Day 4 of the Career Champions Challenge

Welcome to Day 4 of the Career Champions Challenge! Today’s topic is supporting students with resume and cover letter writing.

Getting an internship or job can be challenging but writing a resume or cover letter for the first time can be especially daunting! According to the Harvard Business Review, job recruiters on average take only about 7 seconds to scan a resume before deciding on a potential candidate.

Resume Best Practice Suggestions
While there is a plethora of information on the internet about writing a good resume, here are some suggestions that we often provide to our students at the Office of Career & Professional Development:

Tailor the Resume

  • Many students think that a resume is a “one and done” type document that can be used for every position, but we all know this is not the case. We need to teach students how to tailor a resume. Of course, there are students who are still developing in their experiences so tailoring may not be as feasible. However, as students gain more experiences to put on their resume, as faculty and staff, we can make this tailoring concept a bit more concrete.
  • For example, we can share with students that they can first create a “master” resume where ALL of their experiences can be listed. Students can then copy from their “master” version to create another resume where the experiences that are most targeted toward the specific job or internship opportunity can be left in, and the rest of the “master” information be omitted.

Keep it to a Page (most of the time)
For most undergraduates and recent college graduates, their resumes should be one page in length as they’re still developing their experiences. Students get confused as to when they can have a 2+ page resume. We share with students that the exceptions typically are when they’re applying to graduate school, for federal government opportunities (such as the Peace Corps), for STEM related fields (also known as technical resumes), or as they get more work experience (5-10+ years). Particularly for underclassmen students who bring in a 2+ page resume when they are still developing their experiences, a good place to help “slim” down their resume is with formatting. Formatting suggestions that we provide can be found here.

More than just Internships or Jobs
Remind your students there are lot of different opportunities they can put on a resume in addition to internships and part-time jobs! Brainstorm other experiences such as volunteer positions, leadership roles, sports and extracurricular activities, study abroad experiences, research positions, foreign language proficiency, digital proficiency, certifications & trainings, and much more.

Avoid Templates
With resume templates readily available, it is an easy option for students to use, especially when they’re unsure of how to start one. However, do encourage them to create one using a plain google doc. It has been said that Applicant Tracking Software (ATS) do have a hard time reading columns and tables, which templates typically have.

Spellcheck is Not Enough
Remind students to find an “extra set of eyes” to look over their final resume to catch any remaining grammatical, spelling, or formatting mistakes. Please refer your students to the Office of Career & Professional Development anytime and have your student make an “Undergraduate or Graduate Student Resume Review” appointment!

References
While this may be common practice in CVs, remind students to list their references in a separate document for a resume.

Cover Letter Best Practice Suggestions
In addition to providing resume help to your students, they may also come to you for advice about cover letters because they’re scared of the prospect of writing one or are not clear on its purpose. Please first encourage your students that they’re not alone in feeling dread in writing a cover letter, we’ve all been there ourselves! Second, ask if they have a concrete job posting that is asking for a cover letter, as it will be much easier to guide them if they do.

If they do have the job posting, it will help in going through it together, and asking the student which 2-3 keywords from the posting they could best highlight themselves.

Remind students that writing a cover letter is an opportunity for them to persuade a recruiter why they are a good fit for a job! This is particularly important when a student’s resume is not a perfect “match” for a job description. Don’t forget to share that this also demonstrates their strong writing skills.

Incorporating Resumes or Cover Letters in a class
As faculty and staff, if you’d like to introduce resume or cover letter writing as an assignment in your class, you have several options:

To answer today’s quiz successfully, please be sure to do the following:

Review the Resume Outline example that we provide to all UAlbany students

You need to take all 8 quizzes to receive your certificate of completion. Thank you again for participating in the challenge. If you have any questions or comments, please contact us at career@albany.edu.

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