"We have opportunities in almost any area you can imagine," says Ford's Darrell Washington. "If students don't give an objective as to what they want to do with their education and work history, we end up playing a guessing game as to where they fit in."
If you're looking at a smaller or more specialized company which only hires a certain type of employee, you probably don't need an objective.
If you do use an objective, it should clearly describe the type of job for which you're looking. It should mention both the kind of work you want to do and the specific skills which enable you to do this job better than other applicants. A good objective is narrow, employers say, and it pinpoints a particular job tide.
"The objective should define the area of interest specifically," says John M. Stewart, corporate vice president of The Austin Company, a mid-sized engineering firm in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. "It shouldn't be a broad statement that says "I want to be in management."
Remember that companies want to know what you can do for them rather than what they can do for you. Structure your resume and your objective to answer their question as to why they should hire you.
The best way to answer this question, according to career counselors, is to be direct. Don't get into a lot of lofty statements in your objective about your search for personal fulfillment.
"You look at a lot of objectives, and they say the person wants challenges and intellectual stimulation," says Dr. Ray Harrison, executive vice president of Manchester, a career consulting firm, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. "Frankly, the employer could care less. The whole resume should be oriented towards what the employer wants."
"Don't use fancy overblown language," says career counselor Susan Schuben of Schubert & Associates. "I've seen resumes with objectives that read 'Seeking position with opportunity for personal growth with a high visibility role, etc.' Personnel people don't care about that."
Although you undoubtedly have skills which could be used in several similar jobs, your resume and your objective should target one specific job. Therefore, if you're going to use an objective, you'll need two or three different resumes, one for each objective.
Your Educational Background
Along with your work history, your educational background is the heart of your resume. It is crucial to depict your education as a tool which has prepared you well for your career. The more specific you are about the things you learned in school and how they will contribute to your future job performance, the better chance you'll have of obtaining an interview.
For example, in addition to listing the name of your college or university, the year you graduated, your GPA, your major and the type of degree you earned, you should include relevant course work.
I know, it hardly seemed relevant to your major, much less to a job. Nevertheless, career counselors believe you should use your academic experience as one of your strongest selling points.
"Most people try to match up their part-time or summer jobs to the position they're seeking when they should be focusing more on content knowledge," Harrison adds, "such as a course they've taken."
For example, if you majored in computer science and you're looking for a job in information systems, list the computer science courses you took and include your GPA for your major. If you majored in political science and you're looking for a job with a state legislator, list the political science courses you took and include your GPA for those classes.
When highlighting your educational experience, you can also include courses you may have taken for fun during the summer. For example, if you took a class at a local community college, it could be an asset if it is related to the job you're seeking.
Your GPA And Any Academic Honors
Even if you did not do well in college, you should still include your GPA on your resume. Glossing over poor academic performance will only weaken your resume. When applicants don't list their GPA's, this immediately sounds warning bells for one employer.
Peter Bowen, a college recruiter at General Electric in Bridgeport, Conn., says, "When I see the resume of a recent college graduate and it doesn't have a GPA listed, that tells me it wasn't that great."
If your grades were low, you might stress that you carried a heavy load or a difficult mix of courses. If you worked during the school year and you had a lot of extra demands on your time, you might put that on your resume in some form. You can make up for a lower GPA with hard-hitting work experience, a double major or an unusual combination of courses (such as Calculus and English literature.)
It also helps if you can show that you made some son of progress in your academic development. If your grades progressively improved over your college career, point that out. You can compensate for lower grades by stressing how successful you were in another area of college achievement or in your summer jobs.
Your Work History
Like academic performance, work history is a "must include" category. Unfortunately, while lifeguarding is fine, unless your boss happens to be drowning at some point, it may not be applicable to the job market.
"One thing that is obviously a problem for recent college graduates is that they don't have work experience or what they have isn't relevant," according to Harrison. If that pretty much sums up your life to this point, don't despair.
