Writing Your First Resume

Organizing the Resume

Resumes can be organized chronologically according to education, work experience, and related experience; or functionally according to the kind of experience gained.

• Chronological organizations: This is the most frequent type. In resumes organized chronologically, it is easy to see where a person has worked and when that experience was gained. Under Work Experience, be sure to include the month as well as the year when a job was begun and ended.
• Funtional organizations: The advantage of functional organizations is that if the person applying for a job has gained specific skills in a variety of work situations, this experience can be emphasized by a functional grouping.
• Combination: Probably the best organization for a general resume is a combination of both. In this format, experience is listed chronologically, but a bulleted list is included which highlights specific functions and skills.

Designing your first resume

When you are first starting out, you often do not have much information to place in your resume. To make your resume look its best

• Select a layout and design that fills the page. Don't crowd all the info at the top of the page.
• Combine a functional design with a chronological design to emphasize the experience you do have.
• Use a combination of font colors, sizes, and styles but do not use more than two colors (with most of the text in black or very dark brown), two styles (one style should be either Times Roman or Helvetica), or three sizes (no larger than 14 pt and no smaller than 10 pt).
• Always print your resume on resume paper (it's not that expensive) using a laser printer or a very high quality ink jet printer (or have it printed professionally).
• If you received any special recognition while in elementary school or middle school, include those schools on your resume (if you include elementary, list all three), otherwise just list your high school.
• Include under Education, awards received, special projects for which you received recognition, extracurricular activities, clubs participated in, offices held, honor roll membership, rank in class (if in top 20%-25%), special skills learned, high scores on national tests, or other special honors for each school listed. For instance,
  • Letter in Football
  • First trombone
  • President of chess club
  • Worked with planer, jointer, crosscut saw, band saw, and router
  • Editor of High school newsletter
  • Wrote article for middle school newsletter
  • Special recognition, National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test
  • Beta club member, three years
  • Typing, 65 wpm
  • AV Club, Stage hand and sound assistant
  • Have used Excel, WordPerfect 9.0, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Microsoft Office 2003
  • Teacher's Assistant
  • Played Jr. Varsity basketball
  • Top Salesman, 7th grade school magazine sales

• Include under Related Experience any hobbies, skills learned at home, responsibilities, part-time jobs, or other activities that demonstrate initiative, responsibility, and skill. For example,
  • Coached Little League team
  • Babysitter for two families, children aged 3-11
  • Helped father rebuild Toyota engine
  • Sing in church choir
  • Teach Junior Sunday School Class
  • Church soloist
  • Wrote my own webpage at http://www.someplaceontheweb.com/~mypage/
  • Chattanooga Times paper route, four years
  • Summer camp counselor
  • Girl Scouts, three years
  • Volunteer for American Cancer Society Walk-a-thon, two years
  • Knit, crochet, and needlepoint
  • Built my own computer: 686 motherboard and chip, 80 gig HD, 3.5 FD, 56 kbs modem, 36X CDROM/DVD drive and 32 bit sound card

• However, do not pad your resume, and above all, be honest.

Using the guidelines above, I have created a sample resume for you to model.