Department of Information Studies

University at Albany

Resume Variations

Everyone has a resume; perhaps two or even more.

Nonetheless, employers expect resumes to fit the job announcement, meaning that we often must revise and customize our standard resume into multiple variations. Employers and job posting sites employ resume scanning software to manage the volume of resumes received and, especially, to isolate keywords that match the skills the employer is seeking.

Unfortunately, there is no resume stylesheet that will serve every need. Instead, we get hundreds of tips about "winning" or successful resumes that "sell" in the job marketplace. With so much advice, how do we figure out what works? Alas, it's trial and error. We must be prepared to make multiple variations of our resumes.

Revise the resume you submitted earlier to incorporate at least three tips that were suggested in the readings assigned this week.

Besides submitting a printed version of your revised resume, send me a file via e-mail as well.

While we could employ either a resume writing coach or even resume writing software to create and format our resumes, most of us will handcraft them ourselves. To do this, we must be discriminating in our choices, worrying about what skills we promote, what keywords we adopt, what fonts and formats we select, etc. "Sweating the details," then, prompts us to be very thoughtful about our choices and encourages us to revise numerous times.

Provide a one page description of the revisions you have made, explaining why you adopted them. Also, indicate two tips you read about, but rejected, explaining why you rejected them.

This is another ungraded, but mandatory, assignment. See the class schedule for due dates.

Top of Page

Last updated: 10/1/07