How to Write a Resume

A resume is a summary of your experiences and skills relevant to the field you are interested in. It is designed so that you can highlight your accomplishments, your past work experience, your skills and strengths, your volunteer work, and your educational background. Of course, this is not to be mistaken for an autobiography; one must take into consideration what are you aiming for by submitting the resume.

Sooner or later, you will require submitting one in order to pitch an interview with a future employee, score a scholarship, or get into a college program. In order to have a successful resume, you must keep in mind the initial purpose of the resume and tailor it to fit each field.

How to Start?

An easy way to start writing your resume is to create a list of the skills, strengths, activities, experiences, and education over the years. This will help you take notice of the things useful for the resume you are trying to write. Next to each point you make, write why this would be important to the field that you are applying for.

Before writing your resume, you must first establish a font. 1” margins all over, a readable size (I usually use 12 font) for the body; headings and subheadings should vary in size in order to note the different sections (headings you can use font 16 and subheadings font 14). Use a standard font (Times New Roman is a good example, Arial, Georgia, etc.) to look professional. Do not use “fun” fonts; it will make you look unprofessional and might make it harder for the reviewer to read (I once had a freshmen student reviewing his resume with me and had a cursive font all over the resume, which made it very difficult to read), which may prompt them to not reading it at all.

The heading should include your name, address, contact information, and can be centered or justified.

After choosing a heading, you can also choose a resume layout. Chronological resumes focus on experience rather than education and are best used by those who have been working on the same field for a while, so it won’t be a good idea for a freshman college student using this format for their first job. Functional Resumes focus on experience and skills, best suited for people without a steady career; in this case, a freshmen student can use this type of resume to highlight skills and experience on different areas, rather than just the focus on a steady career. Finally, you can use a combination of the previous ones, which helps people to highlight specific skills and how they were acquired. Although it is a good idea to have a layout in order to keep track of what you are writing, I highly recommend building your own layout, since each person has different experiences, skills, objectives, and education.

To do this, I present below the different sections that you can include into your resume.

Objective

The Objective section of a resume is the first thing that will be visible, right under your name, and this will let the reviewer know what your goals are and how you would benefit the employer. Do not write vague statements; this section is to note the specific goal you have for the particular place you are applying to.

Example:

Targeting a specific position: Accomplished psychology graduate student with strong background in data collection, data analysis, training in data analysis software, and academic writing looking for a research assistant position.

Remember to sell yourself out; this is your pitch to the people reviewing your applications and this will define whether you have anything new to offer that places you in an advantageous position as compared to any other applicant.

Skills

The purpose of writing about your skills and strengths is to let the employer or the committee reviewing your resume know what you are capable of. Skills vary depending on the job, but most of them translate easily onto one another.

Here is an example of a list of skills aimed at creating a resume tailoring a potential employer:

• Fluent in English and Spanish both written and spoken languages
• Proficient in the use of MS excel, word, powerpoint, and publisher
• Proficient in the use of Open Office programs equivalent of the MS programs.
• Excellent at finishing assigned tasks in an organized and timely manner
• Capable of assuming leadership positions and have individual initiative
• Good communication skills
• Good at working in teams to achieve goals in an efficient and timely manner.

The skills highlighted on your resume will allow the employer, school board, or any person reviewing your application know what your general skills are and whether these are suitable for what you are applying to.

Qualifications

The Qualifications section of your resume should be the first best way to showcase the qualities that make you a good candidate for whatever is it that you are applying for. Under this section you can show whether you have years of experience on the field, achievements, and a resume of your skills. This can also be named the Achievements section.

Aside from showcasing you, this section allows for you to quantify your achievements, show progress, and demonstrate what assets you can bring into the position, school, or program you are applying to.

Under this section you can add classes you have taken, certifications, honors you have received, scholarships you have won, achievements you have accomplished in your job, academic life, or volunteering, and specific skills that would be tailored to the specific thing you are applying to.

Here is an example that I used for my application for a graduate program:

• Bachelor of Arts in Psychology
• Background in Psychology and Sociology upper level courses such as:
  • Seminar in Psychology: Criminal Behavior
  • Psychobiology
  • Health Psychology
  • Independent Research
  • Advanced Statistics
  • Research Methods
• Excellent academic writing skills.
• Strong, two-year background in academic research with background in collecting and analyzing data.
• Adequate volunteer experience in fields related to psychology.
• Trained in suicide prevention program, QPR: Question, Persuade, Refer.

Education

The placement of the Education section and the Work Experience section varies accordingly with your own experiences. If you have recently graduated college, for example, and have no experience on the field, the best would be to place Education first in order to highlight that your inexperience on the field is due to your experience on the academic part of it. On the other hand, if you have 5 years of experience on, let’s say business administration, and this is an important part of your application, then it is best to place Work Experience first in order to highlight this.

On the Education content you will be listing from most recent to oldest all of your educational career or degrees. In this section you will name the institution that you attended, the degree you earned (or are still working on earning), your graduation date (or anticipated graduation date), GPA, and if you were part of any honors society. You can also list any related coursework that might prove useful for what you are applying to.

If you did not complete a degree, you can list the credit hours that you reached and the date, solely to focus on the Work Experience field.

Here is an example of the education section on my resume:

Work Experiences and Volunteer Experiences

After you have finished writing down the skills you find necessary for the job or setting you are submitting your resume to, listing your qualifications, and completing your Education section, the next task is to show your past work experience. If you are a student, either aiming for a job or a college, keep in mind that you might not have a lot of work experience; however, if you feel that your job experience is little, it is always useful to list your volunteer work or extracurricular activities that you find relevant to the field, also small jobs, like baby-sitting, will help you in letting the person who views your resume know that you have some experience and that you are willing to learn more.

To write down your work experience, start by the latest one and move on to the oldest one. Remember that if you were a babysitter at age, let’s say, 14 and you are currently 20, that job experience will not be as relevant as your current one.

By listing your job experiences it is important to have an established format. You will be listing the employer, your position, and the start and ending date of this position.

Writing a resume is not an easy task; however, it is an important asset to turn in alongside with any application in order for the people reviewing your file to know whether or not you’ll be a good candidate for any position, scholarship, grant, or program. The template provided here is a general template that covers basic information that is necessary for a complete and useful resume; however, it may vary accordingly with what you are applying to.

To look for more specific questions regarding resume-writing, here is a list of some good resources for tips, templates, and examples:

Monster Career Resources

Monster Resume Samples

Job Search’s Resume Writing Tips

Rock Port Institute’s resume tips

WikiHow Create a Resume