If you did have some substantial jobs in which you used your major, or at least your brain, play them up. Emphasize all of the meaty things you did, even if you only had a chance to do each new task once and were closely supervised.
For example, if you worked for an ad agency and wrote a print and a radio ad, say what you did and how you did it. If you wrote these ads and they never ran, you can still mention you wrote them. Stress the skills you learned when you undertook this exercise.
You could say, "Wrote six print and broadcast media ads for retail clothing store client. Utilized graphics skills for print ads; learned to limit word usage and paint verbal picture for broadcast media ads."
If you worked for an ad agency, but you didn't get a chance to write any ads, tell about what you learned from observing others write ads. Say how you would put these principles into practice if you were to get the job for which you are applying. For example, on your resume you could say, "Summer internship for advertising/public relations firm specializing in the arts. Worked closely with account supervisor; attended client meetings; learned how to meet client demands on limited budget. As a result of this internship got familiarity to copywriting processes and approvals procedures."
Be as specific as possible, and be sure to take credit for developing an idea yourself, even if it was only reorganizing a company's filing system or developing a more efficient way for them to collect money for a mundane office expense, like a communal candy tray.
While your actual idea might be related to something trivial, it demonstrates that you took individual to solve problems.
Improving Your Resume
One career counselor suggests focusing on results to give your resume increased impact.
"Start each paragraph with a verb-developed, initiated, created," says Marilyn Goldman, president of Washington, D.C.-based Horizons Unlimited Inc., a career consulting firm. "What were your accomplishments? If you had an internship or summer work or a research paper that got results, say so." Discussing results often means giving specific examples of what you did, adds Schubert.
"You want a resume to document and support," comments Schubert. "This means giving examples of what you did at a summer job or how you gained a new skill."
Schubert believes a lot of recent college graduates have good experience but are too vague in the way they word their resumes. "One error is that [applicants] talk about wonderful things without giving examples," Schubert adds.
To illustrate that your ideas were highly regarded at a summer job, mention something an employer changed at your urging. Perhaps you suggested to the personnel department that the summer internship application form be expanded to include a brief summary of the intern's goals for the summer. This way, you explained, interns could be certain of getting the most out of their internships and the company would be certain of getting the most out of their interns.
On your resume, you might say "Suggested changes to summer internship form which better informed Company XYZ of interns' goals. Company XYZ made changes and reported better intern and staff satisfaction with program."
If you didn't have any substantial job experience while you were in college, maybe you can transform something you did that was unusual into an attractive and interesting statement.
If you played a menial role in a glamorous field, and you are now seeking a job in that same field, play it up. I knew a guy who wanted to be a doctor. One summer, he worked as a messenger boy carrying lab samples around town. It sounded like a disgusting job, and he had these wild stories about dropping medical samples in the middle of intersections.
While he thought he didn't do anything of substance, and I never saw his resume, he could have used that job to his advantage when applying for medical school or when looking for an even better job the next summer.
For example, he could point out his familiarity with medical labs, his knowledge of the testing process and his ability to withstand the more gruesome side of the medical profession.
''Did I Mention I Filled In For The President Last Summer?''
However, the flip side of this is not to make something totally worthless sound bigger than it was.
First, it's dishonest. Second, seasoned human resources people will see through that immediately. Pretending that a low level job was something impressive makes the rest of your resume weaker.
You might be disqualifying yourself when you were otherwise a good candidate, both because employers are put off by false pretenses and because they wonder if anything on your resume is true.
For example, here are two different ways of describing a waitressing job. You can see how easy it is to tell when someone is basically filling up their resume with overly flattering descriptions.
- "Served as primary waitress for large, fast-paced restaurant. Responsible for food service, decor, and customer satisfaction. Worked closely with manager. Closed out cash register at end of the night."
- "Worked as culinary server for dining establishment catering to corporate clientele. Assisted and advised manager in financial transactions."
Play up your jobs and put in specifics-whether it was developing an internship program or building up some kind of reference tool - but don't overdo it. Just use your common sense.
