About Resumes
A resume is a summary of your past and current education, experience, activities, and skills, and what employers will use most often to decide whether or not to interview you. Because employers can take just 5-10 seconds to look at your resume, use the following tips to make sure it does these 3 things:
- highlights your accomplishments and qualifications
- is well-organized and easy-to-read
- is tailored to include the most relevant things to the position.
1. Create a “Master Resume” that has everything. To get started, write down everything from your past 3-5 years: education, coursework, jobs, internships, activities, skills, honors, publications, language skills, study abroad experiences and community service projects. Then use this master to create one or more versions for particular industries or types of positions.
2. Keep your resume to one page. As you tailor a resume for a particular position, think about what should be trimmed down, expanded, reordered or reworded to emphasize relevant items on your resume. Exceptions to this are if you are you are applying to graduate school or academic fellowships, in which case you create an expanded resume of 2 pages. See Resume Sections for how to effectively categorize items on your resume .
3. Show accomplishments rather than listing duties. Where possible, focus on writing about your achievements or skills used rather than routine duties or merely listing job responsibilities (avoid using “Responsibilities included” or “Duties included”). For each work experience or major extracurricular activity, think about how you:
- Improved a work process or increased the quality of a service/product provided.
- Expanded the scope of work completed to reach the organization’s goals.
- Helped increase the sales or profits of the organization or a particular event.
- Accomplished projects or tasks that were of value to others.
- Learned skills that are transferable to other work environments, such as writing or problem-solving.
- Were recognized for your achievements or contributions.
4. Use action verbs to describe your experiences. Starting your descriptions with one of the many action verbs will help you focus on the RESULTS that you achieved with the ACTION taken in response to the PROJECT/PROBLEM you faced:
ACTION VERB + PROJECT + RESULT = ACCOMPLISHMENT
“Coordinated” +
“3 fundraising events for local shelters” +
“raised more than $8,000, 20% over goal, and greatly improving community awareness” =
Coordinated 3 fundraising events for local shelters, raising more than $8,000, 20% over goal, and greatly improving community awareness.
It is also helpful to quantify your accomplishments in some way if possible.
5. Maximize your formatting for an effective presentation. Use 10-12 point font and have .75-1” margins around your document. Instead of using larger fonts for section titles, use bold, italics, or capitalization to indicate the type of information you are conveying. Your name should only be a couple sizes bigger, at most, than the rest of the text on your resume. If you are emailing your resume, convert your resume to a PDF file before attaching to preserve the formatting, and name your file so that it clearly identifies the resume as yours.
6. Use “resume language”. Resume language is clipped and usually does not include articles (a, an, the). There is also no use of the first person pronouns (I, me, my). While it may be easy to fill your resume with acronyms and technical jargon, make sure it is readable to someone who may not be an expert in your field (e.g. someone in HR), especially if you are applying to positions outside of your current area of interest. Try to avoid flowery or vague language and be specific about your past experiences.