I have been crying into my beer in this thread and decided two things.
Have have posted my resume here minus my personal information and references.
I would appreciate any comments or critiques.
Thank you all very much!
Couple of things…
“blood collection by ocular dislocation and tail bleeding, tail clipping, subcutaneous and inter-peritoneal injections”
Are tail clipping and subcutaneous and inter-peritoneal injections part of blood collection? If not, I’d use semi-colons to separate the items in that series.
Also, according to the Chicago Manual of Style, bulleted items don’t need terminal punctuation, even if an item is a complete sentence. You’ve got some with periods and some without (would those be post-menopausal bullets? 
). You can get rid of all of the periods.
And I don’t know if this is kosher in the world of research labs, but would it be legit to include grants or publications that your skills as a research assistant facillitated? What I mean is, if “prof who’s leaving” had publications/got grants based on research that you did all the animal handling for, could you include that as another section of your resume?
I think your resume looks great! Good luck, Mouse_Maven!
(My, there are some interesting euphamisms in the research world! “Cervical dislocation” means “We break their little necks,” right? :eek:
The first thing I notice is that you aren’t consistent with your verbs. You go from present tense to past tense to gerunds. For example:
“Create and maintain a spreadsheet system to track the animal population.”
“Extracted DNA from mouse tissues for genotyping PCR”
“Managing four mouse colonies for two different research projects and ordering supplies for the laboratory.”
I hope I don’t sound like an old nitpicker. Things like this sort of jump out at me.
Yep. Cerivcal dislocation is lab speak for neck breaking. Another reason some people at work don’t mess with me. OMG, She breaks rodent necks! What keeps her from breaking mine! Also, ocular dislocation means I pop a mouse’s eyeball out and drain blood out of the sinuses using a hematocrit tube - while the animal is sedated, of course.
Thanks for the input. I’ll make the grammar changes you suggested.
I don’t mind. Its been a year since I had looked over this and I just started working on it today. (One of the reasons I joined the Dope was to improve my writing skills.) Pick away! 
I used to go with a girl who (now) used to work at Jackson Labs in Bah Hahbuh, Maine. Their web site is at: http://www.jax.org/about/jax_facts.html
I was amazed to see they have 1,274 employees, including 47 in California.
Have you posted on Mice Pace.com?
(I couldn’t resist!)
Good luck.
:smack: I should have tried to name my blog that. :smack: :smack:
Just updated the resume. Thanks for all the comments! This is helping a lot
Ya’ll are the coolest 
If I’m not mistaken, you mean *intra-*peritoneal.
I’d say bullet your skills - it’s a trifle hard to read, though some of that is due to the blog style I’m sure. Also, the skills are quite verbose - not sure if you could condense a bit more, but it might be better for the recruiter to scan.
BUT…
Do you pull mousies’ eyes out to collect blood? Why, dear God, why?
The retinal vein is easily accessible this way. Generally I just moved the eye to one side with a pipette tip. Often this resulted in evenntual loss of the eye. Veins in the tail sometimes are easy to tap, sometimes not.
QtM, remembering his undergrad days doing original research on antibodies. Which we obtained via the blood and body fluid of mice. You think they grow on trees?
Vhat’s wrong with a good old jugular?
Forgive this digression, but I just love it that someone named Ignatz is posting in a thread started by Mouse_Maven.
Yeah, you try to find it in a mouse.
Even if you’re successful, you’ll probably lose the mouse, from whom you need to keep harvesting serum over time.
Disclaimer: The resume is great, but I see some nitpicky areas of improvement. Feel free to ignore my suggestions.
I would say “proficient in Microsoft Office applications (Word, Excel, Powerpoint)”.
I would say “Able to communicate well with coworkers, guests, and vendors.” Also, don’t forget your bosses!
“Created and managed a database to facilitate tracking of animal populations” (or something like that…you know, just to make you sound sophisticated and stuff 
Also, “managed” is stronger than “maintained”. Managed indicates that you were running things, not merely pressing buttons like a mindless monkey.
I’d say: “Communicated with vendors to place orders, locate items, and negotiate prices”. Don’t use “or” because you did all of these things. (You can also use “worked with” instead of “communicated with”…these are both stronger than “contacted”).
Don’t include these duties in the same sentence, since they are so different (and the first isn’t nearly as important as the second!)
Also, swap out “communicated with” with “assisted”, which is less wordy and stronger. Maybe say something like “Assisted other lab members with ordering supplies” and “Assisted researchers trouble-shoot experiments”
I think the resume is strong, especially since you have so much experience. I hope you get lots of calls, girl!
pinkfreud, you’re one Krazy Kat. Nice catch!
Mouse_Maven:
My only question on the résumé is about the “grant speed types” in
“Reallocated money from grant speed types to the laboratory credit card”
Maybe I’m just not up to speed on the phraseology. Would it be clear to the intended readers?
That’s a good point, Mouse_Maven. Every university system has their own accounting lingo. We don’t use the term “speed type” at mine, although I was able to figure out what you were talking about. Maybe you can make this duty more general by saying, “Assisted primary investigator with laboratory accounting”.
At my university, we use PeopleSoft for accounting purposes. If you use special software for transfering monies, maybe you can cite that.
To close to valuable nerves. If you mess up, the animal may die. Some mice need to be kept for long term studies, antibody production, etc. Keeping them alive and comfortable is very important. (Maintaining low stress on the animals is important to me. Any blood collection is a strain, so keeping the procedure quick and the potential for damage low is valuable.)
I didn’t give this much thought. :smack: We are switching to PeopleSoft, I’m ready to pull my hair out.
There is a position open in another lab, Senior Professional Reseach Assistant/Animal Colony Manager, and I thought I’d give it a try. There is also a biotech company nearby, maybe I’ll send the final polished resume to them with a request for an information interview.