Hi I'm Theodore I work at the
University Career Center as an outreach
PCA going across campus and making sure
you guys know what resources that we
offer today we're going to be talking
about some common mistakes that students
put on resumes one that I want to mention is
putting personal information on a resume
putting age putting height weight maybe
marital status number of kids that might
seem weird but some students do put that
I must say that students that are study
abroad here in America usually put that
information in fact that information is
usually crucial on a European resume
like the ages and the height etc and we don't we
don't look for information like that on
our resume so no personal information
like height age weight hey everybody my
name is Shannon Lindsey I work for the
University Career Center as an outreach
PCA so my job is to go around campus and
to make sure students know about the
Career Center's resources so the first
Personal Interest
one I'm going to talk about is personal
interest / hobbies so a lot of times
students will add an interest section
where they add things like they like
skiing skydiving taking care of
their dog things like that a lot
of times students do that when they feel
like there's not enough on their resume so
they do that to just take up room
essentially so I wouldn't have a section
like that definitely stay away from
things that aren't related to your
career per se so perhaps like if you're
a theater major or like a graphic design
major maybe you want to say designing
maybe you want to say acting so you just want
think about tailoring that to your
career some students also put in skill
section where they say stuff like
leadership leadership skills management
organization time management different
things like that we also suggest that
you just incorporate those skills into
your experience section so into your
bullet points but if you are a freshman
and you don't have a lot on your resume
it is okay to have that skill section
just don't overwhelm your resume with
that and take it off as you go along for
Experience
me the crux of any resume is the
experience the information you put in
the experience to let employers know
what you did in the past so you can help
them in the future we have a lot of
students coming in and in the experience
they start putting sentences of course
we have data that shows some employers
take about eight seconds to look at a
resume and if you put information in
sentence format that might hinder
them looking at your resume at all so
you want to make sure that you put that
information in bullet point form we have
a handy formula that we use to write
bullet points in the Career Center you
start with a power verb or an action verb like
consolidated initiated lead managed than
we talk about what you did so include
detail about the activity that you did
if you have any data to back up your
claims for example if you were a sales
associate and because of these sales
rose twenty percent please include that
as part of the what and then you ask why
you did something so what was your end
goal for doing something if you started
a recycling program here at UNCC did you
do it to help the environment did you do
to clean up the campus and then if
applicable ask how so go into the
process of how you did certain things I
find that in jobs that students had that
were very hands-on whether it was an
entry level fast-food job or a project
if you an engineering student or a grad
student how is very applicable at
question to ask so the process of how
you did certain things so summarize
power verb what why and how so remember
try not to put sentences on your resume
and use bullet points using the formula
now it is worth mentioning to say that
I'm a PR major and how I was taught is
that we actually don't put bullet points
in our experience section we put
sentences so while the PR department may
require sentences the University Career
Center says for you to put bullet points
please double check with your department
with your departmental standards to see
if there can be sort of a conflict of
interest between the career center and
that department of yours whether it's
business or engineering so our next
One Page
major mistake is that undergrad students
make their resume more than one page so
this is okay it is ok to have a 2-page
resume when you are graduate or above so
when you graduate you can have a 2-page
resume or if you are in graduate school
but in undergrad we do suggest a
one-page resume just because employers
typically look at your resume from eight
to ten seconds so you don't want to
overwhelm them with the amount of
information because that could deter
them from reading more in-depth into
your resume you know they are going
through so many so they're going to you
know discard ones that don't look very
good
and they're also going to discard the
really long ones because they don't have
time to read over those so definitely
condensing your resumes to one page and
there's a lot of ways you can do that so
you can like make your margins point 5
you can go down to 10 font and just kind
of look at different spacings may be
condensing your bullet points a lot of
times bullet points are repeated or skills
are repeated so you don't want all of
that information also taking out
redundant information or like high
school things from high school if you
are above a sophomore the next major
Personal Pronouns
mistake is people add personal pronouns
to their resume so these are things like I my
us we things like that so you don't
really want them on your resume
especially in your bullet point section
so under your experiences and then like
your objective or your summaries of your
top of your page you want to start those
things off with action verbs so things
like facilitating communicating managing
leading things like that you're also
going to tailor those bullet points to like past
present positions