Summer internship applications are not going to submit themselves. It is the time of the year for college students to perfect their résumés. According to TheLadders research, employers spend about 6 seconds per résumé. How will you sell yourself in 6 seconds?
Jon Rosenfield, a career advisor from Loyola University Chicago’s career development center, has a lot of advice on this subject.
Relevant Experience
Rosenfield suggests to change your résumé every time you apply for a job. Also, put the most relevant information for the position at the top under a heading related to your experience.
Rosenfield said, “If you have a combination of work experience, volunteering and internship make a category called ‘Relevant Experience.’”
It is important these days with such a competitive job field to focus on getting noticed. On a positive note, according to a Gallup poll, employment is good for college graduates. However, unemployment increased toward the end of 2012 to 7.8%. Another Gallup poll about college students said 5% of college graduates are unemployed and 12% are underemployed.
LinkedIn and Facebook
LinkedIn is the biggest professional social media website with 150 million members. It is a great way to show how connected you are. “The secret is making sure it looks like you’ve been working on it; like you care,” Rosenfield said. Add the hyperlink to your résumé so that employers can easily link to it.
Another aspect of your online presence is to check out your Facebook profile. Rosenfield said that you can never be too cautious and to double check how you are portraying yourself. Even if your privacy settings are high, you should still double check your content because you never know who can look at it.
Formatting
There are differing opinions about whether students should make a résumé completely black and white or add some color. Rosenfield said to stick to black ink because it is important to make it readable.
Boldface type is an easy way to get the employers eyes to focus on what you want them to see. Rosenfield said, “You want the content to be the differentiating factor, not how zany it looks or what kind of crazy font you have.”
Regarding the formatting, Rosenfield gave some good advice to change your document into PDF format when sending it out via e-mail or an online job application. This way, the employer will view your résumé exactly as you made it. Otherwise, it may come in an unreadable format if they have a different program or computer than you.
Also, Rosenfield said sometimes information in the header is unreadable when transferring to different programs. A lot of résumés have the contact information in the header. If the document is a PDF then this problem will not occur.
Skills section
Rosenfield said that many times he sees skills sections at the top of the résumé. However, they should not be at the top.
Additionally, people are commonly confused about what they should include in a skills section. Rosenfield said it is “really meant to be technical, linguistic […] skills that point to a certain type of specific knowledge that you have.”
You should not list personality points like “good with people” or “hard worker”. no hyphen?You should display these traits through descriptions of your past positions.
No Objective or References
There is no need to write an objective, especially if you are going for a one page résumé. If you are applying for a job it is rather certain your objective is to get the job. Writing an objective is a “little old school,” Rosenfield said.
Additionally, there is no need to put “References available upon request” or even list them. Why wouldn’t someone give his or her references if asked by an employer?
Rosenfield said “Do not put them on the résumé.” He also suggested preparing another document with the same heading block as your résumé with your references and having it available if asked.
Ultimately, the best advice is to write your résumé and submit it to as many employers as you can. That is what will get you a job.
Here is a video from About giving ideas for working a job fair with that new perfected résumé.
Photo courtesy of CV Inn on Flickr through Creative Commons
