Student / New Graduate Resume
Purpose
To convince an employer to interview you based on your academic credentials.
Key Strengths & Weaknesses
- Strengths: Stresses your degrees, relevant course work, skills relevant to your objective, internships, cooperative education experiences, class projects, student activities and any relevant jobs, even summer or temporary employment.
- Weaknesses: Liberal arts students and students seeking employment not directly and obviously supported by their academic experiences may find that this format only points out weaknesses such as lack of relevant skills, degrees or knowledge.
Basic Parts
Heading: name, mailing address, city, state, zip code, telephone number, fax, email address
Objective: short phrase stating your job target or industry preference
Qualifications Summary: short statements summarizing your key selling points
Education: relevant education and training listed in detail, such as degree, major, date of graduation (or expected date of graduation),grade point average (if 3.0 or higher), relevant courses taken, in progress or soon to be taken (with brief explanation of course content, class projects with results specified), relevant certifications or other training (e.g. a nurse may list CPR), extra-curricular activities
Educational and Employment History: dates of study, internships, cooperative education experience or other paid employment, job titles or projects, educational institution or employer, brief description of primary role during that time period.
Hint: several miscellaneous jobs may be listed concurrently for one time period (e.g. Summer 2000 Sales Associate / Telemarketer / Laborer). Employers usually expect that students will have had a variety of jobs, some related to the major and some not, while attending college.
Optional Parts
Professional Affiliations, Computer Skills, Licenses, Certifications
Other hints
Try to limit your resume to one page. One page means that you must make a few words tell your historical employment story.This page must have quality so invest in good paper.
Also avoid loud colors unless the job you seek is artistically related.
Try your resume out on someone you know by asking for feedback. You can always call or email careers@mccc.edu the Mercer County Community College Career Services at 609-586-4800 ext. 3397.
