Resumes must make a good impression

Yet another weekend passed and I haven’t finished updating my resume. 

The information is there, but it lacks style. One of my professors noted that an employer spends only a few seconds sorting through resumes. Your resume isn’t the only one an employer sees, they sort through hundreds of them. Your resume will only get a proper read-through if it gets past the first or second round of elimination. Without clarity and style, it will never get that far.

Bullet your summary of qualifications. If the job you’re applying for gives you a list of required or preferred skills, pick out the ones you fulfill and put them at the top of your resume under the heading “Summary of qualifications”. This way the person viewing resumes can see you are qualified for the position. 

If you go over one page, have a good reason. Unless you have a bucket-load of job-related experiences, applicable awards or important involvement, keep it to one page. That is not to say you can’t go over one page, but make sure to vet each thing before you commit it to the page. Pro Tip: manipulate margins and spacing to give you more space to work with.

Include some of your personality. Know where you’re applying and then you’ll know how far to go with applying personality. Don’t do anything weird that keeps employers from taking you seriously. You want to stand out, but also don’t want to look like you are goofing off. Personally, at the very bottom of my resume, I reference my juggling skills. Who knows, maybe I’ll go in for an interview someday and they will hand me some juggling balls. I just hope it makes whoever is reading smile a little.

Check grammer and spelling. You can never over-proof your resume. Make your friends read your resume, take it into the writing center, ask all you professors to read it. Get as many eyes as possible checking for spelling and grammar issues. Your word processor can still make mistakes and miss incorrect spelling, don’t let it fail on your resume.

Do not over-apply. It can be easy to think that you should just apply for everything that you remotely qualify for, but this isn’t always true. Applying takes time and energy, two things which are  high in demand. It is better to put all your effort into one great aplication than to submit many subpar applications. Be selective in your aplications and really show off for that one perfect job. Again, best of luck in your job searching!