Résumés: Your Road to the Future

1. Résumés: Your Road to the Future

2. Average Time Spent Reading Resumes 20 seconds Resumes are scanned, not read.

3. What to put on a resume? Jobs and experience since high school All work that involved business, engineering, or “people” skills Nothing personal, unless a special case

4. What do employers expect? • Ability to communicate • Ability to learn • Self-confidence • Willingness to accept responsibility • Initiative • Imagination • Flexibility • Interpersonal skills Adapted from Career Assistance Center, Cockrell School of Engineering

5. How to make your resume fit you . . .

6. Résumés: Two Major Types • Chronological • Emphasizes education • Usually best for young college grads • Works backwards from most recent for jobs, awards, etc. • Functional • Emphasizes skills • Organizes many and diverse job experiences • Headings name skills instead of job titles or places of employment.

7. Types: Chronological Resume • Education • Related Courses • Experience • dates easily seen • including volunteer work if relevant • Skills • including languages (computer & other) • Accomplishments (or Honors) • including awards and scholarship • Interests (or Activities) • especially team sports and activities

8. Two Common Questions • Do I need an Objective statement? • Answer: it depends • Where do I put my GPA? • Answer: under Education • You may list Overall and Major GPAs. • Also consider stating how much of your college education you financed.

9. Job Experience • Use keywords to stress specific technical, organizational, or communication skills: • “pavement distress mechanisms,” “life-cycle costs,” “multimedia presentations” • Use a past or present tense verb to begin each job description. • Check the list of action words for suggested verbs. • Highlight job title, employer, location, and dates employed. Cluster repeated jobs held at different times.

10. Types: Functional resume • Summarizes skills and experience before listing education and specific jobs. • Organizes strengths shown in many jobs, so better for mid-career applicants.

11. Résumé Formats • Print • for interviews and cover letters • handsomely designed • Scannable • plain and simple design • PDF format is safest • E-mail attachment • Ms Word or PDF • Web • provide PDF version as well as HTML version • avoid possible web-page excesses

12. Scannable Resumes • These are read by a machine. • Keep the resume design simple and standard. • Use standard typefaces/font styles. • Use a font size from 10 to 14. • Do not condense spacing between letters. • Avoid 'fancy' extras (italics, underline, etc.). • Don’t use lines, graphics, and boxes. • Use boldface for section headings.

13. More Tips . . . for all resumes • Use white space as a design element. • Use common names for section headings (Education, Experience, etc.). • Put your name first; put contact information on separate lines. • Avoid most abbreviations. • Be concise and concrete in descriptions. • Use format to differentiate between job title, company name, and place . • Use some industry keywords.

14. For lab this week . . . Job Letter and Resume Workshop Please bring your resume and your job-application letter in both hard copy and electronic form. You can remove or change your actual GPA for the workshop, if you’d like Please also bring a copy of the job description.