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Resume tips to ensure

you stand out.

Our hiring managers review thousands of resumes a year.  Here’s what catches our attention and elevates inquiries to interviews:

Formatting

• Keep it simple and be consistent with your design and font. Whether it’s being reviewed by a human or computer, you have about five seconds to engage the reader’s attention. 
• Keep to one page. If you run out of space, eliminate the oldest and most irrelevant content.
• Submit in PDF format.

Order of information

• The most important portion of the resume is the first three sections: Contact information, education, and work experience. After that, the order is more flexible. 
• Example: 
  • Contact Information
  • Education 
  • Work Experience (most recent at the top) 
  • College involvement/leadership, community involvement 
  • Skills/Other

Who Are You?

• The top of your resume should be a quick summary of accurate contact information, specifically name, personal email, and phone number.
• Education: List graduation date, highest degree level, major and GPA if you’ve graduated in the past 5 years (give or take) 
• Upcoming graduates: include the estimated month and year of graduation date. If you funded any portion of your degree notate that here.
• Include URL for LinkedIn Profile (not required, but helpful)

Results vs responsibilities

• Keep it brief, in bullet point format. Three to five bullets per position. 
• Always list results and data, where possible, instead of responsibilities held. We want to see how good you were at a job, not simply that you held one.
• Use action verbs that demonstrate achievement.

How important is relative work experience?

• Having relevant work experience is always a plus but might not be possible for new college graduates, young professionals, or tenured professionals switching industries. 
• Most employers want to see demonstrated work ethic and results, regardless of the industry or job type.

What NOT to do

• Don’t write paragraphs of experience.
• Avoid unique colors, fonts, and graphic designs. Stick to standard professional formats. 
• Recent college graduates: avoid including work experience before college.
• Don’t forget to proofread, especially if you are customizing a resume to a company.