Write a Resume as a Graduate Student

Once you have graduated, it can be hard to face the world outside college, look for a job or even imagine yourself as an employable person. The first step you need to take is write a resume that can increase your chances of getting hired. This can be a little intimidating at first, since what you are basically asked to do is to squeeze your life experience in a couple of pages. Whether you already have a CV or nothing at all to start working with, there's no need to panic: it's still easy to write a resume once you know what information recruiters expect to find in it and how they should be listed and phrased.

Steps

Choosing a Style for Your Resume

  1. Check out other people's resumes. You can ask a friend to show you their resume if they have one available. You can also search for templates online or quickly compare resumes of acquaintances or strangers working in your field of interest to see what they look like and what information they have included. Focus on what you like about their layout and formatting style.
    • Keep in mind that the aim is not to plagiarize their words but imitate their style if you think it's effective.
  2. Choose a layout for your own resume. This should be as simple as possible. Make sure important information is highlighted appropriately and avoid squeezing too much text in a single page. Recruiters often have little time and sift through resumes very quickly: yours shouldn't be longer than two pages.
    • Your name should be the most visible item in the first page.
    • Start and end dates for each previous position or degree should also be clearly visible.
    • Use elements such as lines or boxes to separate different sections sparingly: they can take up space that can be better used by including useful information.
  3. Choose a formatting style. Stick with professional-looking fonts like Arial, Georgia, Calibri, Garamond, etc. You can use bold type, block letters or a different color to highlight important information. However, avoid using too many colors as this will make your resume harder to read.
    • For example, in your "Employment" section the job title can be in block letters while the duties can be formatted as regular text. In your "Education" section, the name of your degree can be in bold while the name of the university can be formatted as regular text.
  4. Make your writing simple and concise. Avoid using full sentences and try to be as schematic as possible.[1]
    • For example, you can summarize the sentence "For this job, I was required to assist and help customers" by simply writing "Duties: customer care".
    • Avoid repeating yourself and rephrasing competences or skills you have already listed.

Writing Your Resume from Scratch

  1. Provide your Contact Information. This should include your address, e-mail and phone contact. There is no need to title this section: simply list the information under your name.
    • You should not include personal information such as age, birth date, sex, ethnicity or a photograph of you unless your employers have specifically requested it. In many countries it is against the law to discriminate applicants based on this kind of information, which should usually be irrelevant for the purpose of the job. [2]
  2. Write your Objective. This is where you should address the specific position and how your knowledge and skills make you suitable for the role. The section shouldn't take more than three or four lines. If you are just writing a general resume, leave it blank and write it later based on each job's requirements.
    • Avoid generic statements and adjectives such as "hard-working" or "committed". Instead, you should draw attention to what makes you unique.
    • Keep the focus on your future career goals rather than your personal qualities, and list clearly and concisely what you want to achieve and why this particular job can help you achieve it. [3]
  3. List your Work Experience. This section can also be titled "Employment" or simply "Experience". All your previous jobs should be listed in reverse chronological order with start and end dates. After the job title and employer, write a short list of your duties, responsibilities and achievements for each position.
    • Be sure to include strong action words and key terms to emphasize your leadership and team roles, such as "organized", "developed", "supervised", etc.[4]
    • Make sure you highlight your accomplishments. The goal is to show that, whatever you did in the past, your presence made a difference. [3]
    • If you have a lot of experience, you can organize it under subheadings such as "relevant", "additional", "volunteer", etc. [3]
    • If you are currently employed, write "-Present" instead of the end date and specify how much notice you are required to give to quit the job.
  4. List your Education. List all the degrees that you have attained in reverse chronological order, starting from the most recent. Make sure you list the title of your degree, the awarding institution and the start and end date. If you haven't yet completed your degree, specify it in the date section by writing "-Present" instead of the end year.
    • You can include other information such as your GPA, dissertation title and supervisors if it's relevant for the job.
  5. List your Skills. This should be organized by subheadings such as "Computer skills" and "Foreign languages". In the case of computer skills, draw attention to those that are more relevant to the job. In the "Foreign languages" section, specify your proficiency by using words such as "advanced", "intermediate", "basic", or the Common European Framework of References for Languages (A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, C2) [5]
    • You can also list interpersonal skills such as communication or leadership if you haven't highlighted them elsewhere, but these should be supported by evidence. [6] Therefore, you might want to showcase them in your "Experience" section by linking them to a particular position when you list duties and achievements.
  6. List your Awards, Honors or Professional Affiliations. This is where you should showcase any scholarships or grants you might have received, competitions you have won or whether you're a member of a society whose focus matches that of the position you are applying for.

