Build a Resume when Still in School
Creating a resume is a difficult task at the best of times, but when you're still at school, it can seem overwhelming. Landing a job in school can be the stepping stone to help build your professional life outside of school and a good source of income and social interactions until then. So how do you fill a resume when most of your time is spent in a classroom.
Contents
Steps
- Review yourself. Being in school teaches you transferable skills to the workplace without you even knowing it. You have to spend time looking for them because teachers don't have time in each class to point out the skills. For example - full time students are often adept at organisation because you are doing sometimes up to six subjects with multiple assignment and you fit them all in and on time. Presto a transferable skill in organisation.
- Consider volunteering. This is an excellent supplement to a resume and helps build more transferable skills into the workplace. It demonstrates a well-rounded and grounded individual to a potential employer as well as a hard-worker. There are many opportunities for school students to give back to the community.
- Open the resume. When it comes time to draft the resume and you have completed the opening lines of your personal contact details open the resume with the strongest asset you have. If this is your academic performance in school open with this, if your grades are not so sharp but you have volunteer experience open with this. If you have neither open with a list of skills you can offer. Remember what you put on your resume has to the punch line in your advertisement of yourself. This is no place to leave the best to last.
- Progress through the section from strongest to weakest. A Resume has certain set sections they all contain, and an employer will look for them, such as education, work history, skills, hobbies etc. What do you have that is the most appealing to a potential employer and open with that and then work your way down to the least appealing to close. But ensure you cover them all.
- Close with referees. Make sure you contact these referees first and let them know you are using them. There is nothing worse than a referee caught off guard to ruin your chances. If your still working on sourcing referees or there are privacy concerns initially close with referees available on request. But make sure you have these issues sorted out before any interview.
- Get it reviewed. Always get a 2nd opinion on a resume before you send it out to business. Ensure spelling and grammar are correct and that you are putting yourself in the best light you can for a potential employer.
Tips
- A resume is a written advertisement of yourself, so treat it as such. Be professional and serious and treat this document as such. No potential employer is going to want a resume with hot pink text and listing shopping as hobby. If you want to be taken seriously by a potential employer take yourself seriously first.
- Have faith in yourself. You are not unemployable and you have skills that set you apart from the rest of your class. You just have to believe in yourself. If you don't as much as you try it will come across in your communication and the potential employer will see it too.
- Having no experience because you are at school does not make you unemployable. You have skills that an employer can use and your moldable, these are two important aspect in students. Use them to your advantage, because if you don't you can bet someone else will and will beat you.
Warnings
- Do not lie. There is a lot of literature about extending the truth in resuming, which may work when you have some professional experience. But as a student in school unless you're a professional con artist who can pull off elaborate schemes stick to the truth. Plus it always easier to remember the truth than it is a lie.
