly used resume formats.
Length
Be brief without sacrificing accuracy or completeness. Short,
concise phrases are more readable than long paragraphs or complete
sentences. Use action verbs to describe work experiences and related
activities. Generally, one page is sufficient for most college
graduates with limited experience, although some fields are more
length tolerant. Computer scanners are also less concerned with
length.
Visual appeal
Good spacing, margins, and headings contribute to appearance
and readability. Avoid gimmicky font styles and anything that
might make a rader struggle to get your message.. They may detract
from the content. Arrange major categories in order of priority
regarding most desirable qualifications for you career field.
Paper quality
Never mail out a resume on computer paper. Your resume
should be free of marks, distracting lines, and inappropriate
shading. Use quality stock paper. Make it look professional. Use
matching envelopes for mailings or send it in a larger envelope
so your resume won't be folded.
Show your resume to people who can "play
employer" and make constructive suggestions. If you want
assistance, please visit the office.
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