A Student’s Guide to Building a Resume

Step 1: Start with a self-asssessment

• Write out your current short- and long-term goals. What do you hope to accomplish in the next 3–6 months? What about the next 1 year? 5 years?
• Think about the type of organization, position, or program that fits these goals.

Step 2: Create a master list

• Many people find it helpful, before doing a resume draft, to first jot down a “master list” to help them think of all of their experiences that may be applicable for a resume.
• Ideas for your master list:
  • Education including international study and off-campus semesters
  • Every paid job you’ve had with major accomplishments
  • Every volunteer/community service experience
  • Types of courses you’ve taken and associated projects
  • Research experience
  • All of your college activities (sports, clubs, committees, leadership)
  • Include high school activities if you are in your freshman or sophomore year of college
  • Awards (Dean’s List, scholarships, etc.)
• Once you have written this master list, write down the skills you have gained along the way in each of these experiences. The skills inventory, which you can get from a career counselor, is a great tool you can use during this process.
• Not all of these experiences will be on the final resume you submit to employers.

Step 3: Tailor Your Resume

• Tailoring each resume to the position you are applying for strongly improves your chances of getting an interviews.
• You want your resume to draw clear parallels between your experience and the specific job requirements.
• You will most likely have a different resume for each job application.
• To present your most relevant experiences to an employer while keeping the information in reverse chronological order (earliest last to latest first), you can use a new section such as “Relevant Experience,” which goes above a section called “Additional Experience.”
  This puts your more applicable skills earlier on the document, where the employer is more likely to take notice.

Start by:

1. Going through the job description and underlining key skills that are required for the position.
2. Reflecting on your skill set and seeing where you can highlight these relevant skills in your resume.

Expect to go through several different drafts during the editing process. Pay close attention to content, grammar, consistency, and formatting. The information you include is determined by the industry in which you are applying for and the specifics from the job description.

Step 1: Do your research

• Get to know your industry or organization through online research and talking to people in the field.
• Pay attention to the skills, coursework, and experience your industry needs.
• If you have a specific position description, what are the specific skills and experiences listed for this position? Use this research to target and tailor your resume.
• Don’t get discouraged! If a position says that 1 year of research is required, count 2 summers of research experience or discuss research projects you have done in classes.

Step 2: Create a format

• The order of main section headings you may want to include:
  • Contact information (name, address, phone number, email)
    • Include your address as needed, if an employer prefers a local candidate. You can use your college address if you live on campus
    • Use a professional email address. Use your lclark email address when applying to jobs that relate to school or build on your education. Use your personal email address when applying to seasonal jobs and jobs that do not build on your career.
  • Education: college, location, major/minor
    • Include your GPA when above 3.0
    • Include study abroad, relevant courses to the position
    • Awards and honors
  • Relevant Experience: position, organization, location (city, state, country if not the US), and dates (month/year or season/year, pick one style and stick with it)
  • Activities, community involvement, extracurriculars, and volunteer experiences
  • Skills: computer, CPR, WFR, lab skills, language proficiency levels (basic, conventional, proficient, fluent, native)

Writing Strong Action Verb Statements

Strong bullet point statements make your skills, experiences, and abiliites to stand out. Write these in past tense, unless you are describing ongoing responsibilities. Avoid paragraphs, full sentences and repetition. Each bullet should say something new about your skill set.

Ask yourself:

• As a result of my action, what happened to the project? My clinet? My customers? My organization? Others involved?
• Why would a potential employer care?
• What skills did I use to achieve that accomplishment?
• What quantified results did my action produce?

If the bullet cannot answer these, revise it.
Your skills statement should look like this:

Action verbs

• When writing about your experiences begin your bullet point detail with a varied action verb
• Why? Powerful action verbs place you as an initiator of action, leaving a positive impression on the reader
• identify important job details to help guide your choice of action words
• Avoid starting off descriptions with “Responsible for.” Instead use action verbs such as “managed,” “implemented,” “developed,” “created” which more clearly states your function.

Skills utilized

• Identify the skills you demonstrated or developed in your various experiences (internships, thesis, tutoring, volunteering, coursework)
• Pinpoint the relevant skills, core attributes, and abilities you utilized in these experiences as a means to show your value to the reader.
• Tell the reader/employer what you can do for them
• Ask yourself: What was it for? Where was it? How was it done? For whom? Why was it done?

Results(Quantify your achievement/skills)

• Employers want to see worker who can achieve solid results and results are best stated in terms of reportable numbers
• How many people did you organize, manage, or oversee? By what percentage did you increase sales, event turn out or efficiency? How much of a budget did you work with, what type of results?
• By using numbers in detailing your work experience, you are demonstrating your focus as being results-oriented rather than task-oriented
• In order to measure your accomplishments, try to obtain as much data as you can in regards to your previous work experience. It is never recommended to make up numbers

Remember to emphasize the valuable liberal arts skills you have gained at L&C in your bullets

You have just seconds to get noticed, so your resume should look clear, concise, professional and easy to read. Make it visually appealing! For undergraduate students and recent graduates, your resume should not exceed 1 to 1.5 pages. Consistency is key. If you write dates in months, do this throughout. If you list experiences as position, company, location-make sure this is done throughout.

More formatting tips!

• Balance white space with text, and make sure margins are no smaller than 0.5 inches.
• Emphasize information (titles, organizations, etc.) with italics, bold ALL CAPS, underline or a combination.
• Be consistent and choose easy-to-read fonts, between 10 and 12 points in size.
• Organize your information the way people read – left to right and top to bottom.
• Avoid complicated fonts or formatting that will get jumbled when sent from varying programs.
• For printed resumes and cover letters, use white or off-white high-quality paper (e.g., 80lb. linen)
• Do not use templates! These are hard to edit in the future.
• Have dates line up so the document looks clean and professional
• Do not include a picture of yourself, peronsal information (age, marital status, etc.), salary information or experiences that are irrelevant to the employer’s needs (there are exceptions to this rule if you are applying for an international position)
• References should be on a separate page.