General Strategies: Be Informed about the Process

Your resume is an opportunity to present relevant aspects of your experience so that a potential employer may better understand and value you. As you write your resume, you have the freedom to choose the particular experiences, typographical format, category headings, and specific language of your resume.

Before you get started, please:

1. Brainstorm all the experiences you've had which may be related to the position you're seeking. Make a list of:
   • jobs and employment of all types (salaried, grant funded/stipended, unpaid, summer, temporary, part-time, etc.)
   • internships and training programs with companies, organizations, or schools
   • college courses, training seminars, or conferences of an educational nature
   • professional associations, societies, awards, grants, and fellowships
   • volunteer or community service experiences
   • leadership experiences in the context of religious, political, or other interest groups
   • campus activities such as sports teams, musical ensembles, cultural/ethnic groups, and publications
   • computer skills and international language abilities
   • relevant international travel
   • hobbies that are related to your career field
   • unusual or unique experiences which may catch the reader's eye
     
     
2. From this group of related experiences, decide which ones are the most eye-catching or relevant. The one-page resume convention will help you weed out less important information. Then, begin to formulate a sense of how you could organize your resume based on the experiences you've had. Your chosen category headings will shape the direction and focus of your resume.


For example, if most of your experience consists of unpaid campus activity in leadership roles, you may want to have a section entitled "Leadership Experience" instead of "Work Experience." The reasoning behind this choice is that a "Leadership" category will more appropriately showcase your skills, while a "Work" category which highlights paid work experience may underscore the weaknesses rather than the strengths of your experience. If your experience consists of both paid and unpaid activities, you could group all of these together in a more general "Experience" category. In any case, the specific words and categories you use to present your experience will create a certain impression of where your interests and abilities lie.
3. As you review your experiences, think widely about the specific types of skills, field knowledge, on-the-job training, and personal character traits that an employer in your field might be seeking.
   
   This broader perspective is especially helpful if a previous position did not provide much in one area (e.g., using your knowledge of the field) but forced you to develop skills in another area (e.g., problem-solving or communication in groups). Bear in mind that often, if a work experience was not positive in general, you can de-emphasize the negative by highlighting your commitment to the field, or your personal and professional development on the job.
   

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