Help me correct my resume and get hired!

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’m getting my resume ready to post on job banks, send out to employers, etc etc etc
Wherever may be beneficial. you get it.

There are SO many different ideas of what people think makes a good resume… some of the ideas contradict each other. I browsed four different resume books and they all say different things. So, I turn to the dopers.
Below is my resume. I have some political things on there but regardless of whether or not you agree with the things I did (I don’t really agree with them anymore, either.) I ask for your objectivity. It is for someone going into the workplace, a recent college grad. I’m not exactly sure what I want to specifically go into so I wasn’t intending to direct this resume toward any job specifically.

Any corrections, changes, word and grammar corrections, info, advice etc. that you may have…even what font/size to use, throw it at me. I’m sure that the formatting will be non-existent in this text box, so bear with me.
I want this to stand out!

Thanks!!
(Some details omitted for scary internet reasons)

MY NAME
address | town,St 33423 | ph.one.num | email@email.com
EDUCATION
Bachelor of Science, Administration of Justice
Southern Illinois University, Carbondale May 2008
• Minor: Political Science
• Related course work: World Humanities, Public Speaking, Criminal Law, Policing in America, Arabic as a foreign language, English Composition I & II, State and Local Government, Juvenile Delinquency, Legislative Process, Business Management, The Criminal Justice System
• Member of the SIUC University Honor Society

SKILLS & ABILITIES
Management
• Independently organized a fully funded venture with over 50 members to attend the 2004 presidential debate in St. Louis to increase student political involvement and support.
• Organized many successful political events in southern Illinois which conjured support for local candidates and issues.
• Increased membership in SIU College Republicans by 85%
• Presided over meetings of the SIUC Student Government which successfully allocated hundreds of thousands of dollars to different student organizations and campus events.

Sales
• Created an alumni outreach program through the SIU College Republicans which funded the group with donations from previous members.
• Led fundraising efforts for local campaigns in the southern Illinois area.
• Negotiated with the Republican National Committee so that 70 SIU College Republican members were able to travel to Iowa for the 2004 presidential election without incurring personal costs.
Leadership
• Vice President, SIUC Undergraduate Student Government
• Chief Justice, Undergraduate Student Government
• President, SIU College Republicans
• Treasurer, Illinois College Republican Federation
• Executive Director, Illinois College Republican Federation
• Senator, Model Illinois Government
• Chairman, SIUC Technology Committee
• Founding member of Alpha Delta Pre-Law fraternity - Chapter #250
• Secretary, SIUC Pre-Law Association
• Election Commissioner, 2008 SIU Student Trustee election
• Commissioner, City, town Information andTelecommunications Commission
• Commissioner, City, Town Mass Transit Board Committee

EXPERIENCE
Intern
Mlkasdjhfk Media, LLC Aug 2006 to Feb 2007
• Organized tasks for campaign strategies used during elections.
• Handled media outreach for various campaigns.
• Assisted with office computers and networking.

Intern
Non-Profit Org Name Aug 2006 to Feb 2007
• Drafted press releases concerning legislative issues to increase public awareness.
• Handled all administrative and office matters.
• Setup and maintained all computers and networks in the office.

Computer and Network Specialist Feb 2007 to July 2007
Computer and Office Soutions, Inc.
• Maintained, upgraded and repaired computers for customers.
• Established and maintained interoffice computer networks.
• Upgraded computer systems with both hardware and software.
• Provided technical support over the telephone to help customers troubleshoot various computer problems.

2

What kind of position(s) are you interested in?

