It’s about the time of year where students are looking for both spring and summer internships. If this is you, it means it’s time to start looking over your resumes. I recently had the privilege to assist in the hiring process for some student workers on campus, which meant that I got to go through a lot of resumes and help my boss make decisions for interviews. As I reviewed the resumes, I noticed that there was a clear distinction between the ones that really stood out to me, and those that got moved to the bottom of the pile. So, here are some tips I have compiled to help your resume stand out from the crowd.
1. Make a resume
One of the most important things that I can say is to actually have a resume on hand. Some fields may not place as much emphasis on a resume as they would an interview, but most jobs request a resume. All you need to make one is an internet browser and 30 minutes of your time.
Finding templates for many different types of resumes is only a quick Google search away – from science-based to a more traditional business sense to a more artistic take.
2. Include relevant experience
In an ideal world, all of your experience would be relevant to the position you want. But since we are all in college, relevant experience may not be realistic. If you are a freshman or sophomore, include any experience you may have from high school. Once you get to junior year, you should be filtering the high school experience out with more recent internships, on-campus jobs, leadership positions, research, etc.
If you don’t have anything you think is relevant – don’t fret. Include anything you have because you never know what type of previous job you had will show a manager that you are capable of the job you are applying for.
3. Describe what you did
This one might seem like common sense, but on your hard copy resume as well as your LinkedIn profile, you should be including a short description of your responsibilities at your previous (and current!) jobs.
These short descriptions should highlight the main responsibilities, or special projects you worked on while you were there. For example, if you worked as a lifeguard at your local pool, you could say something like this:
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Ensure safety of patrons
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Assisted in maintaining grounds and facilities
While this is a very basic example, a short description like this lets a hiring manager know what kinds of things you handled at your job.
4. Quantify results
When writing your descriptions, make sure to quantify any results wherever possible. If you are in charge of running a social media account, instead of saying “Increased follower count,” you could say “Increased follower count by 20%.” This shows anyone looking at your resume that you can produce results.
If you are in a field that relies more on soft skills instead of hard numbers, you can still quantify these bullets. Three ways to do so are using a range, showing the frequency of a task as well as giving a scale. Discussing how much money was saved on a project is also an easy way to get a hard number.
5. Tailor your resume to the job you want
You should not have a single resume that you send out to every company for jobs.internships. Instead, you should have variations of a resume that are tailored to the job you are applying for.
I recommend making a “Master Resume,” where you list everything you have done in your life, with a majority of the responsibilities you have held. List all of your organizations, awards, skills, and don’t worry about how many pages it ends up being. From there, you can make a copy of the ‘Master Resume’ and edit it down to show the skills you have that are most relevant to the job you are looking for.
If you have limited work experience, tailor your responsibilities to show relevant skills. For example, I recently helped a friend make a resume for a human resources position. Since she helped coordinate an event over the summer, I had her talk about how she had to effectively communicate with the other event organizers to make sure the event ran smoothly.
Making a different resume for each job you apply for can increase your chances of getting an interview since you are highlighting the experiences and skills that are desired by the company.