What is a Résumé

A resume is a brief document that summarizes your education, expertise, employment history, and experiences that are relevant to your qualifications for a particular job for which you are applying. The purpose of a résumé (along with your cover letter) is to get an interview. Research has shown that résumé takes an average of ten interviews to receive one job offer, so your résumé needs to be persuasive and perfect, and in a friendly and easy-to-read format.

Resume Styles

• Modern resume
• Traditional resume
• Artistic resume

Résumé usually contains four sections:

• Contact
  • Your full name
  • Your permanent e-mail address
  • Your permanent mailing address
  • Your cell phone number
  • Your URL (if available)

• Education
• Experience and expertise
• Honors, activities, and outreach

Resume Design Considerations

• Purpose and audience
• Software considerations
• Effective content strategies
• Resume layout and design principles

Employers review hundreds, even thousands, of resumes. It’s your job to make it easy for them to see your outstanding skills and expertise. Here are a few tips on what to include and leave out:

• One page policy. If you plan to seek your career in the visual communication industry instead of a teaching job, you should limit your resume within one page.
• Keep it simple. Determine ahead of time what you’re going to include, and don’t try to stuff every piece of information you can into the document. If you give employers too much information ahead of time, they have no reason to bring you in for an interview to learn more.
• Make sure your contact information is easy to find—and don’t include every type of contact information you have, such as address, all phone numbers, and social media handles.
• Never lie on your resume; all information should be truthful.
• Don’t use graphic elements. When the resume is opened as a low-resolution PDF, it will look bad. If you want to show high-res graphics as part of a portfolio, provide a link in your resume. Do not use any graphic elements such as your portrait picture or curtain clipping art element.
• Be mindful of the PDF size. A 10-megabyte PDF might not make it through to the recipient’s email inbox, as there are often limits on file size.
• Show some personality! Be yourself. A potential employer wants to know who the real you are, and if you’ll fit in the company.

Finishing Your Resume

• Designing your resume in Word if you are not a viscomm major
• Setting up Illustrator or InDesign for a resume design if you are a viscomm major
• Proofreading the content
• Considering typography
• Organizing text hierarchy
• Outputting your resume as a PDF
• Either uploading your resume (both PDF file and Word file) to your personal website or creating a HTML resume page in your website so that your resume could be searchable
• Printing your resume on the special resume paper

Presentation: Post Graduation Experience (Career Center / Truman State University)