Writing Your Resume
Writing Your Resume
Job Objective
We're recommending that you use a Functional Resume format. This kind of resume focuses on your abilities and skills. The Traditional Resume format lists all of your jobs, with the most recent job listed first. Since you're just graduating from High School, you don't have a lot of jobs to list. So the best way of selling yourself is by showing how your training and skills match what the employers want.
The Job Objective is the first thing that the resume reader will review. It can be as simple as:
"To secure a position as a ___________________ (job title)."
Examples:
To secure a position as a service technician in an automobile dealership.
To secure a position as an office assistant.
To secure an apprenticeship as a heavy duty equipment mechanic.
To secure an apprenticeship in plumbing.
To secure a position in construction and maintenance.
To secure a position in telemarketing.
To secure a position as a preparation cook.
To secure a position as office support staff.
To secure a position as a receptionist in a medical setting.
The Functional Resume
What three or four skills are needed to perform this job? These skills make very good headings for this section of the resume. You'll want to use them IF you have skills that you can list underneath those headings.
Let's look at Jennifer who wants to be an Office Assistant in a medical setting. She's done her research and has learned that they are looking for someone who is very organized, friendly with the patients and who knows how to apply software to make the office function more efficiently. Knowing this, Jennifer has identified three categories or headings to feature her skills and accomplishments under:
Organizational Ability
Customer Service
Computer and Software Experience
Rarely, do you need more than three headings. The only rule to follow is to show off skills and accomplishments that are related to the job for which you are applying. Lead with your most impressive set of skills and accomplishments first. Creating headings or categories is a smart way of focusing the employer on your skills. If you can't think of any headings, you can simply create a bulleted list of your skills and accomplishments under the generic heading "Relevant Skills and Experience."
Jazzed Headings List
Specialized Skills
Cash Handling
Technical Experience
Creative Experience
Service Management
Administrative Experience
Clerical Experience
Problem Solving Skills
Supervision
Directing Activities
Community Relations
Construction & Installation
Customer Relations
Repair and Maintenance Skills
Mechanical Skills
Public Relations
Computer Experience
Writing Ability
Communication Skills
Managerial Capacity
Organizational Ability
Customer Service
Software Knowledge
Office Skills
Retail Experience
Community Service
Sales Experience
Coordination/Teamwork
Jazzed Headings cont.
Equipment (If you're applying for a job that requires working on certain kinds of equipment e.g. in welding, carpentry, auto mechanics it would be good to have a section that shows you know how to handle different kinds of equipment.)
___________ Knowledge.
(Here you might simply enter the field of the job you are seeking such as "Cooking," "Auto Mechanics," "Hospitality Industry.")
__________ Skills
(This is the same as above but more focused on the skills that you have in a given area such as "Plumbing" skills, "Carpentry" skills, "Landscaping" skills).
Let's take a look at what Ben came up with for his headings and relevant skills and experience.
Ben's Job Objective is: "To secure a position as an entry level technician/maintenance person.“
He is applying to companies and organizations that need maintenance people. He has targeted large apartment rental complexes, nursing homes, and hospitals in his community that hire their own maintenance crews. He has identified three headings to focus his skills and experience:
Maintenance Skills
Technical Skills
Customer Relations
He added the Customer Relations heading because he knows that these type of employers interact with the public, so he thought that he'd show off his people skills, as well.
Listing your Skills:
Take a look at the skills and experience he chose to identify under these headings:
Technical Skills
Built television scrambler from a circuit board as part of electronics course.
Successfully executed several architectural drafting projects.
Ability to completely rewire lamps understanding electric circuitry.
Awarded honors in electronic courses and blueprint design.
Maintenance Skills
Experienced carpenter's assistant in painting interior walls, accurate measurement and lumber cutting, framing and constructing shelving units.
Broad-based knowledge and experience in plumbing and appliance repair.
Hands-on experience in landscaping: mowing, watering and maintaining lawns; planting, pruning trees and shrubs.
Installed doors and windows prefabricated or framed
Experience with wide range of hand and power tools.
Customer Relations
Advised customers as to their home repair needs as Sales Associate at Home Depot.
Resolved complaints from customers when products were returned.
"Ben has a great way with people, he excels in giving good customer service." Store Manager's Performance Evaluation, Home Depot, 1997
Ben shows potential employers that he is certainly up for a wide-range of tasks that might be asked of him. Since the businesses also deal with the public and being on a team with co-workers, he makes the point that he does have good people skills
Notice that the skills and experience he mentions are a mixed-bag. They come from both work experience and his vocational education training in high school.
Ben also did some interviewing of people who headed up maintenance operations at a hospital and a nursing home. He learned that they really value people who can read over blueprints and bids from outside contractors when the job is too complicated for the in-house guys. They need people who can see between the lines and identify if they're being taken to the cleaners or not. So, Ben, who is good at reading between the lines, highlighted that as one of his skills. He also leads with this in the HIGHLIGHT section of his resume.
