Tips from a Career Coach on Creating a Standout Resume
Recruiters look at a resume for an average of seven seconds! With that, it’s important that your story jumps off the page…quite literally. While this may feel overwhelming, the good news is that you have a lot of agency in the process, and it doesn’t need to feel like “work.” Simply doing things you’re interested in will make you that much more of an amazing candidate, whether that next step is a graduate program, an internship, or stepping into your career.
I am Julie Krause – one of the Career Coaches for the MS Programs Office here to give you a few tips on what you can be doing now, while still in school, to help craft your story. Please read on below for how to be that resume who catches the recruiter’s eye and gets pulled out of the stack!
Tip #1
If you don’t know what you want to do, that’s okay. We’ve all been there! But please don’t let this stop you from getting some kind of work experience. A potential employer wants to see a basic level of commitment or continuity within an organization, i.e. the ability to hold down a job. Internships are a great place to start! But so is any job. Have you bartended or served in a restaurant? You can likely manage in high-stress situations with excellent customer service. Have you been a research assistant? Excellent – showcase your ability to cull lots of information into various insights. You can pull out transferrable skills from ANY role.
Tip #2
Leadership is something all recruiters are looking for, no matter what career path. Leadership can look a lot of different ways – it could be athletics, it could be a position within a student organization, it could be starting a side business of your own, it could be participating in a case competition at your school, and so forth. It is these types of activities that set a good candidate apart from a great one.
Tip #3
Raise your hand on group projects (as much as you may not want to). Leading the group, or serving in some unique capacity, will not only give you insight into what you might like to be doing in a career down the line – but it will be excellent interview content. Inevitably then, when you get asked the question “Tell me about a time where you worked with others and a conflict arose/it didn’t go as planned?” early in your career, you won’t struggle as much to answer this.
Tip #4
Keep a file with notes of your experiences. Projects or work assignments that make you happy, and ones that absolutely do not. Challenging situations and triumphs. Contacts you meet or connections you make. Tracking these along the way will give you a portfolio to access as you interview, and later on, to help shape an idea of what you might like to do for your career. I can’t tell you how many students I’ve seen who have said “Yikes, I can’t really remember what I did there – that was a few years ago!” Don’t fall into this trap; if you track as you go, you will make life much easier on yourself.
Tip #5
We’ve heard from employers that they want to see more than just a great GPA. In fact, some will weight a resume that shows steady, involved volunteer activity over one that does not. Is there a cause that’s important to you? Even if you can only give a few hours a week, that’s okay. If you have an opportunity to volunteer in a capacity that may relate to future roles of interest, that’s amazing, but if not – the experience itself is rewarding and you will likely learn a lot of valuable skills.
Tip #6
Consider graduate school. This would be a great option to level up your skills, or pivot from a different undergraduate field of study into the direction you’d more so like to go in the future. Specifically with our MS Programs, you will sharpen your analytical skills, get real-world experience in working on actual businesses’ pressing problems, and leave with a very strong network – to say the least. Speak with an Admissions Counselor to learn more, if this is something you’re considering!
We’ll call it a wrap with an even number! Hope this gives you a sense of how you can make the most of your remaining months (or years) while in school. And while it may add some extra hours to your schedule, it’s all in service of helping you towards your ultimate goal – finding a job you love. Future you will thank you.
Questions about how a Master of Science degree can help your future career? Don’t hesitate to reach out: