Essential Guide to Resume Writing

Hello again, this is Joy Bailey and I'll be going through module 4 with you. This is the lecture on resume skills. Today we'll go over the tips and tools needed to write your resume correctly. I hope you've by now downloaded the Career Center's handbook that was mentioned in earlier modules. If not, I suggest downloading that because it will be referred to a few times throughout the lecture. You can refer to pages 7 through 19. Before, during, and even after the process of writing your resume, it will be a great resource for writing your resume. Okay, the importance of a well-written resume, it's just extremely important when you're seeking new employment. The resume is a summary of your employment history, your education, your skills, and other pertinent information. Because the resume is the first impression a potential employer has of you, it is one of the most crucial. crucial steps during a job search. You can consider your resume to be like your personal marketing brochure. You want to gain the employer's attention quickly and give them the necessary information they need to bring you to the next step in the hiring process, which would be an interview, of course. Your resume tells an employer a lot about your professionalism. I want you to read this question and think about your answer. How long do employers typically look at a resume? Less than 30 seconds, one minute, or three minutes? Do you think the answer is A, B, or C? The actual answer is A, less than 30 seconds. This should really help you try to understand how important the quality of your resume is to an employer. If the employer is only going to take about 30 seconds to skim through your resume, Among hundreds of other applicants, you really want to make sure that yours stands out from the other applicants. The format of your resume is extremely important. Even before reading the first word printed on your resume, the employer gets a general idea of your professionalism just by looking at how it's formatted. First of all, you should make sure the margins are set to one inch on all sides, top left, right, and bottom. If you set the margins to one inch prior to beginning to type, this can help avoid formatting issues during the process. Don't assume the margins are always set to one inch. Go into the settings of Word and make sure they are prior to starting to write your resume. Also, font is extremely important. The font color should always be black, and it should be black on the entire resume. There should be no splashes or pops of color on a professional resume. Choose the front. Font style and stick with the same style throughout the resume. And most agree that fonts like Cambria, Calibri, and Times Roman are professional styles, so anything similar to those would be fine. You should consider your font size. The font shouldn't be so large that it just jumps off the page or be seen from across the room. And it shouldn't be so small that someone would need a magnifying glass to read it. The font sizes can vary. However, I suggest not going over 12 point font and not going under 10 point font. And most people consider 11 point to be right there in the middle. Okay, so for the purposes of this course, the parts of your resume should include the heading, education, experience, and activities, honors, and skills. Step one is the heading. This is where you'll provide personal contact information. Why do you need to provide this information? Because without it, the employer would be unable to reach you once they decided they would like to interview you. So make sure this information is typed correctly on your resume. First of all, you include your name, of course. You want to use your full name. That could be first and last name. First, middle, initial, last name is okay. You want to bold your name and make... your name one font size larger than the rest of your resume content. Include your correct mailing address including your street, city, state, and zip code. Include your phone number and an appropriate email address like we discussed about in the communication skills lecture. Also never use a work email address. Always use a personal email address. When typing an email address in a Word document you should always remove the hyperlink. To do this Once you've typed the email address, go back to it and right-click on it, and you should be able to click on Remove Hyperlink. I'll show you an example of this later in the lecture. Here I've taken two examples from the Career Center's handbook. Notice that one lists two separate addresses and phone numbers and email addresses. This is perfectly acceptable and is sometimes used by students who are about to graduate or who have recently graduated. They have a campus address or an apartment address in the campus town. However, they also have a home address and a home phone number where their parents live. So this just gives the employer more than one option of trying to reach you should they want you know, Juan to come in for an interview. Although Tom's example is what we typically see, just using that one address. If you notice, both have used their name in bold, and they've also increased the font size of their name. Their email addresses are not hyperlinked. They would have an underline under them if they were, and it would look like it was something you could click on. And both used personal and appropriate email addresses. And you can refer to page 10 in your handbook for more examples and tips. Now for part two, the education section. First of all, if you have more than one degree, you should list these in reverse chronological order, meaning your most recent degree would be listed first. Do not include your high school education on your resume. If you have an associate's degree, it's perfectly fine to list that. When listing your degree or degrees, you should include the title of your degree, and if you're not exactly sure the correct title, you need to refer to the school catalog. because you want to make sure that degree title is correct, spelled correct, written correctly. You also need to include your emphasis area. Since you're getting an interdisciplinary studies degree, this is extremely important. Your