Social and Community Activities
Another tricky area for recent college graduates is which social activities to include and what to say about them. There is a fine line between showing you did occasionally get out of the library and having a resume that would get you a job organizing parties on a cruise ship (although as jobs go, that might not be a bad one).
In general, career counselors don't think you should include a lot of detail about your social life.
"A personal history, like hobbies or social activities, really isn't necessary," says Pavol Bereda.
So use restraint in including social activities. If you include them, mention only two or three. Try to make some reasonable correlation between the skills you used in these activities and the skills you will be using on the job.
For example, if you were the treasurer of a social organization and you're looking for a job in finance, you should list what you did and how you learned from this experience. You could say "I oversaw a $2000 budget, developed a new billing system and put the organization in the black for the first time in three years."
According to Pavol Bereda, if you do include a lot of social activities on your resume, you should delete them after you have been out of college for a few years.
Honors, Awards, and Special Achievements
This should probably be reworded as Honors, Awards and Things You've Done You Didn't Realize Were Special Achievements. Keeping in mind that you don't want to exaggerate and make a big deal out of activities that weren't that important, you can still find a way to promote yourself to employers.
If you won any awards, list them and mention what the competition was like. For example, you could say, "Recognized for achievement in Spanish Literature," or "First student in history of award to receive unanimous faculty vote" or "Won $1000 scholarship for further study of physics after scoring in top tenth percentile on departmental exam."
If you didn't receive any formal awards or honors, you still may have excelled in a particular area of college achievement. This is the part of your resume where you can play up the things you did. It's easy to assume you don't have anything to put in an Honors and Awards category on a resume if you didn't get any formal awards, but if you think about it, there probably is something you can list.
If you were a big player in campus politics and won several elections, list that. Mention how it added to your organizational and leadership skills.
If you received personal recognition from a faculty member for your contribution to the department as a teaching assistant, you can put that in the Honors and Awards category. It's often hard to see smaller bits of recognition as an honor or award, but the trick is to think of something you did in college where a professor or student organization praised you for your participation. As long as this informal "award" is genuine and reflects one of your strong points, you can list it in the awards section.
Obviously, you wouldn't want to include something trivial, like the time you received a form letter from some sort of charitable organization. However, if you organized a college fund-raiser for a charitable organization and got a personal letter of thanks from the regional vice president, which would qualify as something you've done you didn't realize was a special achievement.
Just use your judgment in this category and look carefully over all of your college activities. College projects may not pose the same demands as those in the real world of careers, but they can take a tremendous amount of time, energy, effort and intelligence.
Of course, not all college projects are worthwhile for everyone who participates in them. I remember visiting a friend of mine at another college during my junior year and somehow becoming a part of his "class project."
For this project, his entire literature class was forced to act out scenes from an Ibsen play one cold October night in his professor's garage. I remember watching him and his class mates gorge on the Oreo cookies and wine provided by their professor as they presented scenes from various plays they had read that semester.
I thought the whole evening was a strange experience, and for me, this project would not have been a high point of my college career. You've probably participated in some college projects that wouldn't be too helpful for your resume or your future job hunting efforts as well,
However, there are probably some things you did in college that took a lot of time and effort. Be proud of your collegiate accomplishments and play them up in a resume when you can.
Membership in Professional Associations
Most career fields have organizations in which practitioners of the job get together and discuss common concerns.
It's a great way to meet people in your field and to learn about new jobs, so if you didn't belong to any student chapters of professional associations while you were in college, this is a good time to join.
As far as your resume goes, if you did belong to any of these groups, be sure to list them. It shows you thought about career advancement while you were in college.
References Available
It's important to put across the bottom of your resume that several people will act as references for you. Most employers take references very seriously and will follow up with the names you give them.
You should try to have three or four references. Most employers ask for three. If you have four, you can give them three names and keep your other one on hold.
Alternate your references, so that the same people, whether they're professors or former employers, don't get swamped with calls about you. You should ask your references if they'll serve as references for you, and you should let them know each time they'll be receiving a call.
