How to enhance your résumé — Jessica’s tip of the week
The crucial questions that you may be asking yourself are, “What is going to make my résumé stand out to an employer or graduate program?” and “How am I going to strategically highlight my experience, skills, professional brand and facets of my personality?”
While there are many variables that may have an effect on whether or not your résumé gets noticed — we, as career development professionals at the Fulton Schools Career Center think it is important to include certain sections on your résumé to make you a successful candidate in the application process with potential employers.
The following résumé sections provide a good framework (and check out this sample résumé for guidance):
- Identification — Your name should be included at the top so that it stands out along with your phone number, email address and LinkedIn address — and GitHub if you have one.
- Summary of qualifications – This section should include your engineering specialty or major, that you are seeking a summer internship or a job starting in June 2020, your experience and/or interests. I strongly recommend enhancing this section by using those great adjectives and verbs!
- Education – Include your educational level and engineering specialty (i.e., B.S.E., Biomedical Engineering) and any minors or certifications that you have obtained. Additionally, be sure to include the institution that you are currently attending (i.e., Arizona State University), expected graduation date and GPA.
- Technical skills — This is a VERY important section; therefore, be sure to enhance your résumé with your great technical skills!
- Professional experience — Your professional experience should include your present and previous work experiences that are degree-related. Be sure to list the organization, position title, location and dates you were employed. To illustrate your duties/responsibilities for each position, use positive action words and accomplishment statements to describe your experiences. When writing your accomplishment statements, make sure to quantify whenever possible. Also, you will want to highlight how you have applied your technical skills throughout.
- Academic projects — Highlight your academic projects by using those keywords in your field. This should include the knowledge that you have acquired from your academic courses. The utilization of positive action words is also important to include in order to highlight what you accomplished in your courses.
- Other work experience — If there is space on your résumé, you can include your experiences that may not be career-related, but still allows you to speak upon your work ethic, teamwork or customer service skills. This section should also include the organization, position title, location and dates you were employed. You have the choice of using positive action words here to illustrate what your duties/responsibilities or you can just provide a list of your experiences.
- Activities — Student organizations and/or leadership experiences are important in this section. You can also list the experiences in this section, or you may want to expand on it like I just mentioned to do in the prior section.
Now that I have discussed the essential components of a résumé, please be sure to make a one-on-one appointment via Handshake, so that our professional staff or peer career coaches can assist you with making it a GREAT product! You can also upload your résumé via Optimal Résumé and one of our professional staff members or peer career coaches can review it remotely.
We do have two upcoming Rapid Résumé Review events that would be helpful for you to attend so that you can get your résumé critiqued by participating industry partners/employers.
Rapid Résumé Review with industry
Friday, February 7, 2020, and Friday, February 14, 2020
Noon–4 p.m.
College Avenue Commons (CAVC) Devil’s Oasis, second floor, Tempe campus [map]