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Resumes & Letters

What is a Resume?

A resume is your personal marketing brochure and an integral part of your job search. Its purpose is to gain you invitations to interviews. As a marketing device, a resume must convey who you are, highlight your qualifications and minimize your limitations to prospective employers. You want them to "screen you in" for an interview based on your resume, not "screen you out." A quality resume is: accurate, descriptive, brief, easy-to-read, graphically engaging and laser printed. For more information please log into your Job Finder account and access the Resume Writing handout and podcast.

The Resume

Through preparation and organization, you can develop an effective resume. Start with a careful and accurate assessment of your career objective, educational background, work history, skills, achievements, activities, interests and other experiences which will be of interest to an employer. Analyze and describe these experiences in terms of the "skills" and "results." Review and organize the facts about yourself. What can you do? What potential do you have to show an employer? Remember, employers view your resume as a direct reflection of you.

Please Note: As stated earlier, the visual presentation of your resume is as important as the content. The length depends upon your experience. Most college graduates should be able to incorporate this information on one or two pages. Use of underlining, capitalization, italics, font size and "white spacing" href="#" enhances appearance and facilitates reading. We recommend that your resume be word processed and laser-printed.

Points to Remember

• Use a format which best displays your unique background
• Be positive in what you say about yourself
• Be complete and direct about relevant information, avoid being vague
• Have others read your resume and discuss what they have learned from it
• Project a professional image through an immaculate, eye-pleasing appearance, spacing, margins and headings
• Keep it to one page, unless have had significant experience related to your career goals
• Use action verbs which clearly state your skills and experience. For example: designed, analyzed
• Avoid using the same action verb repeatedly
• Be consistent in use of indentation, underlining, capitalization and spacing
• Use a dictionary when in doubt about spelling -- mistakes indicate carelessness

 

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Last modified: August 19, 2008 10:24:48