YoUR step-by-step resume guide

What’s a resume?

A resume is a document that helps you market and highlight the most relevant skills and experiences you bring to a specific opportunity. Employers use resumes to screen and evaluate applicants as they decide whom to interview. Your resume and cover letter are important because they help you get an interview! After you’re selected, your interview helps you secure the position. At every step, your goal is to convince employers that you are the best fit for the specific role they are trying to fill.

Resumes aren’t mysterious or difficult to master, and our UR guide walks you through the process step-by-step: 1. Draft a resume, 2. Review it with UR’s rubric, our staff, and/or our free online Big Resume tool, 3. Keep your resume current by adding new experiences!

If you are…Go to…
New to resume writingGetting Started
Anatomy of a Resume
Resume sections: detailed guidance
How to describe your experiences
How to make your resume sparkle
Additional Resources
Editing an existing resumeRevising and Tailoring
An alumAlumni Resumes

Getting Started

The view from 30,000 feet: Key tips

  • For human readers, a typical “first read” is a scan of 6 or 7 seconds and rarely more than 30 seconds.
  • Your first reader is increasingly likely to be a machine.
  • Clarity, economy, and standard conventions are your friends!
  • Tailor your resume to specific opportunities to match the job descriptions for which you apply.

Anatomy of a Resume

Resumes are documents that rely on conventions and organize information into blocks. You’ll choose how to name and order the sections of your resume, but almost all students will include a header with contact information as well as sections that convey your education, experiences, and skills.

Resume sections: detailed guidance

Include your name, phone number, and email address (mailing address, LinkedIn URL, and/or personal website or portfolio links are optional)

  • Start with most recent degree and work backwards (omit high school by sophomore year)
  • Include university, location, degree pursued, and anticipated graduation (not date range)
  • Include your cumulative GPA (if 3.00 or higher); you may add your major GPA as a supplement to the cumulative.  Be sure to identify each GPA you are listing (e.g., Cumulative GPA: 3.08;Psychology GPA: 3.38).
  • If including your GPA, be honest: use the GPA listed on BannerWeb, do not inflate the number or round it up, and be sure to list two decimal points (e.g., GPA: 3.49 does not = 3.5).  Any violation will be reported to the Honor Council.
  • Transfer students who do not yet have a UR GPA may list their previous institution and the GPA they earned at that institution. Do not average your UR and previous institution GPAs.
  • Consider listing relevant courses or other pertinent training (lab work, etc.)

  • If honor or award is well known, list the name of the specific award or program
  • If less widely known, write a brief description of the honor or award; include date(s) received

  • Include anything that allowed you to develop relevant skills—jobs, volunteer positions, internships, extracurriculars, leadership positions, class or independent projects, or clinical/field experience
  • Focus on accomplishments – how have you impacted the organization in your role?
  • Highlight any leadership roles you have held, both extracurricular activities & work positions
  • Always include job title, company/organization, location and date range for each position
  • Create section titles that fit your experiences (Leadership Experience, Media Experience, etc.)

  • Skills: “hard skills” such as computer/software, foreign languages, lab skills, military experience, etc. “Soft skills” (e.g. communication, critical thinking, teamwork, etc.) should be highlighted through descriptions in the Experience section(s).
  • Interests: Be specific, such as “classical jazz and sailing” vs. “music and sports”
  • References: Create a separate document with reference names, contact info, and relationship. Don’t forget to ask them first!  Refer to the “References Page” handout for more guidelines.

How to describe your experiences

Every line of your resume advertises your qualifications and fit: Why are you a great choice for the employer? To help employers quickly recognize your value, use the STAR technique to answer 5W1H: who, what, where, how, when, and why? (Good news! You can use the STAR technique for interviews and cover letters, too!)

S – Situation (context, such as your employer or project)

T – Task (the specific charge or problem you were asked to solve)

A – Action (what you did)

R – Result (quantify whenever you can)

An important resume convention calls for you to use bullet points and action verbs to convey the importance of your experiences. Another eliminates the need for personal pronouns or complete sentences. What does it look like when you put it all together?

Your resume should move beyond simply highlighting your responsibilities and instead focus on your skills and accomplishments in each role or activity. Starting each description sentence with a strong action verb can help you to best articulate your abilities.  Refer to the “Action Verbs” handout and the example below to get started.

For Example:

As an intern for American Management Systems you were responsible for writing a report.

To add this information to you resume, consider the following questions to create strong bullet points.

Who?  Who did the work – one individual, two people, or a team?

Wrote a collaborative report

What?  What was the subject matter?

Wrote a collaborative report on quality management teams

Why?  What was the purpose of your work?

Wrote a collaborative report on quality management teams to update project managers on latest developments in the field

How?   How did you do this work?

Researched latest developments in quality management teams using journals, the Internet, and interviews with project managers

When?  Did you have to work within a certain timeframe?

Completed report one week ahead of schedule

How much?  Can you quantify your work?

