Developing Resume for First Time Job Seekers

Creating an effective resume begins as a research project. You want to identify and collect all the information that describes the skills and knowledge you’ve acquired – in school, extracurricular, and other non-work activities and on the job – and any experience you’ve had in the workplace. If you’re a first-time job seeker, your formal employment experience probably is limited to part-time jobs and full-time positions during summer breaks from school. These situations are important because they enable you to demonstrate your skills in a paid work environment. You also can demonstrate your employability by describing your unpaid work in other areas, including internships, school activities, volunteer contributions, and even your hobbies and other interests.

 The following definitions can help you focus on contributions worthy of a mention in your resume. Internships include any workplace function or activity performed under the guidance or sponsorship of an academic institution, employer, or other organization. School activities include any extracurricular programs in which you participated as a student, including student government, clubs, issue advocacy, and athletics. Volunteer work include any role you had in civic, social, community, or other programs designed to assist, support, or promote specific organizations or causes. We live in an imperfect world, and some employers may not appreciate some of the causes and issues you have worked for. Therefore, play it safe and cite only those that aren’t controversial or antagonistic to the business community. Hobbies and interests involve your participation in any group organized by those with similar interests or affinities. Recognizing your accomplishments. These unpaid work activities enable recruiters and employers to identify your skills and abilities even when you haven’t been paid directly for using your time, energy, and talents. Your accomplishments help in the assessment of your level of expertise in those skills and abilities. Accomplishments can include any awards or recognition you received or results you achieved through your participation.

Developing your resume. You can develop your resume by using a seven-step process that begins with gathering the history of your paid and unpaid work experience and proceeds through printing your finished product – one great resume that reflects your history and hopes.  Just follow this plan:

1. Collect your employment information. Include any position descriptions and announcements for your previous or current paid and unpaid work, academic and work related awards and recognition, educational record, and materials describing your affiliation and participation with the student chapters of professional organizations.

2. Organize your materials according to the skills you are/were able to apply in these activities, beginning with the skill in which you have developed the highest level of expertise.

3. Prioritize the materials. Use your objective statement to determine three categories of information:

Critical to supporting your objective and must be included. Helpful in supporting your objective and should be included if space permits. Not essential in supporting your objective and can be omitted

4. Write a first draft of your resume.

5. Revise your draft. Modify the information you presented and, if necessary, delete selected segments in order to achieve a maximum length of two pages. Limit deletions to that information you judged to be helpful but not critical to supporting your objective.

6. Edit your draft. Carefully review your draft for misspellings and grammatical, typographical, and other errors. Then, ask a friend to review the document to ensure that you didn’t miss any errors and that the information presented is understandable and easy to read.

7. Produce your resume. Print your resume using a laser printer, or have it reproduced at a professional print shop. Use a font size of 11-12 points, high-quality white paper, and black ink. Print each page on a separate sheet of paper rather than on the front and back of the same page.