My edits, which are of course subjective:
MY NAME
address | town,St 33423 | ph.one.num | email@email.com
EDUCATION
Bachelor of Science, Administration of Justice
Southern Illinois University, Carbondale May 2008
• Minor: Political Science
[del]• Related course work: World Humanities, Public Speaking, Criminal Law, Policing in America, Arabic as a foreign language, English Composition I & II, State and Local Government, Juvenile Delinquency, Legislative Process, Business Management, The Criminal Justice System [/del]
• Member of the SIUC University Honor Society

SKILLS & ABILITIES
Management
• Independently organized a fully funded venture with over 50 members to attend the 2004 presidential debate in St. Louis to increase student political involvement and support.
• Organized many successful political events in southern Illinois which [del]conjured[/del]** increased ** support for local candidates and issues.
• Increased membership in SIU College Republicans by 85%
• Presided over meetings of the SIUC Student Government which successfully allocated hundreds of thousands of dollars to [del]different[/del] **various (about how many?) ** student organizations and campus events.

Sales
• Created an alumni outreach program [del]through the[/del] to support ** SIU College Republicans.**
• Led fundraising efforts for local campaigns in the southern Illinois area.
• Negotiated with the Republican National Committee to fund 70 SIU College Republican members’ travel to Iowa for the 2004 presidential election.

Leadership
• Vice President, SIUC Undergraduate Student Government
• Chief Justice, Undergraduate Student Government
• President, SIU College Republicans
• Treasurer, Illinois College Republican Federation
• Executive Director, Illinois College Republican Federation
• Senator, Model Illinois Government
• Chairman, SIUC Technology Committee
• Founding member of Alpha Delta Pre-Law fraternity - Chapter #250
• Secretary, SIUC Pre-Law Association
• Election Commissioner, 2008 SIU Student Trustee election
• Commissioner, City, Town Information and Telecommunications Commission
• Commissioner, City, Town Mass Transit Board Committee

EXPERIENCE [put most recent experience first, and work backward]
Intern
Mlkasdjhfk Media, LLC Aug 2006 to Feb 2007
• Organized tasks for campaign strategies used during elections.
• Handled media outreach for various campaigns.
• Assisted with office computers and networking.

Intern
Non-Profit Org Name Aug 2006 to Feb 2007
• Drafted press releases concerning legislative issues to increase public awareness.
• Handled all administrative and office matters.
• Setup and maintained all computers and networks in the office.

Computer and Network Specialist Feb 2007 to July 2007
Computer and Office Solutions, Inc.
• Maintained, upgraded and repaired computers for customers.
• Established and maintained interoffice computer networks.
• Upgraded computer systems with both hardware and software.
• Provided technical support over the telephone to help customers troubleshoot various computer problems.
[/QUOTE]

3

[/QUOTE]

I’m actually interested in quite a bit.
I have a lot of knowledge and interest in computers. I used to fix and repair them… I have a pretty natural ability to learn them and figure things out when others can’t.

Also, I love graphic design. It’s a hobby of mine and I never looked into taking it in college because I didn’t think that I could make a future out of it… I’m pretty good at it and have been paid to design logos, banners, and such.

I find national security interesting. That somewhat correlates with my major, Administration of Justice. I took 2 graduate Arabic language classes and speak it somewhat fluently with the hope that it would give some substance to my background if I wanted to look into doing something with the government or security.

One thing that I left out… because I didn’t feel as though I could word it correctly is writing/journalism
I wrote a column once a week for my University newspaper. It was an editorial… but the position was formal. Thousands of readers subscribe to the paper (which is award winning). I know a lot of people read because I got a lot of hate mail for my rants!
This lead to writing as a reporter for a newspaper in the suburbs of Chicago. I was more of a stringer opposed to a regular employee… but I kept getting called! And I was published in a book about the views of college students.
Maybe someone could give some insight as to whether I should include that or not and how to word it.

4

In my opinion, “Experience” should move higher - just under education. For super bonus points, each job should include your supervisor’s name & phone number.

Your “Leadership” section is pretty impressive. It would be even better if each item included dates.

5

Put on a line: “Language Skills: Proficient in written and spoken Arabic” or some such. I’d leave off your coursework as well.

I think this is too vague, given that it’s at the top of your experience list. What kinds of tasks, with whom? etc.

