With the Spring 2015 Career Fair coming to a close, now is the time when companies start picking and choosing candidates.
So, I think a lot of you might want to get your resume checked. Hear me out. I’m not saying your resume content-wise is bad, just that it would be nice if you had it checked last week. No, I don’t just mean the Career Development Services’ Resumania. I think what you might have needed were pointers on how to really make a great resume. The following is what NJIT’s chapters of the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers and the National Society of Black Engineers sponsored Resume Building Workshop recommends.
First, resume and cover letter writing tips are highly subjective. A lot of you have probably figured out this whole resume thing. Before you roll your eyes and say “Here we go, another career fair article”, listen. The more applications you send, the more likely you are to get hired, and the more revisions on your resume, the closer you’ll get to that perfect resume.
Did you know that you can give cover letters to companies at the career fair? I didn’t think it would be a good idea, but there I was, writing cover letters before the career fair. The resume building workshop emphasized how important it is to provide cover letters to companies. We might not all write them by second nature, but cover letters serve as an explanation on why we would want to work for a company. Cover letters also give the company some insight into who you are. This was a mistake I had been making for quite some time on my own resumes. Don’t say too much on you cover letters or companies might have fears that you’ll be uncovering company secrets!
On resumes, you need to remember that it serves as an explanation of what you are capable of and what you have experience with. If you lie about yourself, or put down anything like your former wage or classified company secrets, you’re not going to get hired. You want to have an easy to read resume with all of your experiences, skills, and your personal summary, being to the point and simple. As controversial as this is, I did say that you should consider writing a personal summary.
Personal summaries are weird to talk about because a lot of people consider them useless, however, the presenter from the event begs to differ. Companies want to know what you are applying for. You can write a cover letter, but let’s give ourselves a contingency plan. If you’re applying for a position in software, you better say you’re applying for a position in software. Just imagine what would happen if you ended up having an interview about how to figure out the chemical formula of toothpaste? That wouldn’t be fun.
The Resume Building Workshop hosted by NSBE and SHPE was one of the more useful career-focused events on campus. The presenter was part of the Human Resources department of L’Oreal and has been looking through and selecting resumes for years. To hear from actual HR representatives about what they would want in an ideal candidate’s resume is important. We have NSBE and SHPE to thank for putting the whole workshop together.
