Resume Advice
With all of this advice, keep in mind that making a resume is a bit more of an art than a science, so none of these are hard-and-fast rules so much as guidelines.
This advice is primarily for college students applying for internships, but most of it should be relevant for others as well.
- Formatting
- I suggest you use one consistent color (black) for all of your text. Even if the distinct color is only for aesthetics, it can still be distracting, and may look weird on a printed black and white resume.
- Your resume should only be one page.
- Contact Info
- There isn’t much of a need to have a physical mailing address of your resume. Recruiters will just need a phone number and email address, so make sure you have those.
- If you have a LinkedIn, consider adding it to your contact info, and fleshing it out. If you don’t have one, consider making yourself an account.
- For Computer Science Majors, I advise doing the same thing for GitHub.
- Make sure you are using a professional email address, ideally one that contains your name.
- Sections
- It is a good idea to have at least Education, Experience, and Skills sections.
- You probably don’t need an objective. While it isn’t the worst thing in the world, it doesn’t add much in terms of selling you to a company – they should already know what position you’re applying for.
- Education
- In your education, consider listing Relevant Coursework.
- Relevant Coursework can include relevant material that isn’t directly in your major. For instance, for a Computer Science Major, things like Math and Stat courses can be listed too.
- Relevant coursework should be in the education section,
- Timeframes
- When indicating the timeframe activities ran from, a good way to make things easy to scan is to right align just the date information.
- For timeframes, consider using three letter abbreviations for months. This will help your resume have a more uniform appearance.
- Additional Advice
- Make sure that when you submit a Resume, you do so with it as a PDF