Stand Out by Changing your Resume

By Maria Martinez
Blog Content Contributor

There is no right or wrong way to do a resume. Just because you follow a certain model doesn’t mean you are getting more jobs than everyone else. Every student has a different template or outline that works for them, and that is okay.  The most important thing in a resume is the content, like what have you done or what you are capable of doing, but having a good format will help you make it even better.

I met with my advisor at Texas State University to talk about internships, and one of the first things he asked me to do was to show him my resume. This was the first time anyone had helped me with my resume. I would always just get internet templates and change them with my information. However, I suggest that if you do the same thing I did, consider having a professional critique it before you hand it to an employer.

The advisor gave me many tips on how to have a cleaner resume. He said I had good content but he could help me boost it. The recommendation that stood out for me the most was that my skills should be on the top of my resume, right after my name. I had never heard this; I always thought having your education at the beginning was the “right” way of arranging it. But I learned that skills should be on the top of your resume for two main reasons:

1.It is what makes you different from anyone else.

Every candidate can list where did they go to college, what their major and minor is, but not everyone has the same skills as you do.  The skills section is where you can “brag” about what have you learned in school or on your own. You can list as many things as you want, everything is important.

2. Employers want to know what you can do for them.

Employers’ main concern when hiring someone is what that employee can bring to the table. Showing employers what you are capable of doing is what is most important to them. They can be impressed about your 4.0 GPA, but they will care more if you know how to handle the Adobe Creative Cloud, Microsoft Office, HTML 5, etc.

After our discussion about this, I was convinced that skills need to be on top of our resumes. The main purpose of having a resume is to get a job, so help yourself getting the job of your dreams by tweaking it a little. Try to make your skills list longer, there are many resources online such as lynda.com that can help you learn a variety of skills.