Career Services
| Resume Tips | How can Career Services help? |
Before beginning to draft your first resume, perform a thorough and honest appraisal of your skills, interests and values. Knowing your strengths and how they will benefit an employer is the key to writing a solid resume.
If you have no idea where to begin, read through the advice below, look at our resume samples, and begin writing. After you have the best resume you can develop, visit the CDC's Drop-In Hours for a critique.
- Your resume should be crisp, to the point, creative and visually presentable! Most of all, it must demonstrate your professionalism. A resume is most often visually scanned, not read, by the employer. Therefore, it must be well organized and clearly laid out.
- Write a rough draft and set aside for a day or two. When looking at it some time later, you will have a different perspective and perhaps notice things you failed to see before.
- Make sure the resume is error-free. Proofread, and have others proofread for you. An error on a resume is inexcusable.
- Make an appointment with a career counselor or a professor, or a working professional to go over your resume and check for attributes they feel is needed.
- Never lie or be anything but believable and never give a reason why someone should not want to meet you. Getting caught in a lie will almost guarantee you will not be hired. If you do not know how to program in C++, do not include this on your resume. You may be asked to write a short sample of code.
- Expressing yourself as leaping over tall buildings should be avoided unless you really are Superman. Learn how to emphasize your strong points and accomplishments. The keys to a successful resume are to "be yourself" and "be creative." Subtlety is usually appropriate and can go a long way towards proper presentation.
- Never show lapses of work or frequent changes in employment, without due explanation. Job hopping at several "name brand firms" will be far less attractive to an employer than showing reliability at ONE place where you demonstrated your skills.
- You may include your cumulative GPA, major GPA, or both if you feel this is appropriate and it supports your skill set and experience for the position you are after. Do not include it if you think it will put you at a slight disadvantage in the competition.
- Update your resume as you approach completion of each assignment or internship, or when you acquire a new skill. This could be every week if necessary.
- Be clear and do not try to get fancy. Use conventional English. Stay away from multi-syllable words when a one- or two-syllable word is clearer. Use one font; italics, bold, or underline should be used sparingly to emphasize a point.
- Make a backup copy of your resume! You never know what could happen.
- When writing the experience section, if you did not have a formal job title, construct one of which you trust your supervisor / manager / boss would approve, and feel free to check with her/him.
- You may want to have two versions of your resume. One for electronic submissions and one for people to read (which could include a more creative layout on nice paper). This latter one is the one to carry to the interview.
- No
two resumes will look alike; format choice is a personal
one. There are two basic questions to answer:
1. Am I communicating the skills I have attained in a way which will fulfill the needs of the employer?
2. Is the layout I have chosen the best way for those skills to be presented? - Use language which is as persuasive and descriptive as possible. The use of action words will assist in the development of a concise and businesslike resume. Don't get too fancy by putting too many adjectives when one well placed word will suffice.
- Laser print final drafts of your resumes. Use 300 dpi as minimum resolution when preparing them.
- Avoid unnecessary personal information such as marital status and date of birth.
- Tailor separate resumes to fit each career field in which you are job searching.
Check our list of workshops
Get your Resume or Cover Letter critiqued during Drop-in hours
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| Science Library G-50 | Phone: 518-437-4900 |
| Fax: 518-437-4906 | Email: career@uamail.albany.edu |