Resume Tips — Joyce’s Career Tip of the Week

With the Fulton Schools Career Fairs quickly approaching, Peer Career Coaches have been busy meeting with students and reviewing résumés. They have put together a list of tips based on the recommendations they give most often:

• It is not necessary to include your physical address. Be sure to include an email address that you check frequently.
• When creating your summary, show the skills that will benefit the company – not what you want from the employer.
• As long as you are a college student, Education should be the top section on your résumé. Once you have graduated and become a working professional, Education will drop to the bottom of your résumé.
• List your degree properly: Bachelor of Science or Bachelor of Science in Engineering and your major. Include concentrations, minors and certificates, if applicable. Check your school’s website in order to ensure accuracy.
• Include your GPA and anticipated graduation date on the right side of your résumé. Do not include the date that you started your program. Employers are interested in knowing when you will be finished.
• Make sure that the résumé is well organized and easy to read. Make good use of margins and white space. Your strongest, most relevant skills and experiences should be on the top third of the page — the section that is read first.
• Your résumé should be 100 percent error free — especially when listing your technical skills, e.g. MATLAB, SOLIDWORKS, etc.
• Include a “Class Project” or “Academic Experience” section. Typically, this is where you will show your strongest technical skills. Be sure to create strong résumé bullets that show what you know and what you have done.
• Résumé bullets should be about you and your accomplishments — not about the company that hired you, your professor, your supervisor, or “the project.”
• Never use “I” or “my” on your résumé. You are the understood subject of all the action verbs that start your bullets.
• When deciding whether or not to include volunteer experience, consider what you can show about your skills and accomplishments. Would they be of interest (and value) to the employer? Like jobs unrelated to your major, this is a section where you can show transferable skills.
• By the second semester of your second year in college, high school activities should no longer be one your résumé. (There are occasional exceptions.)
• Do not use other colors of ink (just black).
• Do not include a personal photograph.
• You do not have to include “References furnished upon request” nor should you include the names and contact information of your references on your résumé.

Use ASU’s online resources for a sample résumé, action verbs and instructions for writing accomplishment statements.

If you have not yet met with one of the Fulton Peer Career Coaches, use Handshake to make an appointment soon.

 

Joyce Donahue is a Certified Career Counselor who works in the Fulton Schools of Engineering Career Center.