Contributed by Lillian Martin | UW-Madison, WI
Entering college, I knew that I needed to begin updating my resume. I had started to format a new one but realized I missed some key points that could be pivotal to being admitted to an interview for a position.
Recently, I attended the Collegiate DECA Diamond One Call called “Build a Resume (Not a Snowman),” Co-Hosted by Natalie Deck, the president of the Collegiate DECA Chapter of Purdue. She has worked developing resumes and had some wonderful insights into describing involvement and experience that I believe everyone could benefit from.
According to Natalie, about 75% of resumes are filtered out before a human being even reads them. They are sent through Applicant Tracking Systems and ranked to ensure the potential candidates are qualified for the position.
With that, it is now important to recognize that resumes should be formatted more to what Applicant Tracking Systems can detect instead of a built resume that does not highlight the qualities certain job positions will seek. This can be done by identifying what requirements a job position is looking for and reformatting the resume to make those points stand out. It is expected to reformat a resume many times for different job positions to ensure that employers know that one is capable of the position they offer.
Another good rule of thumb is ensuring that a resume’s involvement section is effective. It covers everything a candidate has to offer when applying for a position.
A good way to start that is to make a list of 10 things that have been done in the past 3-5 years (it can be anything from babysitting to a volunteer job), pick out ones where the most leadership work was involved and then take the top 3 leadership experiences and list them out in the resume. This will ensure that leadership skills are accounted for and highlighted in the best way possible for employers. This will need to continually be done to keep the resume updated and not stuck on experiences in the past, freezing the resume as time progresses.
The resume is a pivotal tool used in the interview process, so it is important to make sure that it is sharp and well-developed. The qualities of a position should match up to the involvement on a resume to give candidates the best chance of success.
