As seniors investigating what makes a great resume, we asked alumni with jobs in human resources and our own University Career Services team to find out the answers.
Here is a short video from Bryan Rose ‘11. In it, Bryan answers the most frequently asked questions about resumes. Bryan Rose is an Assistant Director and Campus Career Engagement at the University Career Service Office.
To add perspective on resumes, we interviewed Alan Henshaw (‘03), who is Senior Manager, Talent Acquisition at Slalom. Alan had a few tips on what would make a good resume standout.
Alan noted at the average resume is reviewed for 7-10 seconds before a decision is made to move a candidate forward.
His recommendation is to make it stand out by putting your name in large font on the left hand side and then create a text box on the right with contact info.
He said that a lot of students like to put an “Objectives” statement on their resume. For Alan, he has not added an objective statement on his resume for almost a decade. And believes that objectives disqualify more candidates than helps.
Make your education in bold to make it stand out and avoid abbreviations, and be sure your resume is clean and formatted appropriately.
We learned that hiring managers read resumes in as little as 5-7 seconds, so you need to your resume to be clean, concise, free of grammatical errors, and most importantly tailored to each individual job opportunity.
The other thing we learned about resumes is that there is no universally agreed upon resume template or style. Although everyone has their own preferences, the people we talked to agree that a resume should stand out and be easy to read whether or not your name and contact information are centered, left-justified or in a text box.
To make an appointment or explore the many other resources the University Career Service Office has to offer visit http://www.longwood.edu/career/our-services/.
Here is Bryan Rose to talk more about the resources available.
About the Author
Drew Pelkey, Savannah Scheerer, Nicole Stevens
Drew, Savannah and Nicole are 2016-2017 interns in the Office of Alumni and Career Services. They are Department of Communication Studies majors actively working (sometimes a little too hard) to enjoy their Senior Year. On the side, they're pursuing jobs and careers in communications, higher education and/or still working to be inspired.
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