Resume Tips & Tricks
Resume Tips & Tricks
A resume is often the first information a company receives about you. A good resume can make the difference in getting offered an interview and will help increase the chances of you being hired at one of your goal companies.
FORMATTING
General
Your resume should be able to fit onto one page. It should consist of a header with your contact information, and then three sections: Education, Experience, and Personal. The last section can also be interchanged with the title, “Skills & Achievements” if you wish. Make sure all of your margins and fonts are consistent throughout. Use common fonts like Arial, Cambria, or Times New Roman. Standard font size for bullet points is 11. Section headings and the page header can be larger. If you are struggling to fit in all of the pertinent previous work experience onto one page, you can shrink your margins to one inch and reduce your font size down to the smallest acceptable size, 10.
For your header, you do not need to label your contact information. Everyone knows what a phone number and an email look like. Use a professional email address. Do not have an informal username, or something that is difficult to remember. For example, soccerchick@email.com should be changed to jane.doe@email.com. Be aware of the stereotypes certain email domain names can carry. If a company’s hiring manager is picky, they can sometimes throw out resumes with commonly known older domain names because they perceive it as an inability to adapt and change. Gmail is a very safe option and is perceived as the new standard.
For your bullet points, include the locations of where you worked. However, do not use full street addresses or zip codes. Simply listing the city and state should be fine. If your job was international, list the city and country. For the dates, you can choose to abbreviate the months. If you do, be consistent. Make sure all of them are standard three letter abbreviations. If you wish to italicize the dates of your work experience, make it consistent and also italicize the dates throughout the resume. Also, make sure to use spell checker and have another person look over your resume to make sure your spelling and grammar are correct.
Template
We always recommend that you follow the Marriott School of Management resume template. The Marriott School provides a standard resume template for students to get started.
Marriott School Resume Template
Each individual emphasis or career choice may have different resume specifications. Look under Program Examples & Specifics to see specific recommendations and resume examples of a typical Junior or Senior seeking a full-time or internship position.
Program Examples or Specifics
- Accounting
- Entrepreneurial Management
- Experience Design
- Finance
- Global Supply Chain Management
- Human Resource Management
- Information Systems
- IS Resume
- Reid Grawe, the Career Director for Information Systems says that the ideal applicant will use the term “Specialized Courses” as a bullet point under the “Education” section on your resume. Also, he specifically says to not list class names and numbers but to rename the classes in terms of what skills you learned. Giving recruiters a better idea of the skills taught in the course will be infinitely more useful to you than simply stating the class name. For example, instead of saying “IS 241,” you can put “Programming with SQL.”
- Also, Reid Grawe specifically advises to not include your mission in the section “Service and Leadership,” but rather under “Experience.” You can use the guidelines given below within the Bullet Points section on how to craft your mission into a transferable experience. If you do not have any other recent service and leadership opportunities, you do not have to include that section.
- Marketing
- Coming Soon
- Mike Neuffer, the Career Director for Marketing, suggests putting “hard skills” that you are proficient in as a bullet point under the section titled “Education”. He believes that first impressions of a resume are built from the top down, and people will spend the most time looking at the top portion of your resume rather than the bottom.
- Strategic Management
BULLET POINTS
Education
Your education is a chance to show your academic excellence. At this stage in life, you can remove your high school diploma – it’s a given and often what allowed you to go to a University. If you are a transfer student but transferred without gaining an Associate’s degree, list it as “Transfer Student- General Studies”. It is highly recommended to put your GPA on your resume. Most employers have a minimum qualifying GPA of 3.0 for recent grads, so anything above that is acceptable. If you wish, after completing one semester of the junior core you can also list your Major GPA. Many career directors also recommend including any “hard skills” or specialized courses as a bullet point in this section- refer to Program Examples or Specifics.
Experience
Length
Each previous work experience can have a maximum of 5 bullet points, and each bullet point should contain only one statement. While you do capitalize each statement, you do not end them with periods. These statements shouldn’t be longer than two lines. If they are longer than one line, you are telling the company you didn’t put effort into making it more concise.
Content
Your bullets should show impact, use action words, and measure quantifiable change.
