Whether you’re a freshman in college or this is your super senior year, there is no excuse not to have a professional, up-to-date resume. Plus, sitting down and writing or updating a resume is a great excuse to consider your future. It can be a lot of fun, too. Think about creating a resume like compiling a list of some of your greatest hits and achievements, which should only help you to find bigger and better triumphs.

Starting From Scratch

If you don’t already have a resume, ask a friend, parent, career centre staff, or search online for a sample resume. You may have to search through a few before you find one you like. Then, based off of this sample resume, create your own by filling in your own information. It should include, at least, your name, contact information, education, and work experience.

Keep It Recent

Get rid of high school stuff ASAP. If you’re a freshman, it’s not a big deal, but by your sophomore year of college you should have enough new things to add to your resume. Think clubs, your sorority, job,volunteer work, special training, semester honors, etc.

Tidy Up

Keep it simple and very organized. You should use the same fonts or header styles throughout the resume. Also try to organize your activities into different categories. You may want to split it into work experience, activities, awards, honours, certifications, or combine one or two as a header.

Keep it Concise

Keep your resume to one page. Definitely throughout college you need a resume that is only one page. As you get more activities and more work experiences to fill up your resume, you will have to pick and chose what you think future employers need to see. You may even consider have multiple resumes to cater to different kinds of people that you are sending your resume to.

Edit, Edit, Edit

Have someone else look over your resume. After you’ve fixed margins, fit it to one page, and spell-checked everything; now it is imperative to get another set of eyes to look over your resume. And not just one set, but two or three. Your college’s career centre will probably have resources to help with creating resumes and with editing resumes. If you can, submit your resume there for revision.

Half the battle is keeping your resume up-to-date. Once you have these ideas in mind remember to update your resume at least every semester, and make sure you print a few copies of it too.  That way if you just happen to meet someone who may be willing to give you that internship you’ve always dream of, well you’ll have something beautiful to either hand to them in person or to email the minute you get behind a computer.

What Do You Think?

What are your best resume tips? What do you keep and what do you leave off? Leave a comment and let us know.

Careers Success

7 Comments

  1. avatar dhani says:

    should we rite resume or cv(curriculum vitae) on top???/

  2. avatar Julie says:

    Irina, I would definitely keep any jobs you had in high school, especially if that was the last job you had. But if you are working in college those would take precedent. Make sure you include a description of what you did in that job and any job title you may have held. Descriptions are a good way to beef up your resume.

    As for volunteer work, if you feel like it’s something you’d like to talk about in an interview leave it, but be prepared to elaborate on whether you’re volunteering now in college or why you aren’t.

    You want your resume to be a snapshot of you now, not of you just n your senior year of high school. Just keep that in mind as well :)

  3. avatar Irina says:

    Should i really delete the volunteer work off my resume even if it’s from high school? Or any jobs I had in high school? I feel like those are still important. What do you think?

  4. avatar Rin says:

    I update my resume every semester. Also, I had Career Services look over it. Mine is a full two pages.

  5. avatar The Hip + Urban Girl says:

    Don’t forget to also update your LinkedIn. It can be a really great tool for anyone who wants to learn more about you. Think about attaching the link on your resume.

  6. avatar Yasmeen Fahmy says:

    Love this post! A lot of my friends still don’t get the point of making a resume and always bug me because I’ve got like 12 versions of mine :P

    I think they need to be reading this article!

  7. avatar Charlotte says:

    this is great advice. as a budding journalist I had my journalism teacher look over my resume and cover letter and he helped me sort it out.
    great post :]]

    Charlotte

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