Tips for Success

Experiences: For each significant experience, describe your specific duties and responsibilities.

• Describe actions taken and concrete results
• Identify interpersonal or technical skills used
• Provide examples of tasks or projects, including quantified information (number of children taught, size of budget managed, etc.)
• Include any significant accomplishments, achievements, or awards.

Keywords: Many employers scan and store resumes into databases which are searched by “keywords” to identify candidates with the skills, experience, and educational background sought for specific positions. Make sure to identify keywords used in the job description and incorporate them into your resume in your experience descriptions and skills.

Be Clear and Concise: Spend the time to express yourself as clearly and concisely as possible on your resume. Work with an Academic and Career Advisor to improve your first draft.

Common Jargon: Whenever possible, use common or accepted jargon (e.g., MS Word, MS Excel, Access, Mac OS, Java, HTML, etc.). The more you use, the more likely the reader will pick up on important transferable skills you possess.

Keep it Simple and Clean: Avoid parentheses, underlining, graphics, abbreviations, borders, italics, lines, columns, or brackets.

Neatness Counts: No typos, grammatical errors or misspellings. Do not rely on ‘spell check’ function to catch all errors. Aim for a visually pleasing, uncluttered appearance. Try using bullet points for a sense of visual balance.

Heading – Your preferred first and last name, city and state, email, and phone number. 

Summary – A one to two sentence preview of who you are and your most relevant skills/experiences for the specific position you are applying to. This is particularly useful for individuals who are doing a career pivot and want to highlight transferable skills.

Education – List Fitchburg State University, year of graduation, academic program and concentration, awards and honors, GPA (if over 3.0). Include previously earned degrees, including a Bachelor’s or Associate’s degree in the order in which you earned them, most recent to farthest back. You can also include certifications here if relevant to what you are applying to. 

Projects – If applicable, add a section to highlight projects or research, these can be academic, professional, or personal. You can also mark projects as “In Progress” if applicable.

Experience – You can also include experience that was not employment if it is relevant like internships, volunteer work, or independent projects. Include your job title, name of organization, dates, and city, state. 

Leadership – Include title and dates of any leadership roles you have held. 

Skills – List any computer, language, laboratory skills or relevant field specific skills. You can also choose to include certifications here instead of education in the education section.

Consider the order of each of your sections, there is no right way to organize your resume, but think about what you want to highlight first. Depending on what you are applying to, you may want to highlight work experience first, or skills, or education, think about your reader!