Suggestions for improving your resume:
The best way to improve your resume is to put yourself in the position of a potential employer… You have a huge stack of resumes to read, what do you look for?
· Make sure contact information is easy to find. Even though the Word resume template has it very tiny, you can always adjust it to your liking.
· The objective statement is professional and not too blunt or self centered. Don’t do this: “I am looking for a job where I can learn important skills and get some good contacts so I can land a real full time job someday where I can rake in the dough.” How does the employer benefit?
· The overall appearance is neat, uncluttered, and easy to read.
· Most recent experiences are listed first.
· The most relevant and important information is easy to find: it’s either towards the top of the page, or (gently) emphasized with bold face type, italics or spacing. Underlining is a less polished formatting technique, and there’s no need to underline or use colored font for your e-mail address.
· There are no spelling mistakes. It takes away from your credibility and professionalism.
· All the information is formatted and spaced in a logical and neat manner, demonstrating your ability to do high quality work and pay attention to details.
· What if they want to e-mail you? Make sure you include an e-mail address that you check regularly.
· DBC= Don’t be cryptic. Make reasonable assumptions as to what your reader will already know. Use consistent and standard abbreviations. It’s safe to assume that St., MN, and Dec. will be understood, but what is a “GCE 0-level in the UK”? What’s a OWSEIF award? What is ME 2011? Or Physics Z2001? Your GPA is 22.98… on a scale of what?
Some important information to include…
· Under education section: The name and location of the school/university, your GPA, and your expected graduation date (month/year).
· Under work or volunteer experience section:
o Name of the organization
o Location (city and state)
o Dates of employment (month and year) Ex: June 2000 - January 2002
o Your title
o What you did at the job.
Things that should NOT be on your resume:
· Personal information such as date of birth, age, marital or romantic status, health
· Standardized test scores
· Information from middle school (in general)
· That you won THE beer bong award from your fraternity (twice!)… or any other information that is unprofessional and informal.
· Availability or geographical preference (can be discussed later)
· Actual references, or addresses and phone numbers of educational or work institutions. (Fine to say references available upon request)
· The number of credits you have earned
· “Sophomore of mechanical engineering” (Instead, say “Expected graduation date, May 2005”)