By Alyssa Asick, Contributing Writer
Throughout every student’s college career, we learn a lot and hopefully gain experience. As students get closer to graduating or applying to internships, having a professional resume is extremely important. It takes time to do this, and it is difficult to determine which advice from the internet is actually helpful . It is also essential to note that every job or company will have different expectations for a resume.
These are some tactics I have used in my resume that has gotten mine off a desk and into the interview pile.
Putting your resume together
When creating the foundation of your resume, there are countless templates online to choose from. Employers are going to be attracted to different styles depending on the position or company you are applying to. For example, a graphic design entry level job resume should look very different from someone who is applying to a law firm or hospital.
After this, most recruiters will recommend keeping your resume to one page. The only exceptions to this are individuals with their doctorate. or more than five years of experience who need the extra space for all of their experience.
Generally speaking, recruiters spend mere seconds skimming over each resume so there is little chance they will take the time to look at a second page.
Sarah Kleist, digital marketer and content creator based in New York City, recommends to “bring humanity and empathy” into your resume. Resumes start to all look the same to employers, so by adding more pieces of your personality into what you are creating will communicate why you specifically would be a great match for the position.
Choosing your skills wisely
This being said, including your best assets and most relevant information at the top of your resume, above the fold specifically, is crucial. For college sophomores and above , your high school extracurriculars should be taken off your resume so that your current activities can be the main focus. Also, once you are a senior or graduated, high school information should be taken off altogether.
There are many tips for editing the actual content left on your resume. Besides editing your high school information, you should only include jobs that have played to your skills. Including jobs that you only worked at for a short period of time or that do not make sense for what you are applying for only takes up valuable space on the page.
If you are expecting to apply to a large number of jobs or internships, The Muse, a website for finding and researching careers, recommends keeping a master resume outline with every single job, extracurricular, skill and accomplishment so you can swap out information as needed.
The first few lines of your resume should list your best features and most relevant skills. To make space for this, most jobs do not care to read objective statements or look at photos so those should be removed as well. Most of the time the objective statement is redundant, and recruiters would rather not have to read through a paragraph compared to bullet points.
Types of experience
Outside experience and internships are what most employers look for, but the purpose of college is to give students the necessary skills to succeed so it is also important to take advantage of your learned skills as well.
Susquehanna’s Career Development Center (CDC) offers students great advice for how students can shape a variety of experiences into marketable skills to put on their resumes.
Some of their more general advice for what you should list as a skill are: “running a club, being part of a sports team and performing community service.” On campus jobs would work well for this too. You can change this into having a proficiency in leadership, teamwork, planning or problem-solving.
Other ways to find what skills you may have, according to the CDC, is by reviewing the course catalog on MySU and checking the course descriptions for the classes you have taken to remind yourself what skills you may have learned.
Along with this, you can research the industry you want to work in and make a list of the common phrases they use or of what they specifically say they want their employees to have expertise in. Susquehanna normally offers workshops and networking trips during Break Through to give students even more of an opportunity to gain new skills and experiences.
Break Through is a series of events meant to connect students and alumni working in a student’s field of interest. These events are completely free and offer students opportunities to gain connections and tips for how to secure a job after graduation.
For students who had the opportunity to go on a GO Program, the CDC states, “find opportunities for growth and experience through GO programs, volunteer and civic engagement opportunities such as SU SERVE, internships and student activities.”
SU SERVE, or Susquehanna Engaging in Regional Volunteer Experiences, is available for all students, faculty, staff, alumni or even parents who want to help better the world through service. After starting in 2005, Susquehanna has turned SERVE into a year-round event to encourage members of the community to volunteer.
Skills employers look for
Some of the general skills most employers look for are known as soft skills, and examples of these are communication, computer skills, customer service, interpersonal skills, leadership and many more.
It is important to note that resumes should include a mix of both soft and hard skills. Hard skills, for example, would be knowing and listing specific computer skills, such as SEO, PPC, Adobe Creative Suite, Excel and PowerPoint.
To be more specific, hard skills should highlight your definitive learned abilities that you have gained either through education or experience. These specific skills are what can be the reason why one person is hired over another, so if you are knowledgeable about a skill, always list that on your resume.
Applying for jobs is stressful enough, and even though resumes are an important aspect of the process you can take these tips to make the process just a little easier.