It's also a good idea when you ask people to serve as references to confirm they can say something positive about you. If for some reason a potential reference is not comfortable giving you a positive reference, it will be easier on both of you if you find that out now.
When you ask professors (or former employers) if they will serve as one of your references, simply say, "Do you feel there is something positive you could mention from my class performance (or my summer internship)? Would you be able to recommend me for the job if an employer calls you?"
It's most likely your professor or former employer will say yes, especially if you perceived the relationship to be a positive one, but it never hurts you to be sure that your references will be providing you with a true recommendation. It will hurt your chances for getting a job if your reference indicates he or she was not fully pleased with your performance.
If your potential reference does not want to give you a positive recommendation, he or she will probably tell you that anyway. However, in asking if the comments will be positive, you can be absolutely certain.
Professors and former employers hold equal weight, and both will do fine as references. You can never have too many references, and this is a good time to solidify those ties with your professors. It's easier to establish ties with a professor now than it is three years after you've graduated. We'll get into this more in the chapter on networking.
The Perfect Format
Even though you've determined the content of your resume, you're still confronted with the question of how to lay it out on the page. Deciding how to format your resume can be a confusing process.
Fortunately, the consensus among employers and career counselors is it doesn't matter what kinds of headings or type styles you use, as long as your resume is easy to read and follows the standard chronological resume form.
Experienced resume reviewers also agree on another point: it's preferable to have a conventional resume as opposed to standing out with a unique format.
"I don't like to see gimmicky things, like bound resumes or resumes in those clear folders," says John Stone, manager of college relations and recruiting programs at Chrysler in Highland Park, Michigan. "The [applicant] is telling me I don't have enough intelligence to determine from the resume if I am interested or not."
Goldman adds, "You want to look sophisticated. Don't have an orange resume."
Putting things in an unusual format in order to catch an employer's eye might make your resume slightly more memorable, but it takes more time for him or her to read it. Bowen comments, "I prefer a standard layout in a resume. I hire over 400 people a year, and if a resume is totally off base, it takes more time to scan it for the key things I'm looking for." In addition, unless you're looking for a job in a more visually-oriented field, a wacky resume could look different in a negative way.
"Personnel people are looking for the basics," says Schubert. "You want not to exclude yourself. I would use an unusual format or paper only if applying for an unusual job something in art or in public relations."
You should also keep in mind how the words are spaced on the page.
"It's good to have a lot of white space and a balanced look, as opposed to something long and cluttered," advises Pavol Bereda.
Goldman strongly urged job hunters to invest in having their resumes professionally typeset.
You can have this done at almost any copy store for under fifty dollars in most large cities. Many typesetters will keep your resume on file, and you can make minor changes periodically for only a few dollars.
The Chronological Resume
Standard chronological resumes start with your name, your address or addresses and your phone numbers. This information is usually centered at the top of the page and is often in bold type.
The body of the chronological resume is marked with the headings we have discussed above. As you've probably figured out from the name, chronological resumes list the relevant things you've done in your life in the order you've done them. Functional resumes are the other main type of resume.
Functional resumes get into groups of skills you have. Rather than flowing in order of time, functional resumes might include some of your college social activities, one or two of your jobs and some course work under a heading like "Leadership Skills."
While functional resumes are acceptable to employers, they're sometimes difficult to read. Unless you've had a lot of work experience, you can end up referring to the same job several times. Even if you've had a lot of work experience, it can be hard for employers to figure out where you worked, when you worked there, and how long you held the job.
Our experts agree that recent college graduates should not get into functional resumes, but should stick to the easy to read and easy to understand chronological format.
'What an - Uh- Interesting Resume'' We've talked about the characteristics of good resumes. It's equally important to remember what makes bad resumes. Bad resumes have typographical errors. They are vague, cluttered and confusing.
Bad resumes include your weight, height, and the condition of your health. Employers don't really want to know intimate details about your body. If they do, you probably want to look elsewhere.
