Creating Your Resume

What is a resume?

A resume is a personal summary of your professional history and qualifications. It includes information about your career goals, education, work experience, activities, honors, and any special skills you might have.

General Guidelines

Length: It is best to limit an entry-level resume to one typed page. Be as concise as possible in stating information in each section of your resume.

Font: Avoid fonts smaller than 10 point and larger than 12 point.

Paper: Use 8 1/2” x 11” high quality paper. Print your resume with a laser or high quality ink-jet printer.

Objective Statement

Objective statements are out!

"Companies who are interviewing you don't care about your objective, they care about their objective," says Tony Beshara, a recruiter and author of Unbeatable Resumes.

Professional summaries are preferred.

Summary of Qualifications Statement

The summary can replace the objective statement.

Write one short paragraph or a bulleted list of qualifications.

Use a summary of qualifications statement to emphasize skills you possess that aren’t obvious from your past work experiences.

Summary of Qualifications Statement

Summary of Qualifications Strong commitment, vision and leadership Enthusiastic, high-energy educator; passionate about building

strong rapport with students Outstanding communication skills, both one on one and before

groups Goal-oriented, amicable, ethical and creative individual Poised and confident as a professional business representative Proficient in Microsoft Word/PowerPoint, Internet (research &

navigation), PrintShop

Education

Beginning with the highest level of educational achievement, include information such as university attended, degrees earned, major, minors, grade point average, date of program completion, and so forth.

You do not have to include your GPA on the resume, but if it isn’t included, employers may assume that it is lower than it really is.

Education

List relevant courses that:– Help you stand out

from the crowd– Have provided you with

specific skills or knowledge

Spanish (4 semesters)Computer ScienceMarketingBusiness LawEconomics of Business OwnershipWeb Design

Relevant Courses

Experience

Include positions you have held which are related, in some way, to the job you are seeking. These might be both paid and volunteer positions.

Be creative with this section of your resume by describing and emphasizing your experiences in the most relevant way possible.

Experience

Hospitality Intern (May 1999-August 1999)Mountain Jacks, Lafayette, IN* Oversaw the planning,

production, preparation and prompt delivery of food

* Assisted in training and retaining new and experienced employees

* Created a positive and healthy atmosphere in the restaurant

Include information such as company name and location, job title, dates, and duties performed.

Make this section easy to read by using spacing and bullets.

Use action phrases to highlight the duties you have performed.

Experience

ACTION PHRASES Action phrases will help

you avoid being too brief and from understating your qualifications.

Think about your qualifications as a professional would.

Hospitality Intern (May 1999-August 1999)Mountain Jacks, Lafayette, IN* Oversaw the planning,

production, preparation and prompt delivery of food

* Assisted in training and retaining new and experienced employees

* Created a positive and healthy atmosphere in the restaurant

Activities and Honors

Include relevant activities and honors that you could discuss with your prospective employer or that have given you valuable experience or skills.

Specialized Skills

Include skills that make you unique, such as computer skills, foreign language skills, or military service.

Be specific in describing your special skills; name computer programs you know, how long you studied a foreign language, or your dates of military service.

References

As a general rule, do not include references on your resume.

It’s best to do a separate reference sheet that can accompany your resume.

Choose professional references rather than personal references.

Organizing Your Resume

Organize your resume to highlight your unique skills and strengths.

Use whatever combination of organizational styles you think best highlight your individual qualifications.

The most common

resume styles are: reverse chronological functional

Reverse Chronological Resume Style

Present your education and work experience in chronological order, beginning with your most recent (relevant) experiences down to your oldest (within the last 5 years for a high school resume).

What it is:

• most widely used and traditional format

• emphasizes experience

• focuses on employment dates, job titles, and education.

It works for people :

• with work (or volunteer, intern) experience .

Reverse Chronological Resume Style

Functional Resume Style

What it is: • stresses what you can do, rather than when you have

done• defines your value by focusing more on skills• calls attention to qualifications by listing them under

specific headingsIt works for people: with frequent job changes or significant work history gaps who took time off for travel, education or personal reasons who are just entering the workforce out of HS or college.

Functional Resume Style

Organize experience by type of function performed. Under each, give specific examples.

Highlight experiences that directly relate to the job you are seeking.

Ignore experiences that do not relate to the job for which you are applying.

Place things in order of importance rather than chronological order.

Functional Resume Style

Electronic Resume

This format is also called e-resume, Plain Text, Text File, or ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange).

What it is: • a format to use online• can be pasted into a job bank (like the ones sponsored by employment or job search companies)• can be pasted into your e-mail

It is for people:• who want to transmit their resume electronically• who wish to post their resume to an employment website

How to Create an Electronic Resume

Step 1 Open your resume & save as “plain text”. Rename the file “resume_plain text”

Electronic Resume

Because we have changed the font to plain text, your layout and graphics have changed. You now must go through your entire resume and make some adjustments.

Steps:• Set your right margin at 2.0 • Make sure your name, address, phone number, and e-mail appear on one line each. • Your sentences will be disorganized with extra spaces here and there. Flush everything to the left and remove any unwanted spaces.

• Make sure your sentences have ended where you wanted them to end. In other words: go through your resume & reformat it.• Make sure you have replaced bullets and graphics (as they may not convert). Remove these unwanted characters. You can use an * (asterisk) or CAPITALIZATION to attract attention to sentences.• Highlight the entire document and change your fonts to Courier or Courier New 12 pt.• Spell check, Spell check, and Spell check. • Save your electronic resume again.

Electronic Resume