For your leadership roles, I think you should add info to say what you did, cut the list down if you have too, It looks like you were trying to include the information in “Skills and abilities” but you have then match the Skill bullet point with the Leadership bullet point. I would just type it all as if it were regular job experience and put it under a section called 'Campus and Community Leadership" Something like:

You’ll probably have to trim the Leadership list but that’s fine. I suspect bullets like “Secretary, SIUC Pre-Law Association” you can just leave off, there is plenty of other stuff to show your interest in law and government. My rule is that you should put on a resume what you want people to ask you about in an interview, there are much more interesting things for you to talk about then being Secretary of the Pre-Law club. (Unless of course you did do something major for the club, in which case put it down).

6

I don’t know what they call it in resume-speak but you should have a small paragraph between your name/contact info and your experience describing yourself in a nutshell and pointing out any highlights pertaining to the job you’re seeking.

“Doodad analyst with 10 years industry experience. Led domestic and global teams in the development of doodads from initial design to product roll-out. Experience with Doodad design applications A, B, C, and D and familiarity with systems E, F, and G”

Basically something to get the reviewer to keep reading. Imagine your resume in a stack. You need something to interest the reviewer.

Put your education after your experience.

Center your name and contact info. Don’t left-justify it. Make your name bigger than your contact info.

If your resume is more than one page, make sure your name is on all of the pages

7

I’m pretty harsh on resumes, but yours is good if too long for your background

My suggestions:

Add an “Objective” statement tailored to whatever job you are applying for.

You graduated 2008 and have only (not a criticism) a bachelor’s degree, make sure that resume fits on one page, and one page only.

quantify. I also agree with replacing “conjuring”; this isn’t a magic show.

If your resume won’t fit on one page (and I suspect it won’t) trim these areas first:

  1. You mention computer network / computer skills / computer jobs a lot near the bottom. Trim.

  2. Leadership roles - all good, but pick the best and trim trim trim

Like I said though, I’m really harsh on resumes having been in the job hunting market not long ago. But yours is excellent for a recent grad, just a bit too long with the odd word choice as minor distractions (conjured). Trim it to fit on one page, get an “objective” statement in there.

But seriously, I came into this thread ready to rip up your resume but it’s pretty good as is. So good luck!

8

First of all. resume styles have a life expectancy of 5 years and the info I got in my career counseling classes are about 4 years old. That being said I agree with gigi to cut out the “related course work” and in addition:

  1. Resumes serve only one purpose - to get you an interview. They should answer two questions: can you do the job and will you do the job. The rule of thumb I grew up on was that a resume should be one page and if you use a second page, you’d better damn well justify it and if it is three pages you need to take out some crap. My CC teacher said that a resume was like a sailboat, you need enough sail to make it go but not too much to tip it over.

Just to give you an idea, I am often complemented on my resumes. I have four degrees, five credentials/certificates, and have four jobs listed with duties as varied as teacher, math coach, department head, committee chair and everything in between. Since it is a Curriculum Vitae, I also have research interests and a couple publications. I also decided to add a section on my NCLB qualifications to make it look up to date.

I barely fit it on to two pages

  1. Forget the objective statement some have suggested. Your objective is to get a job and no one cares that your lifelong quest is to discover your full potential in a constructive environment <yawn> If you have an insatiable desire to discuss your career objectives then put it in the cover letter in a way that makes it sound like the job description matches your objectives.

  2. Consider having multiple resumes for each career avenue you want to pursue. I personally have three resumes, one for math teaching positions, one for special ed teaching positions, and one for community college positions.

As for your resume
4) The Skills and Abilities section reads more like an experience section. Bring Experience up to under Education and fill in those bullets with what you HAVE done. The last section (Skills and Abilities) contains what you CAN do like type 70 wpm or speak Arabic or heal injured swans.

  1. Bulleting with active verbs is good, but the bullets themselves are too long winded. It comes across as filler. As an example:

Write it as simply

and be prepared in the interview to discuss how many you did, how large they were, the outcomes, etc.

