Career Services: Writing Your Resume - Guidelines
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Resume preparation begins with three steps:
- Assessing your skills and abilities.
- Researching your potential career fields and employers.
- Blending the result of the previous steps into one cohesive,
persuasive, and attractive statement demonstrating the contributions
you could make to your future employer.
Skills Assessment:
The first step is to determine what skills and qualifications you
possess, and what you have done in the past that illustrates you
possess those skills and qualifications. When attempting to do this,
many of us immediately look at our past work history and only consider
the skills we acquired from that experience. While your previous
work experience is one area in which you have developed your skills,
it is not the only area. You may have also had an internship, volunteer
experience, spent time overseas, or been involved in an organization
on-campus or off-campus that allowed you to develop transferable
skills that are applicable to your future employment.
Researching the Career Field:
The second step is to determine what skills and qualifications
your potential employer is seeking. A good place to start is the
Career Library, which contains numerous books and collections of
articles that provide helpful overviews of various career fields.
The next and often most helpful resource are people who are working
in the field you are considering entering; often referred to as
informational interviewing. Speaking with such people can give you
real world practical insights into the kinds of skills and abilities
employers desire to see in their job applicants. The ACE network
in Career Services can assist you in contacting people in your chosen
field(s). You can find out more about informational interviewing
in the Career Library or through our handout.
In addition, you can gather information about your career field
through organizational literature, often made available to prospective
employees. This includes annual reports, employer recruiting literature,
job descriptions, and want-ads.
Relating Your Skills:
The final step is to bring together the information you have gathered
about your chosen career field with the information you have gathered
about yourself. Look at what skills and abilities the employer is
seeking and match those with your previous experiences that best
indicate you possess those skills. Those experiences that best illustrate
you possess the required skills and abilities are the experiences
that must appear prominently on your resume.
Upon completion of these three steps, you are through what many
people feel is the most difficult part of writing a resume. From
here on out it is just a matter of presenting this information in
an easy to read format.
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