The Resume

A resume tells a quick story that leaves employers asking for more.  A simply formatted, clean, and spellchecked resume goes a long way. Avoid colors, designs, or fonts that may be difficult to read when printed or on mobile. Keep your resume to one page and the font to a reasonable size.  And, of course, proofread. A trusted parent, mentor, or educator should review a resume (seasoned job seekers should also take this advice!).

Top of the Resume

• Contact information, including your name, email address, general location (town or metro), mobile number, and a LinkedIn profile link
• If you don’t have an appropriate email address – create one. If you are going to lose your school-based email address at graduation — create a new one

Objective

• You can’t assume that people know what kind of job or internship you are seeking
• Be clear about what you want to do, including the location, industry, or responsibilities.
• Objectives should be narrow in scope – you can create more than one resume with different objectives

Education

• Dates (included anticipated graduation), GPA, Majors, Minors, Study Abroad Programs
• Relevant awards, research grants, or other selective accomplishments

Experience

• If you have real, relevant work experience, including pervious internships, include it on the resume
• Bullet your experience with action verbs (Managing, Implementing, Mentoring…)
• Include the dates of employment and the location

Relevant Tools

• Include your experience with software platforms, foreign languages, coding, etc.

Now that you have the content down, it’s important to make sure that the formatting is aligned with the message that you are trying to get across. There are several resume formatting tools available through Microsoft Word, Microsoft Resume Templates,  Resume Genuis, Google Docs Resume Builder, and more.

Though it is tempting to use ChatGPT or other generative AI resume builders — use these tools with caution. Seasoned recruiters can spot an AI generated resume from miles away. It’s OK to get ideas from AI generation. But, your resume should be curated to your experience and the industry that you want to go into.  Often AI has difficulty with specifics, formatting, and ultimately can make your resume look eerily simliarl to every other person who has used AI to generate a resume.

Once your resume is ready to go, it’s time to move on to step 2:  curating your online profile and managing your search from top to bottom.