What should go in a resume?
The first thing to do before you start writing your resume is to gather the information.Consider following categories for gathering information:
1. Work Experience
Review all your work experience, from baby-sitting for the neighbors to planning the marketing budget for a Fortune 500 company. Remember, everything counts, whether it was part-time or full-time employment.Responsibilities
Work on a brief description of your responsibilities, but don’t go into too much details – just consider your major functions and duties for each position. For example, if you’re a sales manager applying with a new company, your prospective employer will be interested in knowing:
- How many people your supervised.
- If you managed a budget and, if so, its size.
- How much revenue you were responsible for.
- The size of your sales territory.
Accomplishments
State your accomplishments in specific terms. What did you do on that job, and what were the results? Did you increase profits? Did you solve the problem? Did you exceed a goal? Did you improve product performance? Did you improve productivity or efficiency?
If you are having trouble identifying specific individual accomplishments, consider department or company-wide projects. Did your group supply the financial statistics that helped the research department determine whether the project would be a GO? Did you serve on the team that evaluated your company’s current compute system? Perhaps you found upgrading the systems would provide needed services and the company wouldn’t have to buy a whole new system. Did your evaluation save the company money?
Also consider any work-related award that might reflect your accomplishments. Did you win an employee achievement award and similar others.
2. Volunteer Experience
You don’t have to be paid for your work for it to provide valuable experience. For example, were you the president of the Parent/Teacher Organization or band boosters last year? Did you plan and lead meetings? Did you organize and supervise the annual carnival fundraiser? Did you coordinate 20-some volunteers? Did you secure sponsors to help defray costs? Did your fundraiser see a profit? Sounds like some pretty good resume material.If you have little or no paid work experience, or if you’ve been out of the job market and are preparing to reenter, your volunteer service translates well into work experience and should be included on your resume, along with any of your accomplishments with those organizations. Be sure to write down the name of the organization, your volunteer service dates and your specific duties.
For example, did your campaign drive for the women’s symphony unit increase membership? How much? Did you serve on the committee that designed a community program on developing good parenting skills?
Then your entry might read:
- Recommended and organized new women’s symphony unit membership drive, which increase membership by 30%.
- Designed, coordinated and presented Developing Parenting Skills program to fill a community need. Program has evolved into 200 volunteers and nearly 700 participants and earned state and country welfare awards.
3. Education Details
For the most part, the educational listing is fairly brief. You’ll want to include the name and location of the school, date of graduation and your degree or major area of study. Id you didn’t graduate, note the years you attended the school and the type of courses you completed. If you are a recent highs school, trade school or college graduate, you may want to list a few of the courses you completed, especially if you have little or not paid or volunteer experience.Also, if you are short on work experience, play up your school activities and educational accomplishments. You may also want to note special circumstances, such as achieving a high GPA while earning 60 percent of your college expenses. This proves you are a hard worker and take your education seriously, and shows employers you’d be a productive employee.
GPA, Graduating with Honors
If you have been employed for several years, your high school and college grades really are insignificant to a prospective employer. After 10 or 20 years in the work force, your experience and accomplishments should speak for themselves and prove you’re productive and intelligent.
However, if you’re recently out of school/college and your grades are good, feel free to include them in the educational section. Be sure to include to scale on the GPA was registered. If you graduated with honors, mention it in your degree listing.
Internship and Co-op Work
Definitely include any internship, whether for pay, class credit or volunteer experience. Many students complete co-op work experience while still in college, include them here or in experience section.
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