Overview

  • Attendance
  • Career Center Presentation
  • Next Week

Attendance

  • Abu Shettima
  • Alice Bruce
  • Christian Messmer
  • Joshua Watson
  • Lavender Wilson
  • Matthew Williams
  • Nicholas Guess

Career Center Presentation

Resumes

Purpose of a resume:

  • to get noticed by HR
  • first impression
  • a quick advertisement about you
  • highlights relevant skills, talents, etc
  • the resume gets you the interview

Required skills for every job:

  • Communication
  • Problem solving
  • Teamwork, leadership
  • Strong work ethic / initiative

You should be tailoring your resume. A good place to start is to put everything you’ve ever done on your resume, then use it like a menu and choose certain things from it to include. Use the job description (contact the organization or use a search engine if not provided) to connect your resume to the job.

Recruiters are trained to scan through resumes very quickly and to look for certain keywords – this is why using words from the job description is extremely important for getting noticed.

Sections of a resume

Education:

Example 1 (specifically in education):

Pennsylvania Western University, California, PA (bold)
Bachelor of Science, May 20XX (bold)
Major: Computer Science
Minor: Leadership
Major GPA: 3.25/4.00

Example 2 (anywhere else):

Bachelor of Science in Applied Computing (bold)           December 20XX
Pennsylvania Western University, Clarion, PA
Cumulative GPA: 3.2/4.0               Major GPA: 3.5/4.0

Job Description

  • Demonstrate responsibilities, achievements, knowledge, and skills that are most relevant to the specific job for which you are applying
  • Use action verbs
  • Use past and present tense appropriately
  • Use bullet points, not paragraphs
  • Do not use “I”

Writing Bullet Points

  • Who: with whom did you work, or who did your job help?
  • What: what did you do (specifically)?
  • When: when did this happen (daily/weekly/monthly)?
  • Why/How: why did you do this?
  • Where: where did you duties occur?
  • Results: quantify your results; how did your job duties help or add to the organization’s ability to function?

Additional Tips

  • List contact information horizontally
  • Ensure email address and voicemail are professional
  • No smaller than 10pt font
  • Margins no smaller than 1/2"
  • Easy to read and consistent format
  • If QPA is under 3.0, list it in your major
  • List most relevant jobs, experiences, and volunteer work at the beginning
  • Tailor headings based on experience
  • Avoid repetitiveness

Additional Categories

  • Relevant skills (not classes)
  • Leadership experience
  • Volunteering and community service
  • Awards
  • Technical skills
  • Foreign language proficiency
  • Research
  • Special certifications

Typos and Errors

  • No excuse for misspelled words
  • Spell check, review resume with others
  • Don’t include salary requirements or previous salaries
  • Don’t include name or contact information of supervisors
  • Don’t include personal information like birthdates, marital status, or health status
  • Place references on separate sheet

Using AI-Generative Tools

Using LLMs to improve your resumes can be very helpful and/or time-saving. You can copy and paste a resume into the chat box, and ask it to tailor it to a specific job. While it can definitely be helpful, you should always go through its work and make sure that the changes it makes represents you.

Next Week

Hope everyone has a good spring break!