What to put on a resume

[ASTalumna06]

Have you just recently graduated? Or are you a senior graduating this year? If so, I would suggest you worry less about putting down every job you’ve had in the past few years, and worry more about playing up your educational experience. Employers understand that when you’re coming out of college, there’s a good chance that your work experience is not going to be one of your strong suits when selling yourself to them. When I was attempting to get a job with my original resume, it was extremely difficult. I was barely receiving any interviews, and I struggled to figure out what I was doing wrong. As an alumna, I went to the Career Development Center on campus and asked for help. They completely re-vamped my resume and showed me what to focus on. If your work experience is doing VERY little for you, don’t make it the focus of your resume. For myself, my education, special skills, extra-curriculars and awards became the main headings. At the bottom was “Other Experience” and under it was my work experience. And I simply wrote the last two jobs I had (summer jobs in between college classes), where they were located (city, state) and my position at each company. I didn’t give any details, because if they were going to ask me to show up for an interview, it wasn’t going to be because I worked at an amusement park for a few summers. If they asked about it in the interview, I played it up for all it was worth, but I knew that it wouldn’t help me at all to spotlight it on my resume.

If you’re a little more removed from your college experience, still use education as one of your main selling points, but include a little more with your work experience, also. When discussing your jobs, don’t focus on what you did there, but instead, create a bulleted list of all the skills you gained so that employers will be paying more attention to the positives that will potentially help you in your new position. It might seem ridiculous to put down interpersonal skills if you were, say.. a cashier. But it’s better to put that down than, “I checked people out and scanned their items.” It’s a challenge because you need to fill your resume, but not put down the most ridiculous skills that will do nothing except look like you’re trying to take up blank space.