Bad resumes also include your hobbies. When you include hobbies, it looks as though you didn't have enough to put on your resume. I remember hearing about one guy who listed "laughing" as one of his hobbies. That probably prompted a few snide remarks from people who received his resume, such as "I wonder if he attends laughing seminars" and "do you think he practices his laughs a couple of times a week?" If you do not have enough to put on your resume, make the margins slightly wider and use a larger typeface. Again, professional typesetters can help you here. It's better to have a sparse resume than one with a lot of unnecessary information.
Bad resumes exaggerate what you've done or boast very weakly about things most people do without thinking about it. For example, I once saw a resume that said, "Perfect class attendance and on-time record."
In general, it's best not to brag about getting out of bed and attending class. If this was such an achievement, this particular job seeker will probably expect some kind of merit award for showing up at work, if she ever finds a job. In addition, unless you're American Airlines, you don't brag about making it someplace on time. You get the idea. Don't put anything on your resume that will make the person reading it wonder if you're being serious.
Now that you've got some ideas for your resume and you've assessed your strong and weak points, you can get started in meeting that goal you set in the last chapter. Here is a list of steps to take to create an uncommonly successful resume!
Shortening the Distance between Yourself and Your Goals
- Write or polish your resume. Use the skills assessment checklist below, and look at the examples which follow to see how you can get started on, or improve, your resume.
- Make sure you have enough references. Verify the addresses and phone numbers of those you do have.
- Have your resume professionally typeset.
- Make copies of any materials you might send with your resume. For example, if you are seeking a job as a journalist, consider sending writing samples in addition to your resume.
The secret to effective resume writing and interviewing rests not in simply describing your past activities, but in using these activities as part of an organized statement. This state ment should tell employers why you would excel in the job they have available and why they should want to hire you. This is a critical concept in job hunting, and an easy one for recent graduates to forget.
For example, when you talk about your participation in student government only in terms of the hours you put in and the meetings you attended, you still haven't persuaded potential employers that there is any reason they should hire you. You haven't set yourself apart from other job hunting candidates.
However, if you describe your participation in student government as a time in which you learned how to organize presentations to be delivered before a large audience and to work with other students who had completely different goals for the school than you did, you've introduced several specific examples of skills which carry over to the workplace. You've demonstrated to potential employers that you'd be an asset to their company.
The following skills assessment guide will help you decide what to include on your resume and how to describe the activities and achievements you include. It will also aid you in putting together your "mental list" of strong points to mention in an interview.
Look over the list and check off any traits that apply to you. Use this as standing place to recall aspects of your academic courses, summer jobs or collegiate activities which you may have overlooked.
JOB SKILLS REVIEW
Strong academic or work background in particular subject area relevant to job (list here ) Particular hobby which assists in developing skills related to chosen career field (list here) Goal-oriented Attentive to detail Good analytical skills Speak, write or read foreign language Possess strong written communication skills Possess strong verbal communication skills Work well under pressure Able to receive constructive criticism Able to give constructive criticism Tactful in dealing with others Skilled at: rapid memorization retaining facts meeting deadlines proofreading and copy editing presenting polished final document learning new skills quickly identifying problems and presenting solutions carrying through on a project working independently working widi a group: Specific incident(s) or example presenting material to a group motivating others to carry out certain tasks assisting others in understanding/using new concepts working with people different from self organizing thoughts synthesizing information from a variety of sources Now, put these traits to work for you on your resume.
Think of specific examples from your life which demonstrate the skills you checked off on this list. If you can, fit these examples into the three main categories of your resume: academic achievement, collegiate activities and previous work experience.
o Academic Achievement
Make a list of the strong points of your academic career. Start with the obvious, like a high GPA or serving as a teaching assistant to a graduate student. Next, add on things you might overlook when you're thinking about your college career, For example, if you took a course out of your field of major because you were interested in the subject, add that to your resume and expand on it in your interview. Perhaps you majored in Latin American Studies, but you took an Economics course on a Pass/Fail basis.
