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No matter how many accolades or achievements you accomplish in college, it does not matter to employers unless you are able to effectively display them on your resume and sell yourself to the employer. The “How to Write a Winning Resume” workshop I attended earlier in November showed me how to effectively display my skills on my resume, and how I can sell myself best to future employers.

            One of the main points conveyed in this workshop was that employers read dozens of resumes from other people applying to the job, so during the first look-through, they only spend about 30 seconds or less looking at each resume. Because of this, it is crucial to make sure the information they want to see stands out, and that there is no unnecessary information that can distract the employer from important accolades and useful strengths. One of the main ways to accomplish this is through using capitalized, bolded, or underlined text styles to make sure the most important information stands out.

            Another point that the workshop went over is how to structure the resume to ensure everything that should be on the resume can fit. When writing it, you should first adjust the margins so you can write as much information on it as possible without making it look abnormal. Another way to accomplish this that should be used as well is using 10-12 size font for the information contained in the different categories when listing things like achievements, clubs and organizations, and other information about yourself.

The way you structure the different categories themselves is also crucial to ensure you have a “winning resume”. The purpose of grouping information into categories is to divide your achievements and strengths in an organized way that is easy for employers to see. These categories will be in bold font, and will be titled with words such as objective, education, and previous work experience. Categories that are most important, such as education, will be placed highest on the resume, with the least important categories listed at the bottom. The information contained in these categories should be listed in reverse chronological order, so the most recent achievements are listed first.

The main thing that I came to the event for was to see what kinds of information I should put on my resume, so that way I can plan ahead and get involved in different organizations and activities during the rest of my time at college that would attract employers. From talking to the people at the workshop, I learned that the best option at first is to diversify yourself and join many different kinds of clubs/business societies and organizations, because employers like to hire people who have experience in many different areas. The lady there described it to me by saying, “it is better to carry around a multi-tool pocket-knife than a single kitchen knife”. I think this information helped me the most by far, and I will be able to use this advice for the rest of my college career to help with my future employment.