Turning Your CV into a Resume

  1. Convert your CV to a resume for non-academic job applications. Since you’ve recently graduated, you might already have a CV highlighting your academic experience. This is a very good starting point. However, a resume is what most non-academic employers in the private sector will ask you to send as an applicant. It is considerably shorter than a CV (two pages at the most), designed to highlight your work experience and transferable skills, and job-specific. This means that you will have to tailor it to the specific job requirements depending on the requirements.
  2. Compare resume templates to your CV and spot the differences. Also in this case, you can ask a friend to let you take a look at their resume or simply search templates online. Pay attention to what information is included and what is missing that is instead present in your CV.
    • Annotating your CV with a pen or marker can help you through the process. You can circle the sections and information that are also present in the resumes (such as "Work experience") and cross out those that are missing (like "Publications" or dissertation titles).
    • Make sure you have a look at several resumes: the more you see the clearer you'll be about how they should be structured. It will make it easier for you to develop specific ideas about what you want your resume to look like.
  3. Identify which skills you can transfer to the kind of job you're applying for. This can take a little stretch of the imagination at first, but think through keywords that employers might be looking for. Be flexible and creative: reimagine college experiences such as group projects, societies and study groups as little work experiences that helped you develop specific skills. [7]
    • Examples of questions you should ask yourself: Have your ever worked in a team with other college students to work on a specific project? Have you ever been asked to lead or coordinate a group? Have you worked with data or large amount of information?[8]
  4. Make a list of these skills and add them to the relevant section. Some might be clearly linked to a previous job, while some others might be linked to your education (for example, college group projects). [9]
    • If you list interpersonal and adaptive skills under the "Skills" section, make sure you link them to a specific experience to provide evidence of how you developed such skill (for example, Communication skills: delivered papers at five graduate conferences, part-time receptionist at the Student Helpdesk).
    • If some skills don’t fit in any of these sections but still think they could greatly increase your chances of employment, the "Objective" section is probably the best place where to mention them.
  5. Rearrange information in your resume to highlight those skills and experiences that can increase your chances of employment. Keep in mind that the usual order is: Name, Contact Information, Objective, Work Experience, Education, Skills, Awards/Honors/Affiliations.
  6. Add an Objective section at the top. Be strategic: rethink your skills through the job or type of jobs you are applying for and turn them into a positive asset.[10] Phrase your skills as action words ("developed", "managed", "collected") [4] and always link them to specific experiences. However, keep the focus on the job and how your skills can best help you achieve your future goals.
    • Keep in mind this section should be only a few lines long. Be as concise as possible. Omit those skills that are irrelevant to the purpose of the job.
  7. Remove superfluous information. This is by far the most drastic step: be as objective and detached as possible in identifying which parts of your CV are irrelevant for the job. Remove information such as publications, conferences or referees.
    • Some information in your “Education” can perhaps be omitted if unrelated to the job, such as supervisors' names or dissertation titles.
    • It can be worth retaining your Publications if you are seeking a job in the publishing sector.
    • If you have taken out all you think you could and the resume is still over the two-page limit, go through it again and choose what else you can let go. Delete repetitions, turn longer sentences into shorter words or edit the layout and formatting (but make sure the final result doesn't look cramped).[9]

Editing Your Resume After It's Written

  1. Proofread your resume more than once. Look for typos and spelling mistakes. You can also ask a friend or professor to review it for you.
  2. Customize your resume based on the job you're applying for. Omit irrelevant information or expand on those experiences that are pertinent to the job.[11] Make sure you rewrite your "Objective" for each new job to tailor it to the person specifications. [6] Rephrase some passages to include keywords that recruiters might be looking for. [12]
    • When you think about your previous academic experience, focus on how your skills and knowledge can be useful for a particular job. Think of whether any projects or experiences you were involved in can highlight your leadership, teamwork, accuracy or communication skills. [7]
    • If you don't have extensive information about the job, do some background search to find out what kind of person they might be looking for and which duties it entails.[13]
  3. Convert the resume into a PDF to avoid formatting inconsistencies. If you are required to print it out, use good-quality white paper.

Tips

  • Make sure you spend a fair amount of time working on your resume. Once you have a good template, it will be much easier and faster for you to tailor it to each job's specifications.

Warnings

  • Be sure that your resume contains whatever information will best help to promote you as a job candidate, and no more. Instead of thinking of page limits, think about each word of content and why it is there.
  • Some might feel that, by deleting irrelevant information, they are losing an important part of themselves just for the sake of employability. You shouldn't take this personally: remember a resume is not meant to define who you are, but simply highlight which of your skills and experiences match those required for a particular job.

Related Articles

Sources and Citations

  1. ↑ http://edtech.missouri.edu/documents/GuidelinesForWritingAProfessionalResume.pdf
  2. ↑ https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/practices/
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 http://www.theguardian.com/careers/cv-tips-for-graduates
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 http://career.ucsd.edu/_files/awordlst.pdf
  5. ↑ http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/linguistic/cadre1_en.asp
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 http://career.ucsd.edu/undergraduates/prepar-resume-covlet/writing-effective-resume.html
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 http://gradschool.cornell.edu/career-services/resumes-and-cvs
  8. ↑ http://ocs.yale.edu/content/converting-your-cv-resume
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 https://www.careereducation.columbia.edu/resources/tipsheets/resumes-and-cvs-converting-your-cv-resume
  10. ↑ https://uk-mg42.mail.yahoo.com/neo/launch?.rand=3g6a5ve1hmerg#5263219122
  11. ↑ http://edtech.missouri.edu/documents/GuidelinesForWritingAProfessionalResume.pdf
  12. ↑ http://www.theguardian.com/careers/cv-tips-for-graduates
  13. ↑ http://www.theguardian.com/careers/cv-tips-for-graduates
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