Enhancing your Student Resume
More Tips For Those With Limited Experience
Target your Skills to the job - but first, you need to KNOW your skills!
Last week we looked at how you DO have experience that can be applied to the "real" or business/career world, and how you can figure out what experience you do have. Now let's get that information on your Resume! We'll talk about more tips that anyone with limited experience can use to enhance your own Resume, and target those skills to the job application. I strongly suggest you read and do the paper/pen exercises from last week's article so that you can understand this next step.
By now you should have some kind of a sheet with a bunch of skills - either from courses, or just in life! Remember to also write down all volunteer experience as well as any part-time jobs - and seek out the skills you actually used/learned from those endeavours. Even if you were a stay-at-home person - chances are you were actually doing something - such as taking care of a home (cleaning, maintaining, finances, buying within a budget) or an elderly person/children (managing). Played lots of video/internet games? Think of the skills you have learned - such as how to get back into the game when the internet throws you off; strategic thinking for winning; how to plan for the next stage.
Read over those skills - and think about the job you want. How do each and any of these skills you've written down actually apply to the job you want or are applying for? YES they DO apply! Write down on paper (again, no one else will see this but you, so don't worry!) which skills apply and how or why they apply. Yep, this is hard work, but worth it! Not only will it help when it actually does appear on your Resume, the time you spend understanding your OWN SKILLS and application to the job or career will help you get that job in the interview! You'll be able to quickly talk about yourself in terms of benefit to the company, as you'll realize your skills and how it will apply to that job.
Now, try to summarize those skills into a few sentences - point form is fine. Take the best ones for each type of job you may be applying for - remember, you can and should create many Resumes - one for each type of profession. Once you have the information summarized to a couple of paragraphs, it's time to place it in your Resume. Where? Best place would be after your Education, but before your Work Experience. Why? You want to grab the reader's attention before the Resume is tossed aside as just another person who is applying to a job but doesn't know their own worth - to themselves or the potential company! Feel free though, to put it after Experience if it fits better on the page that way. Remember - this is YOUR Resume - and you need to feel comfortable with it in all aspects!
More tips for Students/Those With Limited Experience in future articles.
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Copyright May 18, 2007. Paym Bergson and Suite 101. All rights reserved. Any unauthorized use of this material will constitute an infringement of copyright.
