Resume Development

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Introduction
A well-written resume is one of your most valuable tools in a job search. It summarizes your education, work experience and other qualifications, and often makes that important first impression about you with potential employers. As you develop your resume, be sure to:

• Schedule an appointment with Career Services to assist you.
• Review the sample resume books in the Career Services Resource Center.
• Consider which format (chronological, functional or combination) best suits you-most college graduates use the combination format and target their resume.
• Keep it short-limit yourself to one or maximum of two pages.
• If you are not sending a cover letter, write a clearly stated employment objective and support it in the body of your resume.
• No high school information including no jobs during high school.
• Provide your employment history.
• List your accomplishments and responsibilities.
• Emphasize your skills.
• Use action words (such as supervised, managed, directed) instead of passive phrases like "responsible for" or "duties included".
• Organize the layout-a simple, logical format directs readers to pertinent facts quickly and easily.
• Proofread carefully to produce a perfect product-correct all misspellings, typographical errors and poor grammar.
• Reproduce your resume on quality paper with a high quality copier, laser printer or printing service.
• Prepare some model cover letters to accompany your resume.

Contact Information
Your contact information is at the top of your resume and on the 2nd page if you have a two page resume. A one page resume is ideal. On the 2nd page, "Page 2" is placed on the upper right hand corner next to your name. A resume is not stapled. The cover letter goes on top of the resume, and your reference sheet is the last sheet after the resume with no stapling. You may want to have a temporary contact information and a permanent contact information while you are in school. This allows a potential employer to contact you if you are home on a break unless you provide them with your cell phone number. Please remember to change your voice mail messages and your e-mail address to a professional sounding voice message and e-mail address once you start applying for positions.

Contact information to include:

Name
Address (both permanent and local, if appropriate)
Telephone Number with area code
Email Address with no hyperlink

Objective
Briefly describe the type of position you seek. Employers prefer candidates who are focused and directed. You do not need to include an objective if you are sending a cover letter that states your objective along with your resume.

Education
List educational institutions you have graduated from or expect to graduate from. Begin with the most recent school, indicating degree, major, minor and concentrations; and indicate your date of graduation. Include grade point average if it is over 3.0. Academic honors and other recognition may be included. If you are applying for an internship, you should have a heading following education that says "Relevant Coursework" or "Coursework Related to Major." List the courses that you have completed within your majorand are in the process of completing.

Computer Skills

If your computer skills vary with proficiency, have sections within Computer Skills that state "Proficient", "Knowledgeable", and "Learning." Be honest with what your actual computer skills are. It can be set up on your resume in this format:

COMPUTER SKILLS
Proficient:
Knowledgeable:
Learning:

Work Experience
Work experience can be listed chronologically or in order of relevance to your work objective. Your resume headings can say Related Work Experience (meaning jobs/internships that are related to your major), and Work Experience or Professional Experience. Briefly list your position title, company (city and state), dates of employment (month and year), responsibilities and skills required. Use bullets when describing your job duties and skills. A list of action verbs to describe your responsibilities and skills is located at: http://www.dbq.edu/careerservices/resumewriting1.cfm?id=8.

Honors/Activities
Indicate your co-curricular activities, awards or honors, volunteer experience and memberships-both school and non-school related. Do not include information from high school.

References
Copy and paste your heading contact information onto a separate sheet of paper. References should never be listed on the resume. Have a minimum of 3 references who know your skills well such as an internship supervisor, faculty member(s) within your major, employer supervisor, etc. List the reference's Name, Title, Place of Employment, Address, City, State, Zip Code, Phone with are code and E-mail with no hyperlink. Be sure to request the permission of anyone you list as a reference to use their names. Do not put "References will be furnished upon request" on your resume. Provide the employer with references unless the employer request that you not send them with your resume. Follow the instructions of the job announcement.