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Resumes & Letters: Resumes
Resumes | Cover
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A resume is a document that summarizes and highlights your education, experiences, and activities relevant to your career goals. A well-constructed resume will document your skills and help convince an employer that your skills are applicable to the job or internship for which you are applying. The resume usually does not get you the job but will help you get the interview.
If you do not have a resume yet, we recommend that you use our resume creation tool, Optimal Resume, to create an effective resume.
We also encourage to you review our Resumes handout for more tips (handout also available in Word).
An employer spends an average of 15 to 20 seconds reviewing a resume. Make your first impression a good one!
Keys to Creating a Successful Resume
- Analyze the job description
Review job descriptions for the skills, abilities, and qualifications employers are looking for. It is recommended that you have a specific job in mind when creating a targeted resume.
- Organize your thoughts
Make a list of the categories you wish to include on your resume. This list can include education/training, honors, volunteer opportunities, jobs, academic research, travel, and extracurricular activities. If possible, quantify results and use commonly understood terms. Learn and use terminology on your resume that is common to the field you are pursuing. Always write out or explain technical terms and abbreviations on your resume. List strengths and skills used to achieve your accomplishments.
- Create descriptive phrases
Create short phrases to describe your job duties. Avoid using diluted phrases such as "responsible for" or "in charge of." Arrange the descriptive phrases in order of importance to the position.
- Ensure your resume is letter perfect
Misspelled words, grammatical, or punctuation errors will generally disqualify you from being considered as a candidate.
- Have your resume critiqued by a
University Career Services counselor
You may have a UCS counselor critique your resume during Walk-In hours (Monday-Friday, 10:30 am - 3:30 pm during the regular school year, no Fridays in December, or Monday-Friday, 10:00 am - 2:00 pm during the summer) or you may schedule an appointment with the counselor for your area of study. UCS also sponsors a Resume Marathon on each semester.
Resume Tips
Basic Content
While there are several formats that are
acceptable for constructing your resume, the basic content for most
resumes is similar. You must
include your name and contact information (including email), objective
(except for the Primary resume that you will upload into the UCS Registration
system), education, honors, experience, skills, and activities.
Action Words
Demonstrating your skills is a key element of your resume. Descriptive
verbs like “coordinated”, “developed”, “supervised”,
“initiated”, “evaluated”, tell an employer your
qualifications. UCS has compiled a useful list of action verbs that we
encourage you to use to strengthen your resume. Get more tips on action
words by reviewing our Resumes handout (handout
also available in Word).
Cosmetic Appearance
Your resume
format is as important as your content. The resume should be constructed
so that the reader easily sees all information and does
not have to guess at your skills. Be aware of margins, white space, typos,
and overall “cosmetic” appearance. Review some examples of
well-formatted resumes:
- Chronological Resume 1
- Chronological Resume 2
- Chronological Internship Resume
- Chronological Graduate Resume
- Scannable Resume
Word Processing Software Templates
If you do not have a resume yet, we recommend that you use our resume creation tool, Optimal Resume, to create an effective resume.
Do not use the template provided in software packages to construct your resume. These templates were not developed for the college student.
Stating Your Objective
Include
an objective to demonstrate that you have career direction. The objective
may change for each job title, career function, and employer.
Talk with a career counselor at UCS about developing your career objective.
(Be sure the objective that you use for your Primary Resume on file with
UCS is broad enough to be used for all fields to which you want UCS to
refer your resume. You may tailor your objective when you send your resume
yourself and when you submit your resume to an individual employer for
campus interviewing.)
Paper and Printing
Use good paper in white or off-white
and use a readable font of at least 10 point. Print your resume on a
laser
printer.
Demographic Information
Do not include personal information
like marital status, age, race, etc.
Get it Critiqued
Be sure to have your resume critiqued
by a staff member at UCS during
Walk-in hours. A counselor can suggest entries for your resume that
you may not have considered.
Scannable Resumes and Converting
your resume to a format suitable for email or the Internet
Many organizations scan the resumes they receive into
a computerized database and translate them into text. Employers may also
ask you to email your resume or to send it in an Internet-compatible or
“text-only/ASCII” format. The following directions will help
you convert your resume into a plain text document that can be viewed
in the body of email or online.
- Open your current resume file (WP, Word, Ami-pro, etc.) using your current word processing program.
- Save current resume file as a "Windows TXT" or "ANSI TXT" FILE. This can be done by selecting the appropriate format from FILE TYPE in the "Save As" window.
- The text file will have the same name as your resume, only with a ".txt" extension.
- Re-open the resume.txt file and adjust formatting to make it as legible as possible. You will want to line up your text along the left side of the page. To maximize readability, move the titles of the categories of your resume (Education, Employment, etc.) above the list of qualifications that will be listed below it. If you have bullets, you should change them to a space + an asterisk (*) to highlight the item but not make the line wrap illegibly. It may take some time to make sure that your resume is arranged properly in this format but taking some time now will save you a lot of time in the future. Although ASCII text may look boring, it is the only format universally accepted over the Internet. Re-save your resume to preserve your changes.
- Select the whole resume by clicking on "edit" on your word processor taskbar, then select "select all". Your whole resume will become highlighted. Copy to your clip-board by depressing the keys "CTRL" and "C" at the same time.
- Open your mail program and paste into the textbox in the email by depressing the keys "CTRL" and "V" at the same time (or right click with your mouse in the space and choose “Paste”).
- Look over your final product to check for any additional format errors that may need correcting before submitting.
Curriculum Vitae
A curriculum vitae (or CV) is similar to a resume in
that it provides an overview of your professional and educational experience;
however a CV is typically used by individuals with or receiving a doctorate
for application for teaching or research positions. Review our CV
handout (also available in Word) for assistance
on developing a CV.
If you do not have a CV yet, we recommend that you use our resume creation tool, Optimal Resume, to create an effective CV.
Questions, comments? Email us
at ucs@unc.edu
919-962-6507
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