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Entry level resume – how to highlight your education and your skills

Graduating from college is one of the proudest moments you can experience. Receiving your diploma validates all the hard work you put into your education, all the all-nighters you pulled before exams. Your graduation signifies your accomplishments as a student, and opens the door into the world of career choices, job searches, and 40-hour workweeks. All of a sudden, it hits you – how will you get a job that requires experience if you have none?

As a recent college graduate, you are entering the workforce at entry-level jobs. Your potential employers have very reasonable expectations. They expect you to have graduated from college and that your major is in line with the job you are applying for. They anticipate that you have some experience, a summer job or an internship, but they are not requiring years of professional experience. They would like to see some references – from your professors or previous supervisors – so that they can get a better idea of your personality and work ethic. Sound reasonable so far?

The best way to show your potential employer that you are a perfect candidate for the job is to create a functional resume. Functional resumes focus on your qualifications, not your career timeline. This style of the resume highlights what skills you have, rather than where and when you acquired or utilize them.  In other words, instead of listing your experiences by your job titles, your resume will contained sections titled by your skills such as verbal and written communication, customer satisfaction, project management, etc. This resume style is highly recommended for and most often used by college students seeking internships or their first jobs out of college.

Begin your resume by stating your career objective. Make sure that your career goals are personal. Your objective should be specific to the position you want, and should indicate to your employer how you intend to utilize your education and how this position will help you develop your experience. Your education should be listed next. List the school you attend and its location, your graduation year, and your major. It can be helpful to include your GPA, specific courses you have taken, or any honors you have received while in school. Your professional skills should come next. This section will include sub-headings as they relate to specific qualifications you want to promote, such as communications, customer relations, managements, etc. Here, you can utilize any experience you have that relates to the sub-sections, including your part time jobs, internships, volunteer positions, community service work, or school-related activities. Only include a work experience/work history section if you have held part time jobs while in school or have had internships you’d like your employer to know about.  This list should only include dates, titles, companies, and locations without listing any of your responsibilities, since you are covering them in the previous section. If you belonged to any clubs in school, include a section for activities and list only those that support your career objective. For example, if you were an editor of your school paper, and you are trying to get a job at a publishing company, make sure that you include this experience in your resume. Your last section should list references. As a new graduate, it is to your benefit to include references on your resume, and give your employer everything they need to consider you as a qualified candidate for the job. You have nothing to lose by providing this information ahead of being asked for it.

Before you start applying for jobs, take advantage of your school’s career center and have one of the mentors there review your resume and help you perfect both the content and the format. With a well-written resume, you are prepared to take the professional world by storm.

Related Tags: entry level resume, resume entry, resume style, functional resume, contained sections

Resume review – asking and getting help

Writing a resume is a process of self-discovery in many ways. You have to market yourself to your potential employer, which is a very difficult task because we have to walk the fine line of objectivity and self-promotion.

Your resume must summarize your educational achievements, professional experience, and qualification in a way that best meets your career objective. Composing your entire professional history on one or two pages can be time consuming; thus, we sometimes spend hours and days writing and re-writing our resumes in order to perfect the content and the format before it reaches our potential employer. However, after looking at the same content over and over, it becomes easy for us to miss very simple typos or grammar errors, or even poorly written statements that may raise questions in the eyes of the hiring manager. Before posting your resume on job search web sites, or submitting it to companies you are interested in, it is in your best interest to have someone else review it. This can be a scary thought – while you may want help and feedback from your friend, you are concerned they will dislike something aesthetic and you’ll feel the pressure to make formatting changes. And since you have already spent a lot of time on your resume, you don’t want to have to start over.

Since you know you can benefit from having someone else review your resume, the key is to set some boundaries and goals for that review. Ask about specific things that are of the concern to you – if you know that grammar isn’t your strength, ask your friends to proofread the content. If you have gaps in your work history, ask your friend to act as a potential employer and review the resume and cover letter together. Do they have any questions about your work history, or have you addressed everything in your cover letter? Accept feedback about content, but make sure that your friends are raising valid questions about the statements you are making. If they suggest that you change an action word, can they give you a valid reason behind the change, or is the reasoning based on their personal preference? Don’t get into an argument over formatting – do your research ahead of time and know what the acceptable resume style is for your field.  It is also beneficial that you have more than one additional person review your resume before you send it to your potential employers. This helps you in recognizing if the feedback is based on personal preferences or professional concerns. Ideally, the person you ask for help has experience in your field, and can help assure that the action words or phrases you have chose are appropriate for your industry and position level.

