Robin's Resumes (r)

Adding value to your Career Documentation | Career Coaching

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Your First Resume

Recently I helped a college student with her first resume. Like most new job applicants, she made three main mistakes in her resume.

First, she wasn’t clear about the job she wanted. If you are not sure what your education qualifies you to do or how your interests might translate into a career, you may want to consult a certified career coach or Job and Career Transition Coach. At the very least, start reading job descriptions, advertisements, and postings to see what companies are looking for and how you fit their requirements.

Second, she downplayed her volunteer work. The skills you acquire as a volunteer—communication, computer, leadership, organizational, and so on—are not only valuable in themselves, they also show a commitment to the community that most companies appreciate in employees.

Third, she provided the wrong details: she mentioned every school she attended, including grammar school, but neglected to describe her 3.9 GPA, courses, and awards in college. As a recent graduate, your education may be stronger than your job (or volunteer) experience. However, your early education is not important; what you should stress are your most recent successes, including GPA if it is a good one (generally above 3.00), the courses you took that are most relevant to your chosen career path, and achievements such as founding or serving as an officer in a school association or being recognized for your contribution to academics or sports.

I have many years of experience helping recent college graduates with professional resumes that show how ready they are to enter the workplace. Let me help you.

Resumes for College Students

Sometimes a college student comes to me with a very clear set of restrictions: “I know my resume is good because my college professor [or best friend/spouse/parent] helped me with it, so all I need is a cover letter.”

More times than I like to admit, I look at the resume and/or cover letter and realize that this is a job seeker who has been led astray by well-meaning people. Resume writing is a profession, and I am credentialed and certified in that profession. Plus, I make it my business to know what hiring managers are looking for right now in resume content and format.

Let’s take the example of a college student helped by a professor. The professor is likely thinking in terms of the college career services agency. Resumes that from career services have a standard format: they don’t have the resources to individualize resumes and the standard format lets an interviewer easily work through and compare dozens of student resumes sent by the agency at the same time.

Outside the college career services agency, the purpose of a resume is different. You want your resume to get an interview for you—and you alone. This is not a reflection on the career services agencies, which provide a very helpful service. However, your agency resume is not the resume you should be sending out to companies where you will be competing with people from different schools and with different educational background, experience, and their own professionally written resumes.

When a job seeker comes to me with a poor quality resume, I am always polite but I am always honest. Sometimes they entrust me with the cover letter and then realize the big gap between the quality of the cover letter and the quality of the sub-par resume. Sometimes they visit the civilian resumes and federal resumes on my website and see the difference between what they have and what they could have.

Before you send out your resume, contact me. If it doesn’t need improvement, I’ll let you know. But if it does, you definitely want a professional resume writer to help.