In your interview, explain how taking this course contributed to your academic development. Perhaps it made you think about the link between cultural practices and the economy or it encouraged you to learn more about topics outside your major.
Activities and Community Involvement: You can and should use your collegiate activities to demonstrate to potential employers that you have the skills for which they're looking.
List the organizations to which you belonged and the contributions you made to these groups. Focus your attention on what it taught you to belong to these groups and how you can carry these skills forward to your first job. Make sure you don't get bogged down in details, though.
If you talk about the sailing club's calendar or the wonders of the yearbook staff s photography lab, and nothing else, you haven't moved from the school to the work environment. Speak proudly of the substance of your activities, but don't stop there. Instead, describe your ability to lead the sailing club as evidence of your strong interpersonal skills, and link these skills to the job in sales for which you're applying. Equate your experience in the photography lab with an internship in graphic design, and tell a potential employer how you could use your talents to produce a professional looking newsletter for their company.
If you weren't a "joiner" in college, consider making an "activity" out of some of your particular interests or hobbies. If you recycled plastic containers, glass bottles and newspapers during your senior year, and you persuaded one floor of your dorm to do the same, mention it in an interview. Perhaps you typed papers for a fee for a wide circle of friends and acquaintances. Talk about your fledgling "business" and what it taught you about providing a service to demanding clients.
Your recycling efforts and your use of your typing skills certainly won’t win you a job, but they can be briefly mentioned as another example of your motivation to make the most of your life and your college experience.
The key to using small, personal examples in your inter views, and, to a lesser extent, on your resume, is to do so honestly and briefly. Just make sure you don't blow these self-initiated activities out of proportion.
Take this time to write a few lines about each of your collegiate activities. Be sure to focus on the skills you learned and think of the specific ways they enhance your qualifications. Just make sure you don't focus solely on the extracurricular activity itself
Previous Work Experience
The same holds true for your summer jobs. Play up the specific skills you learned in each job, but stress most strongly the impact a particular job had on your future career goals.
For example, perhaps you worked in a small retail store one summer which was only in its second year of operation. You may immediately think of saying that you learned to operate a cash register...and handle customer complaints...and learn more about direct mail advertising through your assistance with the company catalogue.
What you may not have realized is that it made a big impact on you to see a small business owner in action, and someday you'd like to open your own kite store...or work for a lobbying group in support of small business.
Maybe you worked for a day-care center one summer, and you've realized you'd like a career in which you could contribute to public policy regarding children, either through a job with the government or through a nonprofit organization dedicated to consumer activism.
Just as with your academic experience and your extracurricular activities, the true benefit of your summer jobs is not the tasks you performed, but the way in which the job may have changed your attitudes or helped you enlarge upon your goals.
Finally, don't forget to include on your resume and in your interviews a mention of any technical or interpersonal skills you possess. Check off your qualifications on the list below and add in skills not included on this list.
Technical Skills:
Familiar with general office environment (list summer jobs here ) Skilled in writing business letters Proficient with computer systems and programs (list here) Have experience operating machinery in a factory or plant setting (list here) Qualified to perform CPR and basic first aid Know how to operate: fax machine copy machine cash register travel reservation system audio visual equipment photography equipment Other:
Interpersonal Skills: Comfortable in new situations Enjoy meeting new people Enjoy taking on new responsibilities Confident Enthusiastic about projects in which involved Interested in achieving new goals Friendly Flexible Stable Easy to get along with Loyal to organizations in which involved Skilled at; expressing own opinions confidently listening to others' opinions even when they differ from own compromising with others in order to reach goals acting as mediator or resolving disputes between people or groups making new contacts within other organizations Now that you're armed with specific examples which clearly demonstrate your strong points, you can feel comfort able talking about your excellent academic record or your strong interpersonal skills.
Mention these points on your resume, in your cover letters and in your interviews, and you'll find yourself in the midst of a successful and productive job search!