Showing Impact
Write your bullets to impress employers with what you have accomplished. Simply stating what the duties were in your job will not be enough. You need to show the impact your job had. An example of a subpar bullet point could be, “Managed the needs of a group of 5-6 clients.” This does not tell a potential employer anything about what you can accomplish. You need to raise the bar and state what influence or change you were able to make because of that responsibility.
If being able to display your impact does not come naturally, a good first step is to write out all your job responsibilities. After each statement write, ‘that’ and finish the phrase explaining what you were able to do with that responsibility. The end of that phrase shows the impact that you were able to make in that job, and building on that can help you create a great bullet point. If you finished the first sentence with “that I reduced the onboarding time on the new software by 3 days,” that is a good start. By crafting these bullet points to show you went above and beyond – it will show potential employers what you can do and why they would want you in their company.
Action Words
Start each bullet point with an action verb. This helps your bullets to not only be easier to read, but also emphasize the impact you had on customers and others. For instance, if your bullet point was “I worked on a project in my internship that decreased turnover by 12%”, you could rephrase it to, “Decreased turnover by 12% by ….” and succinctly explain your project.
Remove weak action verbs like “helped” or “assisted”. Replace ‘learned’ or ‘gained’ with ‘applied’ or ‘used’. You are expected to learn and gain skills in a job, but then apply them. Only use present tense verbs in the jobs you are currently doing, for all the others make them past tense. It also is possible to include sections in bullet points about what you are planning. For the impact, say that it is “projected to increase sales by…” and use realistic and fairly accurate numbers.
Quantifying Change
A good way to portray the impact you were able to make in your previous roles is to show a measured change that you implemented by using a number or percentage. Even if these impact-producing numbers on your resumes are estimates, ensure that they’re accurate and realistic. It can be as simple as comparing what the time/sales were before, and compare it to after your initiative. An example could be, “Led innovation to introduce seasonal toppings resulting in 14% increase in holiday sales.” Do some simple math, and you’ve got a fairly accurate percentage. Try to include the quantifiable change as soon as you can in the bullet points, because that is what will have the most impact on employers.
On Campus Internships (OCIs)
Don’t forget to include your on-campus internships in your experience section. When listing your OCI on your resume consider talking to your OCI Sponsor to establish the deliverables to list. The format for an OCI is no different than a regular internship or job, just be sure to list (On-Campus Internship) after the company name and before listing your title. Another option is to list that it was an OCI within the bullet points underneath the job description.
Soft Skills
Many candidates want to include soft skills in their resume, such as leadership, presentation skills, or certain achievements. To do so, simply infuse them into your bullet points. Some examples are, “Led a team of 12 to, Key member of a team tasked with, applied problem solving skills to, presented reports used by key management that, recognized for achievement in…” End all of it with a quantifiable amount as detailed above, and you are good to go.
“So What?” Test
This is a good test to help your resume be effective. To do the test, read every bullet point that you have written and ask “so what’? Every person who reads your bullet points will be asking the same question. Think about what potential employers will know/perceive you. Will this bullet tell them what you did and how it matters? If not, change the bullet points to tell employers about the importance of what you’ve done.
Church/Missionary Service
If you wish, you can put missionary or Church service experience in the Experience section. Limit this section to 3 bullet points. The first two should focus on leadership, training, teaching, motivating, organizing, and setting & achieving goals. The last should be used for humanitarian service.
Don’t use “Church words” like missionaries, wards, stakes, mission presidents, etc. Instead titles like, “Volunteer Representative” or “Regional President”. Try to think of alternative titles or phrases your reader would be familiar with to fully explain the breadth of what you did.
Transferable Experience
A common concern among Pre-Management students or Juniors looking for their Junior Year internship is that they have little relevant experience relating to their intended field. A strategy we encourage students to use is transferable skills. Transferable skills are “portable skills” that can be applied in many different situations. Typical examples of transferable skills are: Leadership, Time Management, Delegation, Communication, Process- Oriented, Analytics, Teamwork, Customer Service Skills, or any outwards achievement. No matter the position, any job can showcase transferable skills, and we encourage students to include them in the bullet points underneath that job.
Even if your job was something that feels small, you always made a contribution. For example, if your job had been working as a dishwasher at a local restaurant, focus on the impact your role had on the company. Did you eventually figure out a way to make it go faster, or be easier for you? A potential example of a bullet point could be, “Maintained order and streamlined dish-washing processes to reduce turnover time by 10%.” Even though that job doesn’t have any relevance to your future position, it can show employers that you are hardworking, dedicated, innovative, and will contribute to a workplace.
