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Writing a Resume

Writing a Resume

This is a pretty basic one I wish we were taught in school. I remember taking a computer class back in my Sophomore year of high school and was told that we would just be skipping this unit since it could easily be googled later when we needed. What a load of crap, right? Let’s skip probably the only useful skill in the whole class 🙄

For all you guys that went through the same boat I did, I hope this sheds a little light on what to include, how to write it, and some word choices to make it stand out among the rest.

How to Get Started

  1. Write down all the accomplishments you currently have

    – Medals you’ve won through different clubs
    – Classes you’ve taken throughout the years; foreign language, speech, or even classes relating to the field you’re trying to get into.
    – Clubs you belong to that could help you; National Honor Society, Historian for the ______ club, etc.

  2. Create a brief summary of who you are and what your goals are in the long run.

For example:
“Insightful and self-directed Certified Public Accountant with 3 years of experience delivering quality audit assessments. Build strong client relationships through active listening and independent objectivity. Employ critical thinking skills to examine issues and develop best practice solutions. Also fluent in Mandarin and Cantonese. Member, Information Systems Audit and Control Association.”

Now, it may be hard for you to get to this level of writing out your summary because you may not have the necessary skills yet but try molding this template in a way that can benefit you. Remember, every word you put in that resume must be thought through. Make the most out of every word.

  1. Write out your work experience

From my experience, most hiring managers prefer to see the applicant’s work history in reverse chronological order. Meaning the most recent job should be listed first, then the second to last job, etc. It’s easier for the hiring manager to be able to see your previous work experience, and you always want to make the hiring manager happy.

  1. List out some skills you’re good at.

    Examples:
    Microsoft Excel – Advanced
    SQL
    Financial Analysis
    Data Reporting
    Bilingual – Fluent in both Spanish and English

  2. Put it all together!

Make sure to try and tailor the resume to the position you’re applying for. Generally, you’ll be able to the same application for various positions, but every once in a while, you’ll have to tweak it slightly.

I personally have a “master copy” of my resume and if there need to be any small changes for a job, I’ll copy and paste it to a new word document and make the changes there. That way I don’t move something around, end up not liking the way it looks after a few days, and then not being able to change it back because I forgot how it was worded.

  1. Weed out anything that doesn’t look like it would help your chances of getting a job.

You may have had a lot of fun on that tennis team in high school or that rowing club in college, but unless you can make a good spin on it during your resume or interview, I suggest you leave it off.

  1. Proofread! Please use spellcheck.

Lastly, we want to make sure everything is spelled correctly and that there are no mistakes. Word will practically do everything for you so take advantage of it. If you don’t have word and don’t want to pay for it, don’t blame you there, you can download a free program that is almost the exact same as Word; Open Office. Download this guy and it comes with a free version of Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and a few other programs. They work just like Microsoft Office except with some minor differences since it’s free.

If you don’t have the space to download it, it’s a pretty big file, try Google docs. It’s free as well and everything is stored in the cloud. If you have a google mail account (email ending with “@gmail.com) you have access to this free platform. If you don’t have a Gmail account, get one. They have so many free features such as Google Docs (Word), Google Sheets (Excel), Google Slides (PowerPoint), and Google Drive (like a thumb drive, but everything is on the cloud and it comes with 15GB of initial free storage).

Now that you have access to all these great processing tools, there’s no way why you shouldn’t be able to use spellcheck on your resume. If your sentences don’t make sense or you use “asses” instead of “assess”, you could be looked over during the initial process and never move past that step.

For more ideas on how you can improve that snazzy new resume, check out these infographics!

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