Resources Resume Tips
Resume tips to ensure
you stand out.
Our hiring managers review thousands of resumes a year. Here’s what catches our attention and elevates inquiries to interviews:
Formatting
- Keep it simple and be consistent with your design and font. Whether it’s being reviewed by a human or computer, you have about five seconds to engage the reader’s attention.
- Keep to one page. If you run out of space, eliminate the oldest and most irrelevant content.
- Submit in PDF format.
Order of information
- The most important portion of the resume is the first three sections: Contact information, education, and work experience. After that, the order is more flexible.
- Example:
- Contact Information
- Education
- Work Experience (most recent at the top)
- College involvement/leadership, community involvement
- Skills/Other
Who Are You?
- The top of your resume should be a quick summary of accurate contact information, specifically name, personal email, and phone number.
- Education: List graduation date, highest degree level, major and GPA if you’ve graduated in the past 5 years (give or take)
- Upcoming graduates: include the estimated month and year of graduation date. If you funded any portion of your degree notate that here.
- Include URL for LinkedIn Profile (not required, but helpful)
Results vs responsibilities
- Keep it brief, in bullet point format. Three to five bullets per position.
- Always list results and data, where possible, instead of responsibilities held. We want to see how good you were at a job, not simply that you held one.
- Use action verbs that demonstrate achievement.
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How important is relative work experience?
- Having relevant work experience is always a plus but might not be possible for new college graduates, young professionals, or tenured professionals switching industries.
- Most employers want to see demonstrated work ethic and results, regardless of the industry or job type.
What NOT to do
- Don’t write paragraphs of experience.
- Avoid unique colors, fonts, and graphic designs. Stick to standard professional formats.
- Recent college graduates: avoid including work experience before college.
- Don’t forget to proofread, especially if you are customizing a resume to a company.