Independently researched and wrote a 20-page report on quality management teams

What happened?  What happened to your work after you completed it?

Conducted one-hour oral presentation of findings to senior managers

Big picture?  Did your work have an impact on the organization overall?

Persuaded management to begin using new team design that increased efficiency 15% during the first 6 months of its implementation

How to make your resume sparkle

There is no one right way to set up a résumé. Here, we’ll walk you through some fine points and show you three alternative versions of the same resume entry. You can also find industry-specific resume samples and templates in the Career Services Resume Library on our website.

1. Choose a font. Tip: Keep it simple, professional, easy to read, and use it throughout your résumé.  The best fonts for applicant tracking systems (ATS)-friendly resumes are Arial, Calibri, Helvetica, Georgia, and Times New Roman.  Other options: Garamond, Tahoma, Bookman Old Style, Palatino Linotype, or Century Gothic.

2. Be consistent with your font size. With the exception of your name, keep everything the same size. You can use CAPS, bold, italics, and underline to accentuate certain parts of your résumé, but use these options strategically, consistently, and sparingly.

3. If you want to ALIGN certain elements on the right margin while the rest of the line maintains left alignment, set a right tab marker. (Example #3)

  • Look at the ruler at the top of the page and note where the right margin is (often 6.0)
  • Click the arrow to expand the PARAGRAPH menu on the HOME toolbar and select TABS
  • In the box that reads “Tab Stop Position”, type in the right margin (6.0)
  • Under Alignment, click RIGHT, then SET, then OK.
  • Position your cursor to the left of the information you want aligned to the right and click TAB once.

4. Use BULLETS to organize the descriptions of your experiences.

  • With your cursor in the position where the bullets will start, click the arrow next to the bullets icon in the PARAGRAPH menu of the HOME toolbar
  • Choose a simple form of bullet (• or ▪). Resist the urge to use shamrocks and other “cute” bullets.
  • Use the INCREASE or DECREASE INDENT icon in the PARAGRAPH menu of the HOME toolbar to move your bullets left or right
  • Do not use hollow bullets or interviewers may use them as check boxes.

5. If your bullets in one section are not matching up to the bullets in another section (or any type of formatting is inconsistent), use the FORMAT PAINTER.

  • Highlight the area that looks as you want it
  • Click on FORMAT PAINTER (HOME toolbar in the CLIPBOARD menu; looks like paint brush)
  • Highlight the area that is not yet as you want it—it will mirror the format of the first area

6. If you want to add horizontal lines to your résumé to accentuate section divides or headers:

  • You can use the BORDER icon in the HOME tool bar in the PARAGRAPH menu.
  • Click on the arrow that appears next to it to see your options—you can select a line on top, below, completely around, or any combination between
  • You can also vary these lines by selecting BORDERS AND SHADING to change size and color of lines (you can use shades of gray, but do not use other colors).

7. To make the words that comprise your section headers stand out more:

  • Under CHARACTER SPACING, select EXPANDED in the spacing drop down menu. Click OK.

8. With the exception of creative résumés, you should avoid using graphics or colors other than black and white.

Revising And Tailoring

A resume doesn’t work in a vacuum. Instead, it showcases your “fit” for a specific role by highlighting relevant skills and experiences. You want to make it as easy as possible for employers to see this fit, and you do this by “tailoring” your resume.Tailoring just means matching your resume to what this employer wants by choosing words that match or echo the language of the job ad. Imagine the employer is doing a “keyword search” on your resume for the skills and experiences they’ve listed in their ad: Tailoring is a form of “search engine optimization.” If this doesn’t speak to you, think of tailoring like translating your experience into the employer’s language.

For example, even if your summer job or volunteer opportunity wasn’t in same field as the internship you want, it probably helped you build relevant skills. Scan the job ad for key phrases like “data analysis” or “community engagement.” Then, show those same themes in your bullet points, especially through action verbs and outcomes.

Does this mean you need to create a new resume for each opportunity? At first…yes! Most students find that they quickly develop a small library of resumes, each suited for a type of role in a particular industry.

Tailoring is a useful skill, and the process will help you both learn about roles and industries and prepare for interviews. God news: YoUR Spider Prompt Library includes a “tailoring” prompt for your favorite chat bot. Even more good news (can you stand it?): Our team of human staff is always ready to lend a hand.

As you tailor and revise, take a look at UR’s library of examples and templates, ranging from a “universal basic” resume for undeclared students to industry-specific resumes in the arts, not-for-profit, finance, consulting, and more.

Alumni

As an alum or experienced professional, you likely have more experience than a typical undergraduate. You may also be pivoting to a new role or industry! Almost the basic guidance we provide to undergrads will apply to you, but you’ll have more choices to make. Will you use a chronological structure or a functional one? Will you include a professional summary or not? We’ve got you covered. More good news: Spiders can access the UR career team for life!

Additional Resources