Photo via careeremployer.com
Before the start of college life, a resume should be written. College is the start of your career search for the future, so you want to make sure you are prepared to impress employers and leave a mark on their radar.
Whether you are just starting out and do not have much experience or you are ready to show off your resume to an employer, it never hurts to improve the quality of your resume.
Writing a resume can be intimidating because you may not know what to include.
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“The first thing that anyone writing a resume needs to realize is that they are very synced, no personal pronouns, with as few conjunctions as possible,” said Lisa Duke, Assistant Director and Advisor to the Career Center.
Resumes can sometimes be misconstrued, assuming they are large paragraphs written about the person, like a biography. That is not the case.
“Writing a resume is a lot of bullet statements that end up being short dynamic statements and incomplete sentences. You won’t see many people putting many periods on a resume after a bullet statement. They are more powerful and action packed. Each bullet statement should tell a [compelling] mini story in as few words as possible,” said Duke.
Once you figure out exactly what should be included in your resume, all that is left to do is figure out the best way to write it.
“We have a formula that we like to share with students when they are getting ready to start their bullet statements. You always start with an action verb, which we recommend being in past tense rather than present tense, just to be consistent throughout the entire resume,” said Duke. “This formula starts out with the action verb and then it describes the situation, task or duty that you did and then you wind it up with a statement talking about what the result was or the reason why you had to do it.”
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Besides refraining from using personal pronouns and not using many conjunctions, there is something else to stay away from when writing a resume.
“We always advise against using the phrase ‘responsible for’. When you say ‘responsible for’, it takes away your ownership for it, and you want to make your resume is about you and your impact on whatever you did. Own the action, just don’t say that you were ‘responsible for’ it,” Duke said.
Working with career advisors is a great opportunity to learn the best ways to write a resume and how to get an employer’s attention.
For help with vocabulary when writing your resume, visit the Career Center’s 24-hour help library on their website. Forbes and Business Insider also have good information on resume writing.
