College Grad and Entry-Level Resumes

Showcase Relevant Classes but Don't Forget Experience

May 31, 2009

Former students or new workers who want to shine should accentuate their best assets and leave potential employers wanting to know more.

Resumes shouldn't read like autobiographies. The main goal of a resume is to entice employers into scheduling an interview. Recent college graduates and entry-level job seekers can tighten their resumes by sharing the most relevant information to prospective employers to make it clear how they can contribute.

Target Accomplishments

It's common for new college graduates and those looking for entry-level positions to focus on what they want in a career, says Dr. Katharine Hansen, author of Dynamic Cover Letters for New Graduates [Ten Speed Press, 2004]. The goal, instead, should be to impart to potential employers what they can do for the company's bottom line.

In order to do this, Hansen advises prospective employees to structure a resume around accomplishments rather than job duties. For college students and those entering the workforce for the first time, this can seem a little tricky, but all it takes it the right twist on any past responsibilities.

Experience is experience, whether it is paid or not. Hansen says volunteer opportunities, fraternity or sorority officer positions, resident advisor position, sports involvement and even part-time jobs that may not directly relate to a position can all be included in the experiences section. Each of these activities builds skills in the areas of teamwork, leadership, communication and interpersonal intelligence.

When writing a resume, she suggests creating a qualifications summary at the top of the resume that briefly outlines accomplishments as well as computer and foreign-language skills.

Avoid Errors and Use Action Verbs

All resumes should be free of spelling and language usage errors. A strategy to ensure a resume is grammatically perfect is to set it aside for a couple days and edit it later. Hansen also recommends that job seekers ask a friend or family member to look it over.

It is also important for prospective employees to fill their resumes with action verbs that vividly describe what they achieved in their experiences. These verbs should be varied and not repeated in the resume unless absolutely necessary.

Common verbs that can be spiced up include "work," which can be replaced with "collaborate" or "interface"; "do," which can be replaced with "conduct," "perform" or "orchestrate"; and "was," which can be replaced with "served," "functioned" and "acted."

Nouns and Keyword Scanning

Many employers, including most Fortune 1000 companies, use keyword scanners to select resumes for internal review. The chances are good that if a new graduate or entry-level job seeker does not include the keywords the employer is looking for in his or her resume, it will not get in front of a human's eyes.

The difficult part about keywords is that it can be hard to predict what an employer is searching for. A strategy for loading a resume with keywords is to pull phrases and verbiage from the job ad, says Hansen.

For the majority of positions, employers are programming nouns into their keyword-scanning machines. Precise nouns include job titles, certifications, technical expertise specific to the industry, common industry jargon, degrees, schools, specific professional skills and area codes for sorting resumes geographically.

Hansen suggests naturally writing suspected keywords into the first 100 words of a resume for maximum scanability. A good place to do this is in the qualifications summary.

Stand Out and Make Employers Take Notice

The most effective resumes are those that leave the employer wanting to know more about the applicant and how that person will fit into the organization.

New grads and entry-level job seekers should tailor resumes specifically to each position they apply for. Items that don't directly correspond with skills needed for the job should be trimmed off and the most important skills should be at the top of the resume.

Information should be kept to experience that occurred in college, unless a person won a prestigious award in high school or he or she can show an early interest in the industry.

Readability is another way potential employees can attract future employers. Leave enough white space at the margins and between each resume section and position. Use a font size no smaller than 10.5 pt. and bullet points to highlight relevant achievements.

Effective Resumes Get the Interview

Resumes that make it in front an employer's eyes and snag valuable face time are resumes that:

The copyright of the article College Grad and Entry-Level Resumes in Writing Resumes is owned by Heidi Lowry. Permission to republish College Grad and Entry-Level Resumes in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.