How to Write a Resume & Cover Letter

Video Transcript

"When we're working with students what we encourage them to do is resist the temptation to use a computerized template. We encourage students to use their word processing skills from a blank document and we just basically walk them through step by step each part of the resume, each element of the resume. The header is the very first part of the resume which includes the student's name, address, telephone number if it's a land line or a cell phone and also a current e-mail address. Sometimes students have funny or controversial or silly e-mail addresses that they use for personal use and that's fine, nobody is saying you shouldn't have those, those personalized e-mail addresses, however, when you are conducting a job search it is important to be professional from top to bottom on the resume so we encourage them to use their current student e-mail. Once they leave the university to create a professional e-mail address so they have that professionalism from the top to the bottom. The next part of the document is going to be the objective and we talked about this a little bit before. The best objective is a focused objective where recruiters know when a student has made a cookie cutter objective for multitudes of employers. They know that, they can read between the lines. The GPA issue is a very controversial issue in resume writing and you'll probably when you talk to numerous people about GPA's you'll get numerous types of feedback but as a rule of thumb we encourage students that have a 3.0 or higher to definitely put that GPA on the resume. When we are talking about students that have below a 3.0 I think that it's important to make them understand that this is their document. They need to be proud of their document. If that 2.6 GPA makes them uncomfortable, they're not really proud of that to me I think a 2.6 is awesome especially if you've got a great internship or some great work history or activities on campus, hey I think that showing well roundedness is absolutely critical. The student that has a 4.0 GPA and doesn't have any experience is probably going to be overlooked quite frankly but typically for a cover letter I kind of tend to focus on the opening and the body of the cover letter and the closing and once again kind of referring how we started the resume focus is very very important. The opening paragraph is one where you have to sort of ask the student, how are you using, I need to stop for a second how we are using this document, where is this going, how did you hear about this job? It is important to tell the reader where you found the information so they know kind of what you've been telling people where you've been looking is a sign of the fact that you are actively engaged in your job search. Acting actively engaged in your job search is absolutely critical. You can't set back and let the Internet do all the work for you, absolutely not. One of the things in a job search strategy which is very apparent in written communication is being an active participant in your own success."