school's name and the city and state of the school. And then your graduation month and year. Remember, don't abbreviate the months. Also, if your GPA is above a 3.0, you can include this as well. If you do list your GPA, just remember to include the scale. And for example, Mississippi State is on a four point scale, so if your GPA is a 3.5, you can list it as it's seen here. And here are three examples of education listings on resumes. The first two were taken from the career handbook. I typed the third one and really want to discuss the third one. But as you can see, you're listing the name of the university. the city, the state, the month, the year, your title, the title of the degree, and the first one is using the GPA example. But if you go to the third one where you see the orange arrow, this is what we would like yours to look like because we do want those emphasis areas to be included. So that should give you everything if you use this as an example. The next section is experience. and we want to list the experience in reverse chronological order as well with your most recent job at the top. When you are listing the jobs, you need to include the job title, the company name, the city and the state, and the start and ending date of that job. If you're currently still at a job, you can type the word present instead of an ending date, and I think it's in the next example that I'm about to show. When describing each of your jobs or what you did at your jobs, You need to use present tense verbs if you're currently still in the position and you need to use past tense verbs if you work there previously. Refer to pages 18 and 19 in the handbook. There is a great list of power verbs and synonyms just to keep you from being redundant with your verbs and using the same one over and over. You do not need to include the street address of the job nor the supervisor's name. You should use an appropriate heading for this section. I've given you a few examples here. And remember to use the same format when listing your experience. If you bold something in the first entry, be sure to bold that in the same entry and so on. Okay, so here's the example of experience section. Notice that they are using the present tense verbs for their current position and for their most recent or the job before that they're using past tense verbs. They are in reverse chronological order. The formatting for both entries are exactly the same. Whatever is bolded in the first one or italicized in one is the same in the second. And I did notice they are missing the city and the state in this example, so please remember to include this in your experience section. They could have easily inserted it right above the ending and starting dates, but for this example they didn't. Just remember to do that on yours. The last part of the resume is the Activities, Honors, and Skills section. And depending on what you're wanting to list, you may either combine these activities, as you can see in the top section where it says Honor and Activities, or you may want to list them separately. You may feel like you really don't have one of these areas and so you just choose to omit that. If so, that's perfectly fine, but this section just depends completely on your history. Here you can see one example of honors and activities together as I mentioned. Here's one with only activities and one only with skills. Just refer to page 12 in your handbook and you can see more on this area of your resume. You want to convey accurate skill sets so achievements that highlight your abilities and relevant areas are much more impressive than a list of skills with no context. So if you feel like you don't have anything in this area to list it can be completely omitted as well. Also, never confuse professional honors, activities, and or skills with those that are personal. You should never include your marital status, your religious or political affiliations on your resume. So let's talk about references. The first thing you should know about references is that you do not, do not, list these on your resume. This is a completely separate document, and you can refer to page 13 in your handbook to see what that should look like. You should include three to five professional references and you should include their full name, job title, company name, mailing address, and email address for each reference. Please do not use family, friends, church members, or personal references when applying for a job. And you should only use the phrase references available by request at the bottom of your resume if and only if you need a space filler. Okay so we're about to wrap up this lecture. And we're going to just go over a few of the things that we've touched on here to summarize. You do not include your high school education or high school activities and honors. You do not abbreviate the months. You do not include a GPA that is lower than a 3.0. And you do not hyperlink your email address. So here is it hyperlinked here in the first one, and this has been unhyperlinked in the second one. You do use different verbs when describing tricynonyms to make it a little more interesting. You do use correct verb tense and you do be consistent with formatting. And now for what you've waited for, the assignment. For this module's assignment, I need you to write the first draft of your resume using the information and tips that you've learned from this lecture and in the pages of 7 through 19 in the career handbook. This assignment is worth 25 points. And remember, you must submit it through the... resume submission assignment within module 5 in my courses. Please note no credit will be given to you if you email me your resume. Remember to take the quiz regarding the resume in module 5 and also don't forget about your job description or graduate school statement of purpose assignment which is also in module 5. I will begin looking over resumes once you've submitted them and I'll return them to you with any revisions that may be necessary. If there are revisions, be sure that you start making those so you'll have it ready to resubmit at a later date. And as always, if you have questions or need assistance, just feel free to contact me. Thanks so much, guys.

