Resumes are a fun topic. Everyone and we do mean everyone will have an opinion on this. Your family members, your neighbours, your friends, your classmates, senior students, and the geese walking across the road.
As a first-year student, you might find it tough to come up with points that will make yourself stand out to employers. But we were all in your position once before, and we’ve come up with the following points to give yourself an edge over other junior students.
Waterloo's Centre for Career Action can also help you if you have never prepared a professional resume before, or if you need help explaining what you did in high school or extracurricular activities. No matter how much you like your resume, if it's not pulling in interview offers, something is off. Don't wait too long - get help!
The purpose of the resume is to get the interview. Never forget this. Never. Ever.
For 99% of junior 1A/1B students before you have your first co-op job - a one page resume is all that is warranted. Not two pages. However, there are some individuals who do indeed have a lot of valuable information to share and a longer resume is warranted. Make sure whatever information you share is VALUABLE to the reader.
Be wary of using colour or fancy formatting (like two columns) - make it easy and fast to read - they are not hiring you for your fancy word processing skills.
Do not allow typos or goofs in the resume. Be consistent. Be neat and tidy.
Do not use meaningless adjectives and keep claims to a reasonable level - you might be an expert compared to another 18 year old, but that does not mean you are an expert when an employer sees the word.
There are different resume ‘styles’ and content for first year students vs intermediate vs the senior students considering options after graduation.
In the co-op process, employers who get many many applications
may spend 3-5 seconds per resume at the first look - what do they look at in those few seconds?
In the
four months you will work with us, can we get something of value out of you.
If they cannot see the potential of this quickly or easily within the 3-5 seconds, they will move on.
The money-shot has to be the first thing that gets their attention, the summary qualifications section - this section gives employers a reason to read on and consider you.
When going through a co-op process like Waterloo's WaterlooWorks, the employers know that you are at UW, probably knows about your program, knows what the program's normal student did in high school, and that you did well enough to get into the program. Only
include something if it is really unique and special - not what everyone else in the class did.
Only include your high school ‘facts’ if there is something special; something that other UW students would not have received or done.
Include any special clubs, volunteering, special roles, positions, or activities that showed responsibility, initiative, grit, determination, accountability, etc. - but keep it simple if it is usual (e.g., the reader knows what a student council does or what a class rep does - just say you were head of the student council).
However, if the role or activity would not be normally understood by an employer, you should expand on it! If you don’t have any work experience, it will be important to ensure that your engagement in music/community engagement/athletics/school projects really tells a story about your skills and qualities.
Keep the top of the resume very clean and simple - so and so, Management Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, 1A - that is all you need. When you are applying for jobs within something like UW's WaterlooWorks, you should also add your student number in case there are a few other students with the same name as you.
The top section should be relevant skills or something similar - the first point should be something that is
very clear and outcome oriented - what can you do for the employer. This is not the place to list skills that almost anyone can say they have, such as
that you are energetic, a great communicator,
an admired team player, that you can work with people. They want to know what you can DO. E.g., you know
how to use Excel and VBA, pivot tables, forms, charts, or you have experience making presentations to large groups or running events that achieve a particular kind of (desirable) outcome. This is what the employer can understand because it's concrete. In the body of the resume, you explain what you did with Excel / events / other.
In the experience section, explain what you learned and accomplished with the skills or on the job - e.g.,
you were responsible for the design or coding of the term project. For other types of jobs like working at a grocery store, do not include useless descriptions - everyone knows what someone does at a fast food location or grocery - one sentence will do.
Mention interesting or unique things like how you took initiative to accomplish something extra or were given additional responsibilities.
