Build the Resume Employers Want

      Matt Longino has read student resumes on college and university campuses throughout the nation. He has pored over pages of bond, vellum, and plain printer paper in hotel rooms, airports, and airplanes. He has seen faxed resumes, e-mailed resumes, and resumes posted on the Internet. Very little surprises him.

      It’s much the same for Stephanie Calhoun and Seth Feit. Like Longino, they’re familiar with the ways students describe their skills and themselves. They know how to quickly scan paper and electronic documents, to pull out the ones they’d like to examine more closely, and to toss the others aside.

      Longino, a college recruiter for GTE Corp. in Irving, Texas, says he looks at the education portion of a resume first.

      “I look for the degree, the major, and the graduation date,” he says. “And, of course, the GPA. It’s kind of a lump sum of things that I look for.”

      Calhoun, college relations manager at JC Penney Co. Inc. in Dallas, Texas, says she looks at the experience section first.

      “I look to see if the student has retail experience,” she says, adding that she then checks out the graduation date and the GPA.

      Feit, corporate staffing manager at America Online in Fairfax, Virginia, says he looks first for skills and experience.

      All three recruiters agree that aside from containing the education, skills, and experience they seek, a resume needs to communicate those elements clearly and be free of glaring grammatical and spelling errors.

Getting started

      If you’re just beginning the process of building your resume, you’ll need to construct a framework first.

      “A resume is like a final term paper,” says Jeff Nardo, career services coordinator at Coastal Carolina Community College in Jacksonville, North Carolina. “You have to put in the same energy, attention to detail, and focus.”

      Your resume should begin with a heading that includes your name, address, telephone number, and, in most cases, e-mail address. If you’ll be leaving campus soon, be sure to provide a way for employers to reach you after you’ve moved from your dorm room or apartment. If you’re not sure where you’ll be living, it’s best to include both your campus contact information and contact information for your parents or a friend who isn’t planning to move and who won’t mind taking and forwarding messages.

      “I often tell students to sign up for a free e-mail account that can travel with them,” says Marcia Merrill, career adviser at Loyola College in Baltimore, Maryland, pointing out that most campus e-mail accounts end within a certain time after a student graduates.

When you’re choosing that e-mail address, make sure it appears professional.

      “I don’t feel comfortable responding to ‘sexylegs,’ ” Calhoun says. “Keep it simple.”

      If you have your own web site, you may also want to include its URL on your resume. But both recruiters and career counselors stress that you must make sure your site contains only professional information and images.

Objectively speaking

      After you’ve assembled your heading information, you’ll need to find a focus for your resume. One good way of doing that is to write an objective that clearly tells the employer the sort of work you’re hoping to do.

Merrill advises students to avoid writing grandiose “philosophy-of-life” objectives.

      “Some students look at the objective as a statement of what you want to do with your life,” she says. “Employers get a lot of ‘To continue learning and growing in a nurturing environment.’ You can probably say it in a different way.”