Identify Your Skills
If you received any awards or citations for school work or activities, include them. They can even become one of your highlights.
If you worked part-time through high school and maintained solid grades like a B+, then note this under your work history. Matt, for instance, worked 15 hours a week at Home Depot and maintained a B+ average so he he mentioned this under his work history. It looked like this:
Sales Associate at Home Depot 1996-1998 working 15 hours per week and maintaining a 3.0 average at school. (If you have this average only in your core courses or major you could modify this and say, "maintaining a 3.0 average in major.")
Really think through your activities as a source for identifying skills. Say for instance you were on the Yearbook Club - did you help with sales, writing, marketing, public relations, telephone sales, editing, art design, or printing? Each of these tasks represents a skill that you could highlight.
Breaking it up. Don't make the mistake of lumping all of your skills under one generic title, like "office skills." Think of each task you performed - and break up the functions of your work. Say for instance you worked in an office, break up the functions. Bang! You have skills in telephone reception, telephone sales, purchasing, inventory control, computer applications and customer relations! If you're having a hard time with this, get someone to interview you. Have them ask you what your day is like - at your job or in a school activity or in a course you took - and as you describe it start taking notes - you'll quickly identify the skills you use to perform that function.
Did you help promote any event at high-school or sell items for a fundraiser? You could show off the skill as sales. Be sure to quantify what you did. For example, Sold $1,200 worth of tickets for high school benefit.
Quantify. Quantify. One way to catch a potential employer's attention is to add numbers to your skills. An example of this is shown above, rather than just say, "raised money," you "sold $1,200 worth of tickets." Here are other examples to give you an idea of what we mean:
Beat deadlines on 40 percent of all projects and met deadlines 100 percent of the time.
Ranked in the top third of class while working 20 hours a week.
Dramatically increased the number of ads for the Yearbook by 50 percent yielding an extra $5,000 over last year's budget.
Directed the proper unloading of ten trucks per night at the Giant.
If you held an office in a school club this would be good to show-off you leadership skills. Again, break out the functions you performed in that role.
One characteristic that all employers like is the ability to meet deadlines. Think of anything you've done that shows you can meet deadlines or if you set a record at school - use it. Another trait they like is being punctual - if you had an awesome record of never being late for class - brag about it.
If you had a job during high school and you had a performance evaluation in which your supervisor said something very good about you, you can quote that when you mention one of your skills. Or, you could do the same thing if one of your teachers wrote down something very good about you. If they didn't, ask them to! Here's an example:
Recognized as one of the "top students in blueprint design" in a class of 200.
"No matter how hectic or short-staffed we were, Tony kept his cool and got the job done." (Manager's Evaluation, June 1997).
Use the PAR approach by Yana Parker to help you think through your skills. Think of a Problem you worked on - what Action did you take and what were the Results? Here's an example:
Created a web site so that students who were being home-schooled because of injuries or an illness could benefit from excellent class notes taken by honors students.
Solved scheduling problems for auto inspection garage by installing scheduling software into the computer system and trained service manager on how to use it.
Work History
If you don't have any experience in the area for which you want to get a job, start getting it NOW so that you can add this to your Work History or Education section. You can do this by: volunteering for a company or organization that employs these kinds of skills; working for a Temp agency that will assign you to places that require this skill; or sign up for a course at the local community college that will teach you this skill. Here's how you will use this:
Work History
Inventory control and warehousing, Goodwill Industries, 1998.
Note: In this instance, lead with the skill then the employer and enter the current year. You can legitimately enter this under Work History even if you are volunteering to pick up this skill. Do not, however, enter volunteer work under Job History.
Work History cont.
As a high school grad, no one is going to expect you to have a long work history. We recommend that you title this section "Work History" rather than "Job History" because you can include volunteer work and internships since those activities do qualify as work. Since many of your jobs were probably summer or seasonal, enter the season or just the year such as Summer 1998, Winter Semester 1999, School Year 1996.
You also might want to consider beefing up your job title - but don't go overboard. Use a title that best describes what you actually did on the job. The term "associate" is popular today - your title might have been a Retail Clerk but you really helped sell clothes - you could change this to Sales Associate. Again, under your work history include any work you performed that shows you have the skills for the job that you have targeted.
Example See resume work history sample
Education and Training
We've added training to the title so you can highlight any extra classes, seminars or internships you might have taken in addition to your High School Degree. If you're going for a job that would benefit from a little extra training, immediately sign up for a Continuing Education course at the Community College - it looks good on your resume and guess what - it's good for you. You can list this BEFORE you finish the course, as long as you are attending classes.
Examples: See Education and Training sample
Sample resume: See Sample Resume
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