Creating a resume can seem like a scary feat, but don't worry. With these tips you'll be a pro at writing resumes in no time.
1. Include any class activities and classes taken relevant to the job or internship you're applying for. Say you haven't had any experience in the field of marketing, but you had a class project where you marketed a product to other students. Employers will want to know and will value that!
2. Keep your resume a maximum of one page long. Employers spend mere seconds scanning your resume anyway, so the chances they'll even look at anything after the first page are slim.
3. Be specific and give numbers. For example, if you worked at a bookstore, rather than say “I shipped out books and helped customers," specify your accomplishments by saying, “I led my coworkers in shipping out more than 500 books daily and aided customers over email, the phone and face-to-face conversations.
4. Don't include references or "references available upon request." This line only takes up more valuable space on your resume that should be reserved for showcasing yourself to your potential employer.
5. Be professional — your resume isn't the place to be anything less. If you receive an interview or even get the job, that's the time to show your personality. An employer doesn't want to hire someone who should be acting professionally on a daily basis if he or she can't even take a resume seriously.
6. Don't include activities from high school if you're past your sophomore year of college. If your resume seems really short without your high school activities listed, that's a sign you should be getting more involved in college.
7. Use a resume builder. UMD has a GREAT resume builder. This tool allows you to fill out your information and choose a format, then it plugs in your info for you! Ta-da!
8. Use bold, underlining and italics sparingly, if at all.
9. Only include what is relevant to the job you're applying for. You should update your resume for any job, program or internship you apply to. Personally, I have a lot of experience with working with kids, so when I apply to child psychology programs or camp counselor positions, my experience with children and teamwork is all that's on my resume, because that's all the employer cares about.
10. Focus on what YOU did, not what past positions you held entailed. Make everything you list specific! Did you increase the efficiency of a process? Were you in charge of anyone or was there a job you specifically did a lot? What did you do that makes you a better applicant for this position than other applicants? Remember to sell yourself, not the job.
11. Embellish without lying. Play up your strengths without misleading the employer. The worst possible situation is having an employer ask about something on your resume that you lied about. If you know some Spanish, but not enough to communicate, don't say that you're fluent. The last thing you want is your interviewer to start a conversation with you in Spanish and all you can mumble back is “¿Que?"
