 What do you include on a resume other than work experience?" IntroductionThe last step in writing a great resume is to include the extras that make you, you!
The previous blogs that we have covered--header, professional profile, education, and work experience--highlight the most common items on a resume. However, miscellaneous items, especially when they are specific to the job application or culture of the organization to which you're applying, can be very powerful. If used strategically, miscellaneous items can showcase your uniqueness and distinguish from other candidates. Used unthoughtfully, of course, you could end up having the opposite effect. When in doubt--leave it out! Best to use precious resume real estate for work history. In previous blogs, we provided a “Before” and “After” of our resumes; however, this post will focus on general advice becaise we did not make any changes to our sections. We will provide our final overhauled resumes in the next blog post.  I like to think of the Work Experience section as the main course. This section is the most important part of your resume--the things recruiters need to decide if you have the knowledge, skills, and abilities to function in the advertised role. If the recruiter feels satisfied by the first few sections of the resume, they will move on to get a taste of what skills you have for the job! In some case, recruiters may just skip to the work experience and scan it for key details. This section is important because it showcases your experiences that would qualify you for a position, and by having a great format with effective wording should impress the recruiter before they ever meet you!
 In this post, we continue the step-by-step series on how to write or improve your resume by focusing on the Education section. So far, we have covered how to write an eye-catching headline and an impressive professional profile.
Now we will review Education, which is often located at the top of a resume for a current student or recent graduate. It is often the largest accomplishment for them to date. After three or more years of work, however, it will likely drop to the bottom of the document.  A professional profile is to your resume as a thesis is your English paper or speech.
If written with high-impact in mind and without grammatical errors, a resume profile can get the document through application scanners and provide a recruiter a quick summary of the key highlights in a resume. The difference between a good profile and a great profile could be the difference between a recruiter reading your resume (great profile) or immediately passing on it and moving to the next candidate (bad or good profile)! In this blog, we continue our resume writing journey (see our first post on the header) by providing a before and after look at our profile summaries.  Students are constantly asking us how to write a high-quality, impactful resume. Therefore, we're providing a how-to series that offers a step-by-step, top-to-bottom approach to writing a resume. As you read each post, complete a review and improvement of your document following our advice. At the end of the series, we'll reveal our improved resumes to you. The HeaderYour header is the title of your resume, and the first piece of information a recruiter will see. It provides a quick reference to your contact information and it is the first impression. Therefore, it is important to keep it neat and informative.
We are two students setting out on a journey to polish up our resumes. Here are two samples of what our original headers looked like when we started this project. |
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