16 replies to this topic

[Crimson Lego]

So for my coop program, the first round of job postings have passed with me not getting any interviews; second round starts Wednesday and I was wondering if you guys could help critique my resume and let me know what improvements I should make.
 
 
 chronological_resume_draft_4_la_no_info.rtf   67.73K   3 downloads
 
 
Thanks in advance.

Edited by Leo Crimson, 03 March 2014 - 04:41 PM.

[deep]

Are you submitting this into Applicant Tracking Software, or directly to people? Because I'm already seeing some formatting stuff if you're feeding this into a computer.

[deep]

Right off the bat, I'd say lose a lot of your parentheticals. It's not important where you got your skills, just that you have them. Saying that you developed a skill in secondary school is more of a red flag to a recruiter.

 

Also, reframe a lot of your skills and qualifications to reflect specific achievements. Yeah, okay, you have experience coding HTML for school, but what did you accomplish using it?

[deep]

Otherwise, your formatting is very everywhere. Your spacing and bolding choices are giving me a hard time ascertaining what things are linked to where, if they are at all, and is just a little difficult to read. I'll fiddle with this a smidge and show you maybe two ways I'd go about doing this.

[Jasi]

Resumes should be one page. If it's more than one page, reformat or start deleting things. If it's a curriculum vitae, it can be more than one page, but my understanding is that this only goes for academia jobs and not for like...anything else.

 

Why is your font so big? Make your font 12 pt max. That's part of why you're going to two pages.

 

Your organization of your resume is non-standard. Your first section heading should be Education, where you briefly state your college education and awards. Leave out anything about secondary school; it's no longer relevant. Your next heading should be Research Experience, where you list any projects you've done in school (university or secondary school) and a brief summary of your achievements therein. Your next heading can be Work Experience, where you list any other jobs you've had, like your computer camp volunteer job, which I would promote out of the Activities subheading you have it in now. Then lastly you can put Activities, which should be highly pared down and to-the-point—none of these details about your activities are relevant. 

 

Your resume should be better organized. Use tabs and bullet points to make a hierarchy more clear underneath those headings. It's very hard to tell what things are associated. Resumes need to be easy to take in at a glance, not at a careful reading.

 

I also would be willing to make you a new version to explain what I mean which you can use or not use. Do you have Word? I don't know how to work with .rtf files.

Edited by Jasi, 03 March 2014 - 03:46 PM.

[deep]

Actually, a skills-based organization scheme is very common these days, especially for individuals without relevant work experience to the position. One thing you're missing, Leo, is a summary/objective at the top.

 

And resumes beyond one page are absolutely fine. It's often physically impossible to keep it at one page.

 

And .rtfs will work in Word just fine.

[Jasi]

Alright, fine, I guess I just haven't seen it ever but I also guess I haven't seen that many resumes! I just know how I would organize it, and how I've been told to organize my own resume, I guess. 

 

Re: one page, I still think Leo could do without a lot of these extra details. And without 16 pt fonts.

 

OH and opening this up with Word makes it muuuuch prettier.

Edited by Jasi, 03 March 2014 - 03:57 PM.

[deep]

One page is a relic of the days of the paper resume, and even then you had a front/back.

 

It still is important to be economical with your space, though, yes.

[deep]

Leo-- what coops are you going for, exactly?

[deep]

Is diabolical a real kind of math problem?

[Jasi]

Hahaha yeah I was gonna say, if you just mean "difficult math", you need to delete that because that is unprofessional

[deep]

Here's a go at a cleaner format. I also added some suggestions for beefing up yo deets.

Attached Files

•  FRANCO QUEEZY IN DA HEEZY RESUMEEZY.docx   20.35K   7 downloads

Edited by deep, 03 March 2014 - 04:36 PM.

[Jasi]

My version is mostly focusing on making the formatting more easily readable. This format puts everything in a consistent place, with only a few exceptions where following this would take up too much space: roles are bolded, followed by institution, and dates on the left margin. Bullet points are for job duties and such.

 

I bet deep will have more to say about the phrasing and such so I'm gonna lay off of that mostly, especially since I'm not familiar with the skills-based organization scheme. A few phrasings I did alter: I took out "diabolical"; I put "working knowledge of French and Chinese Cantonese" because this is a standard term for what you're describing, I restated a few job duties more strongly since you were being too modest about your role.

 

A few guiding questions:

• Is the Cayley certificate from high school? If so, remove it; high school isn't very relevant here.
• At Bit by Bit, maybe list the other programs? 
• Come up with a few more duties for these things that only have one bullet point underneath them. I think it looks weird to just list one thing you did.

I didn't actively cut in order to make it fit on one page, but once I took out things that I thought were irrelevant and formatted it more, it just ended up fitting on one page

 

It's certainly not perfect yet; I think a lot of your listings of duties need to be phrased more strongly and show more achievements and less just listing your skills and when you acquired them (like deep said before).

Attached Files

•  chronological_resume_ML.rtf   105.14K   6 downloads

Edited by Jasi, 03 March 2014 - 04:37 PM.

[deep]

Did we actually finish at roughly the same time?

[Jasi]

Apparently

[Crimson Lego]

Just realized I had shit-tons of personal info in the file I uploaded, so should probably take that out so guests don't find out everything about me.

 

Are you submitting this into Applicant Tracking Software, or directly to people? Because I'm already seeing some formatting stuff if you're feeding this into a computer.

 

Just upload onto a a site called JobMine; employers just download so I don't think there would any problems with formatting.

 

I also would be willing to make you a new version to explain what I mean which you can use or not use. Do you have Word? I don't know how to work with .rtf files.

 

Yeah if you have time, that would help a lot. I haven't had much experience with job applications prior to this so I mostly built mine on a template the school provided; which is probably why it stinks rn. I also have no idea why I saved it as an .rtf, should probably change to .doc before next round.

 

Leo-- what coops are you going for, exactly?

 

Math-related stuff, which sort of also branches out into CS, stats, business, etc.

 

Is diabolical a real kind of math problem?

 

Will take that out, it does sound pretty bad. >.<

[Selena]

I think the key thing to remember is that an employer honestly spends like 10-30 seconds scanning the whole thing over. And they only read more if it's evident in those couple seconds that you've got what they're looking for. So the goal is -- clear, concise, to the point. List skills and whatever relevant work experience you have. The goal is to make it extremely easy for them to read super-quick.

 

The job interview itself is where you can elaborate on stuff.

 

 

 

Length is one of those things up for debate. If this is a situation where you're handing out paper resumes, then I'm a supporter of the old school 1 page resume. Because they scan those even quicker, and some won't even bother checking the back, and some get annoyed if it's more than one page. Especially since you're in school and don't have the work history to genuinely warrant multiple pages.

 

Online resumes -- especially ones where you just fill out text boxes -- are different. You can put more in those. The one I just did allowed you to write up to 1000 words for your skills, and another 1000 words for each job you've held in the past. So, yeah. You can elaborate a bit. But still, you should always be concise and to the point.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

.....Of course, take my words with a grain of salt, because psshhhh my work history is atrocious.

 

 

edit: wow there were a lot of replies while i typed mine out, okay then