By Zach Swanson, Peer Career Consultant

Navigating the job market can be a challenging endeavor. One of the most essential tools in your toolkit is a well-crafted resume. This powerful document serves multiple purposes, from introducing you to potential employers to showcasing your qualifications, skills, and achievements. In this post, we will delve into understanding the purpose of a resume, begin mastering professional formatting, and effectively highlighting your accomplishments and transferable skills to make you a competitive candidate for the position.

Understand the Purpose of a Resume:
A resume serves as a comprehensive record of your personal, academic, and professional achievements. It introduces you to potential employers and showcases your suitability for a particular role. This essential document should contain key sections like Contact Information, a Summary of Qualifications (optional), Education, Experience (Professional, Research, Volunteer, Leadership, or Industry-Specific), Awards and Honors (optional), Professional Affiliations or Memberships (optional), Projects (optional), and Technical Skills.

Master the Art of Professional Formatting:
The quality of your resume often reflects your ability to deliver high-quality work. As
such, the formatting and structure of your resume convey more than just your qualifications for the position. Examples of professional resume formatting can provide valuable references. You can view multiple examples of professional resume formatting here. Here are some guidelines:
Consistency: Ensure your resume is consistent throughout, in terms of formatting, section headings, and bullet points. This gives your resume a professional and organized look.
Clarity and Conciseness: Review your resume several times for clarity and conciseness. Aim for a clean appearance and easy readability.
Length: A resume should ideally be one to two pages long.
Focus: Keep your descriptions focused on your most relevant experiences, awards, and skills.
Visuals: Use spacing, bold text, italics, and indentations for contents to “pop”, but also aim to minimize “white space”.
Remember, a carefully curated and visually appealing resume is an essential step towards impressing potential employers and landing an interview.

Highlight Accomplishments and Transferable Skills:
Given the limited space on a resume, it’s crucial to prioritize the relevant accomplishments and skills that align with each job you apply for. This might mean spotlighting your project development skills (such as grant writing or IRB processes) for a research position. For an IT or UX position, it would be important to list the technologies and processes you are trained in (such as Wix, Java, HTML). Transferable skills, accomplishments, and other job output metrics (e.g., number of sales, people trained, or clients) should be highlighted within your experiences bullet points. They add depth to your resume and demonstrate your capabilities as a high performer. Remember to highlight honors, certificates, presentations, publications, or awards as well. Highlighting yourself at your best will convey your ability to deliver!

In conclusion, a well-crafted resume is more than just a list of your experiences and
qualifications. It’s a tool that tells your professional story and illustrates your potential value to a potential employer. By understanding these skills, you increase your chances of standing out in the competitive job market. Crafting an effective resume is indeed an art, and with practice, you can master it.