You can refer to pages 7 through 19. Before, during, and even after the process of writing your resume, it will be a great resource for writing your resume. Okay, the importance of a well-written resume, it's just extremely important when you're seeking new employment. The resume is a summary of your employment history, your education, your skills, and other pertinent information.

Because the resume is the first impression a potential employer has of you, it is one of the most crucial. crucial steps during a job search. You can consider your resume to be like your personal marketing brochure.

You want to gain the employer's attention quickly and give them the necessary information they need to bring you to the next step in the hiring process, which would be an interview, of course. Your resume tells an employer a lot about your professionalism. I want you to read this question and think about your answer. How long do employers typically look at a resume?

Less than 30 seconds, one minute, or three minutes? Do you think the answer is A, B, or C? The actual answer is A, less than 30 seconds.

This should really help you try to understand how important the quality of your resume is to an employer. If the employer is only going to take about 30 seconds to skim through your resume, Among hundreds of other applicants, you really want to make sure that yours stands out from the other applicants. The format of your resume is extremely important.

Even before reading the first word printed on your resume, the employer gets a general idea of your professionalism just by looking at how it's formatted. First of all, you should make sure the margins are set to one inch on all sides, top left, right, and bottom. If you set the margins to one inch prior to beginning to type, this can help avoid formatting issues during the process.

Don't assume the margins are always set to one inch. Go into the settings of Word and make sure they are prior to starting to write your resume. Also, font is extremely important.

The font color should always be black, and it should be black on the entire resume. There should be no splashes or pops of color on a professional resume. Choose the front.

Font style and stick with the same style throughout the resume. And most agree that fonts like Cambria, Calibri, and Times Roman are professional styles, so anything similar to those would be fine. You should consider your font size. The font shouldn't be so large that it just jumps off the page or be seen from across the room. And it shouldn't be so small that someone would need a magnifying glass to read it.

The font sizes can vary. However, I suggest not going over 12 point font and not going under 10 point font. And most people consider 11 point to be right there in the middle.

Okay, so for the purposes of this course, the parts of your resume should include the heading, education, experience, and activities, honors, and skills. Step one is the heading. This is where you'll provide personal contact information. Why do you need to provide this information? Because without it, the employer would be unable to reach you once they decided they would like to interview you.

So make sure this information is typed correctly on your resume. First of all, you include your name, of course. You want to use your full name. That could be first and last name. First, middle, initial, last name is okay.

You want to bold your name and make... your name one font size larger than the rest of your resume content. Include your correct mailing address including your street, city, state, and zip code.

Include your phone number and an appropriate email address like we discussed about in the communication skills lecture. Also never use a work email address. Always use a personal email address.

When typing an email address in a Word document you should always remove the hyperlink. To do this Once you've typed the email address, go back to it and right-click on it, and you should be able to click on Remove Hyperlink. I'll show you an example of this later in the lecture.

Here I've taken two examples from the Career Center's handbook. Notice that one lists two separate addresses and phone numbers and email addresses. This is perfectly acceptable and is sometimes used by students who are about to graduate or who have recently graduated.

They have a campus address or an apartment address in the campus town. However, they also have a home address and a home phone number where their parents live. So this just gives the employer more than one option of trying to reach you should they want you know, Juan to come in for an interview.

Although Tom's example is what we typically see, just using that one address. If you notice, both have used their name in bold, and they've also increased the font size of their name. Their email addresses are not hyperlinked. They would have an underline under them if they were, and it would look like it was something you could click on.

And both used personal and appropriate email addresses. And you can refer to page 10 in your handbook for more examples and tips. Now for part two, the education section. First of all, if you have more than one degree, you should list these in reverse chronological order, meaning your most recent degree would be listed first.

Do not include your high school education on your resume. If you have an associate's degree, it's perfectly fine to list that. When listing your degree or degrees, you should include the title of your degree, and if you're not exactly sure the correct title, you need to refer to the school catalog.

because you want to make sure that degree title is correct, spelled correct, written correctly. You also need to include your emphasis area. Since you're getting an interdisciplinary studies degree, this is extremely important.

Your school's name and the city and state of the school. And then your graduation month and year. Remember, don't abbreviate the months. Also, if your GPA is above a 3.0, you can include this as well.

