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Curating a resume comes down to three simple things: formatting, tailoring and impact. The reality is your resume is the first screener recruiters and hiring managers will use to weed out candidates. On average, your resume isn’t given more than seven seconds to be evaluated by a human. AI applicant scanners are a different story in themselves, often only checking for mirrored language from the job description.
Crafting a resume is not rocket science (though there are parallels)! It just takes a little time and intentionality to create a document reflective of your professional experience. The wonderful news is if you put in the time to create something viable, you’ll only have to update it throughout your career instead of having to reconstruct it entirely.
High school resumes vs. Undergraduate resumes
Before we dig into the logistics of building your resume, it’s important to recognize that a resume is a living breathing document, in short, it’s meant to evolve as you do.
A high school resume tends to lean on a summary or “about me” blurb, list the school you attended, and round out with extracurriculars, leadership roles or volunteer work. You might even include a part-time job in there too. Either way, it was built around involvement – being captain of the volleyball team, leading a teen ministry group, getting inducted into National Honor Society. The resume’s job was to show you were well-rounded.
Your undergrad resume needs to do something different. Every line on it should be building toward the same goal: showing an employer you’re ready for the specific kind of work you’re chasing post-grad. You want to ask you’re self “is my resume reflective of the career I’m pursuing?” If the answer is unclear, you may need to do some reconstructing.
How to craft a professional resume
Now that we’ve made that differentiation, let’s get into the steps of crafting a professional undergraduate resume.
- Step 1: It’s time to let go…I know I know all the memories! Remove your high school from your resume and replace it with your higher education institution. Include your intended degree and your anticipated graduation date, and if you’ve got a GPA worthy of noting, be sure to include it.
- Step 2: Make yourself accessible. Link your LinkedIn, portfolio or personal website in your header. Make it easy on recruiters, don’t make them chase you!
- Step 3: Be selective about your experiences. You don’t need to list every job you’ve ever worked on your resume. Retail and customer service jobs, unless directly relevant to what you’re applying for, are usually wasted space. Every experience you include should be tailored to the job description. If it doesn’t connect, that’s a good sign not to include it.
- Step 4: What to do in the absence of experience. Look for the overlap instead. Clubs, organizations, leadership roles all count for something if you can draw a clear line from what you did to what the job needs. Being specific about the nature of your contributions rather than just naming the group you were part of is key here.
- Step 5: Mirror the language in the job description. Pull both the soft skills and the tangible skills listed in the description and make sure your resume reflects them back, clearly and specifically.
You don’t want to just list duties you want to show impact. Employers aren’t hiring you to merely perform tasks; they’re hiring you to produce results. Everything on your resume should be telling a greater story about who you are as a professional and what you’ve accomplished.
By Raigan Clay