  1. The leadership section is difficult to read. Put it after Experience and condense it to:

This is where multiple resumes come in handy. You would reorder the experience from most prestegious to least depending on the job you are applying for viz. a job for a city, a job for a law office, and a job for the Young Republicans would have very different orders.

Also, you may want to get rid of some of the leadership experience depending on the job. If you are getting a job for the city, you may not want to stress that you are a Republican. Likewise a job with a PAC won’t care about the tech committee or pre-law association (it looks like filler) Always remember rule #1 plus, you can always bring it up in an interview if appropriate.

9

I have to respectfully disagree with **GameHat ** on the Objective. The employer knows you made it up to match the job, or it’s too generic to really mean anything. I know cover letters may not get a lot of attention, but that’s where you say how the job you’re applying for fits into your goals.

10

I see tons of resumes and the objective statement is almost always some bullshit like, “I wish to leverage my excellent experience in an innovative organization that will give me an opportunity for career advancement.” I hate those. Total waste of time to read it.

The only time I would include an objective is if you really, honestly have a very crisp objective, and you don’t mind having someone shred your resume if what they have does not match that objective. One of my objectives read something like, “Manage execution of software development projects of $1 million or larger.” If that’s not the job they had, then I didn’t want to waste my time talking to them.

In many cases people will not have such a crisp objective. In that case it’s better to stow the bullshit and leave the objective out, and work it in the cover letter. I always read cover letters, but not everybody does.

I have cannot tell what type of job **SweetHomeColorado ** is looking for just based on the resume so I would suggest that it needs to be accompanied by a brief but punchy cover letter highilghting the qualifications that woujld be of interest to each employer.

And don’t mention *your * goals in this first step. Talk about how you can help the employer meet *their * goals. Focus on self-actualization does not make a good first impression.

11

I would disagree with this for most resumes. Employers want to see your career progression, increasing responsibility, and check for gaps in employment. Anything but chronological order makes that difficult. It comes across like you’re trying to cover something up.

There may be a small number of positions or backgrounds where this would be appropriate but not most.

12

Well, politics is somewhat of a magic show….
Your point is well taken. Would garnered fit more appropriately?
Thank you for everything, everyone! This is great and I’m using almost everything you’re throwing at me.

Keep it coming!!!

13

I’m certainly no resume expert by any means, but I started getting a lot more attention when I made the following changes to my resume.

I added skills associated with various jobs. This seems to be something that people like to see. I used to tend to omit some things but I feel like people tend to infer as little as possible. When I said that I had several years in tech support, nobody seemed to infer that I knew most of the basic skills that come along with that. After I started listing them, things got easier.

Secondly, and I think this makes a big difference. Make your resume visually striking. Go on the web and find a format that you like and copy it. I chose a cool one and I think it has helped me. Print out your name in a much bigger font for emphasis. Think of it more as a formatting the look of a magazine than a resume.

Finally, and this horrified me when I found out, stick to the standard fonts. I realize that it doesn’t jibe with the above advice, but it is very important. I opened up my resume on another computer one day, only to see that my formatting was all screwed up! That’s because I had chosen an obscure font. When that font isn’t present on the system the reader uses, it uses the closest one which might have different spacing. Keep this in mind, especially if you are using a Mac, or Linux. I’d say steer clear of anything but MS Office entirely as it’s almost guaranteed to be what they’ll be using. I realize that you OpenOffice people think that it’s as good as Word, but when it comes to a resume, the prospective employer only needs the slightest fault to throw yours in the rejected pile. Confusing formatting is a pretty good one, I believe.

14

:smack: I actually stumbled over the way I said that in my post; I didn’t mean so much how the job works for your goals, but an awareness of what the job is all about and how it fits into your skills and why you would thrive, which is good for employer and employee.

15

I blame early-morning writing. Thank you for the correction, I was (of course) referring to the Leadership section.

16

Do you even need that phrase? Isn’t the point of any political event to conjure/increase/garner “support for local candidates and issues”?

