College Student Resume

Yep, it’s true, you need a resume to find a good job. This is true for anything past your basic waiting-tables or man-the-register summer experience. A college student resume is pretty simple to write, and it will give you a leg up on getting your career started.

When you’re first starting out in the job market, your resume can be very simple. At this point in your life, employers will know that you don’t have a lot of job experience, so your schoolwork and extracurricular activities will play a major role in your resume.

As you progress through your career, you’ll drop these once you have relevant work experience.

A resume consists of four basic parts: heading; objective; work and educational experience; and relevant skills.

The heading is the easiest part. It consists of your name and contact information – address, phone number, and email address. Put the entire resume in a simple, common font, so it will stay formatted when employers open the file.

The objective should be general if you’re posting it on a job site, but specified to particular jobs when you’re sending it for an advertised position.

Work and educational experience is the meat of the document. First, list your educational experience, mentioning honors.

If you haven’t yet completed your degree, it’s appropriate to list the course of study and degree with the expected graduation date.

Follow this with your work experience. In a college student resume, as with any other, list any jobs you’ve held in reverse chronological order, and include your responsibilities. If you’ve served in officer or similar positions in college organizations, you may include them as well.

The final section of your resume is skills. Include computer software knowledge and proficiency, any languages you speak, strong interpersonal skills, etc.

For the first few years of your career, your resume should be short – no more than one page in a standard font size (usually 11 or 12 pt.).

Write your resume using professional language, with good punctuation and grammar. Show of what you know, without bragging. Your college student resume won’t be the one thing that gets you a job…but you won’t get a good job without it!