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How To Structure Your First Resume

When you’re fresh out of college and ready to start your career, you won’t have the training and experience that many of your competitors will have. Therefore, it’s vital that you arrange and organize your first resume in a professional and easy to read format. This could mean the difference between being chosen for an interview and being passed over for someone else.

The resume is a summary of your training and qualifications. You want to portray this information in such a way that it makes the reader want to learn more about you and what you have to offer the company. It should intrigue them enough to make them want to bring you in for an interview. Once you get the interview, you’ll have an opportunity to personally show off your skills.

It’s important to understand that there are different types of resumes but the most common one used for the first time is called the “Functional Resume”. This one puts most of the emphasis on your abilities and education instead of your work history.

A functional resume should be arranged as follows:

• Personal Information- Your name, address, phone number and email address should always come first and be listed in that order at the top center of the page. If you don’t have an email address, get one because this is a necessity in the electronic age that we now live in.

• Objective- Your objective will include why you’re a good candidate for the job and how you can be an asset to the company.

• Qualifications- Make a list of your qualifications using action verbs that will get the attention of the reader.

• Experience- This is where you need to put down any experience you have acquired over the last several years. This will include any voluntary work, part time work or anything else that you’ve done that has helped you gain work experience. If you can, get references from anyone that you’ve worked for even if it was volunteer work.

• Education- List all of your education especially any college courses that you’ve completed and all degrees that you have earned. Be sure and list the year you graduated, and the year in which you completed each degree.

• Accomplishments- The last section should list all of your accomplishments to date. List everything that you can that shows you have the ability to reach your goals and be an asset to the company.

Never add extra information to your resume that is not relevant to the job position you’re applying for or try to pad it to make it look like you have more experience or training than you do. The employer is not expecting you to have a long resume and this is not what they’re looking for. They’re more interested in the quality of the resume not the length.

It’s vital that you’re always honest on your resumes. If you exaggerate or claim to have training that you don’t it will eventually come out and this will hurt your reputation in the long run. Every good resume is accompanied by a well-written cover letter that complements the resume and that’s specific to the position that you’re applying for. You now have all the information you need to write and present your first resume.