I’d perhaps replace it with an example or some specifics: “Organized political events in southern Illinois, including Meet the Candidates Night attended by over 300 community members and local press”. Something that the reader can visualize.

17

Agree. As low-tech as it sounds, if you are sending a resume by email, consider a plain-text version instead of using a word processor. I have seen a couple of employers who actually require that. Also, if you want to send a pretty resume, a PDF file avoids any problems with formatting or fonts, and there are good free PDF generators out there.

18

I’m with the crowd that says “objective” statements are usually a very bad idea.

You can certainly leave all the “Republican” stuff in if you want, but there is a way around it if you’d rather not. Instead of:

Increased membership in SIU College Republicans by 85%

why not say

Increased membership in the campus branch of a major political party by 85%

Readers will understand that you are using such wording because you don’t feel that your political stance is necessary or appropriate resume information.

[CRANKY PET PEEVE] I don’t know you, and MAYBE you really are “fluent” in Arabic, but I kind of doubt that for two reasons: first, very few non-native speakers are truly fluent in any second language. When linguists say someone is “fluent” they are implying that someone uses the language at or very near native speaker level. If you are really good, say you are a “competent” speaker of the language. That’s much more likely to be accurate.

Second reason I doubt it: what did you study, MSA? Formal Arabic? People speak all different dialects across the Middle East, which vary wildly in pronunciation and vocabulary (and no one uses MSA or formal on the street). [/CRANKY PET PEEVE]

19

I like the idea of steering away from mentioning the political party. I juts couldn’t think up a way to phrase it but it looks like you nailed it.
Thanks…

Second, I took two years… four semesters of MSA (modern standard arabic) There’s much I don’t know, sure. Although, I can carry on a conversation and would have no problem communicating if I were thrown into an arabic speaking country. All the different dialects make my head spin, luckily, my university only offered one.

20

SweetHomeColorado. From having read quite a # of resumes, and hiring people, I did a quick scan and saw no work history, maybe because once I saw the words “independantly organized” I stopped reading. If I was hiring you and not critiquing you, I would have tossed it and not hired you.

I usually, actually used to, employees suck, I make more money with out them, but, the first thing I looked at was work history. If you’ve never held a job, I want to know, if you have a big gap (more than 2 weeks in employment) that says a lot to me. If you haven’t worked in a year that scares me.

I would rather see, “humping my nuts in the Quicky Mart for 60 hours a week for little to no pay from July '07 to June '08 looking for the place I really wanted to work and paying the bills”, Reason for leaving, “its a Quicky Mart, wouldn’t you leave???”. Pay rate? “what pay??”.

I would rather see that than a year gap. And according to your resume, you haven’t had a a job in a year, to me that is scary. School counts, I’m just looking at dates at first. Took care of my mom, she has a terminal STD because she had sex with donkey’s in Tijuana, fine, fill in those dates. Don’t lie, be honest.

All the “leadership” qualities and other crap, if I got that far. Who cares, you’re going for a job, who cares. You don’t need to make a political statement with your resume, besides there are about 4 republicans on any college campus that have come out of the closet, you were bound to be the president of something. Kidding aside, too much placed on college stuff, who cares, thats just a pump-up of yourself.

Remember, a resume shouldn’t say how great you are, it should tell ME how YOU can make ME money. I don’t care if you organized the Holocaust, how can it make ME money.

As for objective statements, pure BS.

There should be 2 allowed, the first

I WANT the job.

I love “XXXXX”, and would like to make money doing “XXXXX”. I would like to learn more concerning “XXXXX” and move up in XYZ company so that I can take my knowledge of “XXXXX” to another company where they will pay me for my new found knowledge, or stay at XYZ with a large pay raise due to my increased knowledge of “XXXXX”.

I NEED a job.

I know “XXXXX”, I couldn’t care less, but I need a paycheck and will try my hardest until I puke, maybe, just pay me and we will see how it goes.