Tom Woodie
It’s difficult to find help writing a resume. Well, to be more precise, it’s difficult to find good help writing a resume. There is plenty of information out there, from career centers to online websites, but the fact of the matter is that a lot of it is out-dated crap. Students are downloading the same worthless resume templates and all making the same mistakes (not to mention turning in a cookie cutter resume).
Our cv writing center wrote 5 tips for finding help when writing a resume:
1. Your Teachers Are Not Experts
First off, it is important to realize that your professors are not necessarily the best people to go to for help writing a resume. Sure, it never hurts to get an opinion, but don’t forget that this is all it is.
Unless they are some proven expert in the field, there is no reason to think they know more than anyone else, and in act they may know less because teachers tend to stay with the industry for a long time and do not do much job searching.
2. Your Career Center May Not be Qualified Either
On a similar note, for too many people, the college career center has proven to be a dead end. Someone once told me they found their unemployed neighbor working in their career center.
And many will send you away with nothing more than a stack of standardized forms and a resume handout that will give birth to an ugly 5 page document that will send an employer running. Their intentions are good, but too many of these places are not caught up with the times.
3. Have 3 People Look it Over
I don’t want to discourage you about getting help though. You should definitely have at least 3 responsible friends look it over and get their opinion. Most of all, they should be looking for spelling and grammar mistakes, which can be detrimental.
4. Network with Managers
One great resource for help with writing resumes are people who work in executive positions and have been on that side of the hiring process before. If you know people like this, do not be afraid to get their opinion—it may be the best resource you have. And who knows, maybe someone in their network is hiring.
5. Ask for Help from Successful Friends
One more possible place to find qualified help is friends with proven results at getting hired to big companies, especially if their resumes landed them a lot of interviews while they were searching. Ask them to look over what you have got and give some tips. Or maybe you can even see the one they used.