If you are unsure that you are even on the right track with your resume, and you feel that the research you have done is overwhelming and not helpful, seek assistance from a professional resume writing service. A professional resume writer should be able to help guide you in the right direction, revise your current resume or create a new resume for you. Make sure that the professional you are working with can provide you with references and samples, and that they are versed in writing resumes for professionals in your field of work. While this option requires you paying for someone’s assistance, it can prove to be a more beneficial one in the long run.

You can always serve as your own resume editor. Step away from your resume for a while; give yourself some time, usually a day or two, between writing the resume and reviewing it. This allows you to be more objective as you review the final draft of your resume, because you are not as intimately involved with it at the moment of review (the way you would be immediately after completing the draft).

No matter what option of review you chose, make sure that you do in fact review your resume before submitting it to your potential employer. You don’t want your hiring manager catching your mistakes, do you? A well-written, error-free resume is more likely to get you noticed, and get you the job that you want.

Related Tags: grammar errors, help writing a resume, career objective, educational achievements, valid questions

You’ve heard it over and over again – a well-written resume is a winning resume. What does that mean? How can you determine whether your resume is written in a tone and style that employers will respond to? Synthesizing your educational achievements, years of your professional experience, and numerous qualifications you have acquired over the years into one to two pages is not easy to accomplish. Every phrase or statement you write has to convince your potential employer that you are the best candidate for the job. To do so, you will need to use action or power word.

Action words, or power words, are keywords (verbs) that add strength and positive implication to your job responsibilities or qualifications. When you submit your resume to your potential employer, there are two scenarios that will occur. One, your application will be ran through a computer software program, which searches your resume for key terms as indicated by the employer. If your resume contains those key words, your resume will be pulled aside for further review. Two, a hiring manager, or most often a human resources associate, will receive a stack or resumes and scan through them quickly to pick out those that stand out the most, again based on certain key words. It should now be clear why these action words are critical to your success in job hunting.

When listing your employment history, each job’s responsibilities should be listed in bullet point form, with each statement starting with an action word. Using power verbs or phrases will indicate to your employer that you are driven by action and results, and that you can effectively articulate your professional experience (thus, showcasing your communication skills).

Here is a small sample of action words:
- created
- developed and implemented
- managed
- delivered
- designed
- facilitated
- negotiated
- coordinated
- budgeted
- acted
- communicated
- consulted, etc.

This is a very short sampling of action words. Many resources on the Internet contain extensive listings of action words or phrases. Do some research and use only those terms that are relevant to your field of experience. Your best bet would be to locate samples of resumes by professionals in your industry. Review those resumes for ideas on how to list your responsibilities. Important note: do not copy exact statements from someone else’s resume; while you can do your research, you will want to make your resume personalized to your professional experience.

Don’t fall into the trap of using the same action word over and over. If you have in fact managed multiple projects, you may want to be a bit more specific about your role in each. For example, maybe you were the communication liaison in one project, while you were the project manager for another task. Begin the first bullet point with “communicated,” and the second bullet point with “managed.” However, be aware of the words that you are using and consider their value in your resume. Do not go overboard with using varying terms, especially those that may change your role or your responsibilities.

Additionally, you can find key action words in job descriptions. Review your resume against a job description and make sure that all required qualifications are addressed in your statements. This will also help you identify action words that the employer uses, which you can in turn use to customize your resume or cover letter to that specific job.

Always make sure that you are consistent in the way you list all of your responsibilities and qualifications, and make sure that your statements exude positive attitude and focus on actions and results. By doing so, you are guaranteed to create a winning resume that will get you noticed.

Related Tags: computer software program, power verbs, human resources associate, job hunting, word action