If you do list your GPA, just remember to include the scale. And for example, Mississippi State is on a four point scale, so if your GPA is a 3.5, you can list it as it's seen here. And here are three examples of education listings on resumes. The first two were taken from the career handbook. I typed the third one and really want to discuss the third one.

But as you can see, you're listing the name of the university. the city, the state, the month, the year, your title, the title of the degree, and the first one is using the GPA example. But if you go to the third one where you see the orange arrow, this is what we would like yours to look like because we do want those emphasis areas to be included.

So that should give you everything if you use this as an example. The next section is experience. and we want to list the experience in reverse chronological order as well with your most recent job at the top.

When you are listing the jobs, you need to include the job title, the company name, the city and the state, and the start and ending date of that job. If you're currently still at a job, you can type the word present instead of an ending date, and I think it's in the next example that I'm about to show. When describing each of your jobs or what you did at your jobs, You need to use present tense verbs if you're currently still in the position and you need to use past tense verbs if you work there previously. Refer to pages 18 and 19 in the handbook. There is a great list of power verbs and synonyms just to keep you from being redundant with your verbs and using the same one over and over.

You do not need to include the street address of the job nor the supervisor's name. You should use an appropriate heading for this section. I've given you a few examples here. And remember to use the same format when listing your experience. If you bold something in the first entry, be sure to bold that in the same entry and so on.

Okay, so here's the example of experience section. Notice that they are using the present tense verbs for their current position and for their most recent or the job before that they're using past tense verbs. They are in reverse chronological order. The formatting for both entries are exactly the same.

Whatever is bolded in the first one or italicized in one is the same in the second. And I did notice they are missing the city and the state in this example, so please remember to include this in your experience section. They could have easily inserted it right above the ending and starting dates, but for this example they didn't.

Just remember to do that on yours. The last part of the resume is the Activities, Honors, and Skills section. And depending on what you're wanting to list, you may either combine these activities, as you can see in the top section where it says Honor and Activities, or you may want to list them separately.

You may feel like you really don't have one of these areas and so you just choose to omit that. If so, that's perfectly fine, but this section just depends completely on your history. Here you can see one example of honors and activities together as I mentioned.

Here's one with only activities and one only with skills. Just refer to page 12 in your handbook and you can see more on this area of your resume. You want to convey accurate skill sets so achievements that highlight your abilities and relevant areas are much more impressive than a list of skills with no context. So if you feel like you don't have anything in this area to list it can be completely omitted as well.

Also, never confuse professional honors, activities, and or skills with those that are personal. You should never include your marital status, your religious or political affiliations on your resume. So let's talk about references.

The first thing you should know about references is that you do not, do not, list these on your resume. This is a completely separate document, and you can refer to page 13 in your handbook to see what that should look like. You should include three to five professional references and you should include their full name, job title, company name, mailing address, and email address for each reference. Please do not use family, friends, church members, or personal references when applying for a job. And you should only use the phrase references available by request at the bottom of your resume if and only if you need a space filler.

Okay so we're about to wrap up this lecture. And we're going to just go over a few of the things that we've touched on here to summarize. You do not include your high school education or high school activities and honors.

You do not abbreviate the months. You do not include a GPA that is lower than a 3.0. And you do not hyperlink your email address. So here is it hyperlinked here in the first one, and this has been unhyperlinked in the second one.

You do use different verbs when describing tricynonyms to make it a little more interesting. You do use correct verb tense and you do be consistent with formatting. And now for what you've waited for, the assignment.

For this module's assignment, I need you to write the first draft of your resume using the information and tips that you've learned from this lecture and in the pages of 7 through 19 in the career handbook. This assignment is worth 25 points. And remember, you must submit it through the... resume submission assignment within module 5 in my courses.

Please note no credit will be given to you if you email me your resume. Remember to take the quiz regarding the resume in module 5 and also don't forget about your job description or graduate school statement of purpose assignment which is also in module 5. I will begin looking over resumes once you've submitted them and I'll return them to you with any revisions that may be necessary. If there are revisions, be sure that you start making those so you'll have it ready to resubmit at a later date. And as always, if you have questions or need assistance, just feel free to contact me.

Thanks so much, guys.

Transcript for:Essential Guide to Resume Writing

Transcript for:
Essential Guide to Resume Writing