DEVELOPING EFFECTIVE RESUME WRITING SKILLS

What is a Resume? A resume is your personal advertisement. The purpose of this document is to obtain an interview from a prospective employer by convincing them that you have the skills that the position requires.

Resume Formats Functional - Lists the information gathered under skill headings without focusing on dates. Good for recent grads, career changers, or a desire to highlight certain skills. Chronological - Lists jobs, education, and events in chronological order by date. Most common if you have a long, stable work history and want to show progression in your career field. Electronic - Electronic version of your resume to include key words (nouns) from the job advertisement so that it will be picked up on the employer’s applicant tracking system. Follow specific instructions for formatting and sending.

How is a Resume Organized? Heading Education Honors and Awards Experience Additional Categories Reference Page

Heading The heading information is used by an employer to contact you. List your information at the top of the page (either centered or pulled out to the margin) and make it stand out through bolding, capitalization, and slightly larger than the text of your resume. List your name, address, phone number, , and home-page URL if you have one. Include only reliable contact information. Include the heading on all pages.

Education Include the complete name of your degree as listed in the college catalog; do not abbreviate. Include the month and year of your anticipated graduation date. Place the name of the college that you received your degree from directly under your degree information; include the city and state of the college (do not include street address). ◦ Example:Associate in Applied Science, Chemical Technology, May 2015 Corning Community College, Corning, New York If you hold more than one degree, list the most current degree first to least current. If you have been on the Dean’s List, identify the number of semesters. Always include dates and list it under Education.

Honors & Awards If you have received an honor or an award that is not well known, give a brief description of it. Don’t create a category for one honor. Include it under the section where it was earned such as education or employment.

Experience Include experience from all employment, work-study, clinical, practicum, internship, volunteer work, and military service. Include your job title followed by the name of your employer, city and state and the dates of employment (month/year). ◦ Example:Production Assistant, XYZ Incorporated, Corning, NY May 2012 – Present When describing any experience or job, always give concrete examples of your duties, accomplishments, or achievements as well as any leadership roles/responsibilities. Quantify as much as possible by including numbers such as people supervised/trained, amount of budget responsibility, number of clients/customers, etc.

Additional Categories That You May Include Certifications Licenses Skills (foreign language, computer programming) Professional Affiliations Relevant Courses Presentations/Projects Military Service Volunteer Experience Community Involvement

Obtaining References The best references are from current and previous supervisors who can comment favorably on your work habits. Always obtain permission from the person before using them as a reference, ask them how they would prefer to be contacted and provide them with a copy of your resume. Typical professional references would be from supervisors, managers, instructors/professors, and advisors.

Reference Page Be prepared to provide a typed list of references. Usually three professional references are sufficient. On a separate page, include the name, title, employer, complete mailing address and contact information. ◦ Example:Mr. Joseph G. Reference Assistant Manager XYZ Incorporated 125 Main Street Corning, NY (607)

Resume Tips 5 Seconds not 5 minutes: Design your resume so anyone can skim through it quickly and easily. A resume should be one full page in length. Your resume should focus on work experience and skills directly related to your objective and the position. Post your resume on LinkedIn and use this professional networking site to view the competition and see how others detail their roles. Have your resume critiqued by a resume professional and someone in your field of interest.

Mechanics Use quality plain white bond paper. A resume must be free of grammatical, spelling, punctuation and typographical errors. Proofread it!!! Be consistent in your format with bolding, capitalizing, italicizing, bulleting, use of fonts and margins that are even. Do not use personal pronouns such as I, my, we, mine, etc. Use specific nouns and action verbs in the present tense for current positions and past tense for previous positions. Spell out all words; abbreviations may not be picked up in applicant tracking databases. Save your resume under a file name that is relevant to the position so it is detected on tracking systems, i.e. “automotivetechnician.”

Electronic Version This alternative version of your resume should be used when applying electronically. Only your name should appear on the first line of the document. Move all text to the left margin. Remove shading, vertical and horizontal lines. Convert bulleted items to simple hyphens or asterisks. Remove all underlining, bolding and italics. Restrict fonts to Times New Roman, Arial or Helvetica, using only one size (10-14 points).

Application Work Sheet Gather information from all jobs. ◦ Employer (company) names ◦ Employer complete mailing addresses ◦ Telephone numbers ◦ Supervisor names ◦ Exact dates of employment and job titles ◦ Starting and ending salaries It is important to keep a record of this information since some of it will not be on your resume. Keep this worksheet in your portfolio so it is easy to refer to each time you need to fill out an application.