Your resume and cover letter can quickly decide your fate; poor ones will pull you out of the running before you even get to the starting line, while great ones will earn you a trip to the top of the "prospective hire" pile. Your resume and cover letter are the first thing that an employer sees about you, and anyone who has ever gone on a date knows the importance of that first impression!
Even though A+ Summer Jobs offers automated resume creation tools, we strongly recommend you read this guide. Your resume and cover letter represent you to the employer - in fact, they will probably know nothing else about you - it’s likely that the resume will be used as a guideline during your interview. So while the automated tools will help you create and format your resume, this guide can help your get noticed. Noticed in a good way, that is.
What Exactly is a Resume?
A resume is a summary of your work experience, education, and personal qualities that is used to convince an employer that you are qualified for a particular job. It provides a brief and concise report of your personal history regarding your ability to function well in a structured environment such as school, the workplace, and the community. The resume should concentrate mostly on quantifiable events and skills - meaning things you have actually accomplished, not abstract qualities. For example - the statement, "increased sales by 75%" is preferable to "I’m really a people-person." Any mention of personal qualities should be in the context of real work, education, or extracurricular activities.
There are many different styles of resumes - the chronological, functional and combination - but here you will learn to make a chronological (also know as the "classic") resume. We chose this format because it is the most widely accepted. Much of the substance of the chronological resume focuses on your actual work and educational experiences, and offers a concise, readable format in which you can best describe your skills.