Skills & Achievements
In this section, you will want to include technical skills unless your career director has specified otherwise in Program Examples and Specifics. Many are tempted to list soft skills like organized or friendly, but this should be incorporated into the bullet points under Experience. Be precise when you describe your knowledge level. In certain technical skills, proficient means taught, but haven’t used it in the workplace. "Experienced" implies that you have used that skill successfully in a project. For foreign language, again be precise when describing your skill level. Do not put fluent unless you are comfortable using it in a business situation. For other levels of fluency, put conversational or proficient. Only ever include one bullet point about high school, and if you are an Eagle Scout and want to include it, it must be the last line in the section.
Personal
If you have chosen to list all of your hard skills in the Education section, some choose to title this section as Personal. This is the opportunity for employers to get to know your personality. Asides from the other options listed in Skills & Achievements, you can include your volunteer work, involvement with clubs/organizations, or anything else that will help you to be memorable.
References
You do not need to include the statement “references available upon request” at the bottom of your resume. All employers know that if you asked, you could provide one. If it is a concern, be prepared and have a separate page of references to take with you to an interview. Only provide it if asked.
COMPANY TAILORED RESUMES
Tailoring your resume to each company you apply for is perhaps one of the best things you can do. Hopefully by this point you have Company Matched, and so you could even create a custom resume per dream company.
If you are applying for a specific position, look for buzzwords on the application. They can deal with soft skills like leadership and team work, hard skills like VBA and Adobe Illustrator, or company values like scrappy, creative, and innovative. Highlight or write down those words, and then make sure to put those buzzwords into your bullet points. Make it obvious that you are the perfect candidate. If you are submitting a resume to the general “Careers” section of one of your dream company’s websites or sending it on to a connection within the company, customizing your resume will take a slightly different approach. Since you do not have an application to look for buzzwords, you have to do your homework on what that company values in its employees. Look for examples on any marketing material, ask employees, or even look at previous job postings to see what that company values. Once you’ve incorporated those points into your resume, you will have done your best to prepare.
COVER LETTERS
Only about 10-15% of job applications use cover letters, so these are just the basics. Your cover letter is a meant to give employers a window into your personality, and set you apart from other applications. You can reference your resume, but you will want to expand deeper about who you are and how you could impact the company if hired.
Formatting- Have 4 paragraphs with 4 sentences each if possible.
Intro- A written version of your “Me in 30 Seconds” elevator pitch, mention a connection with someone in the company, state why you like the company, two skills you want to expound upon.
Skill Paragraph 1– Integrate the skill with an experience where you demonstrated that skill. Ex: I always to my best to uphold m values not only in the workplace, but in personal life as well. I showed integrity when I was pushed to do sell something. While I could have gotten higher bonuses, I always made sure to sell things that I knew would positively affect a customer. I left with a clear conscious.
Skill paragraph 2 – Repeat with a different skill.
Aggressive close- Thank them for the opportunity to be part of the company, provide contact information. State you will follow up with them in 7 days (and do so) if you don’t hear back from them. End with a direct statement, such as “I look forward to joining your team and I am certain that it will be a positive experience for the both of us.”
FINALIZE
Resume Reviews
You should constantly be revising and refreshing your resume. It is extremely beneficial to have professionals review your resume and give you advice on how to improve. Your career director will have the most important and influential advice on your resume since they maintain relationships with the companies that come to recruit here at BYU.
You can get your resume reviewed by your career director by setting up an appointment on their profile pages or by talking to the Business Career Center front desk. You can also use VMock, an online scoring tool.
Uploading Your Resume
Once you have had your resume reviewed by multiple people including your career director, the final step is to upload your new resume to Handshake. Recruiters will have access to these uploaded resumes when you apply for a job through Handshake, or attend an Info Session on campus. Making sure that your resume on Handshake is updated is important to make the best first impression with on-campus recruiters. You wouldn’t want one of your dream companies to be sent your Freshman year resume, now would we?
A good resume can make the difference in getting offered an interview, just as a poor resume can get your application tossed aside. When your resume is professional, precise, and well-written, a recruiter’s decision to bring you into an interview will be easy to make.