Resume Organizing tips for College Students

The corporate world of today has seen a major shift in the hiring process especially when it comes to fresh college graduates. Everyone wants to hire people with experience or some practical knowledge of the field. Hence, the ever increasing demand and importance of internship programs in the college curriculums across country. But to secure internships at any good organization the first step of the interview process involves sending across your resume to the employer.

Your resume defines whether or not you are approached by the company HR for the next step in the process. A good resume will help you stand out from the crowd and get noticed by the recruiter. But, designing a good resume and organizing it as per different organizations is where most college students struggle the most. There is a very big pool of the 'best formats' for the resume available from various sources. And a never ending debate on what's important and what should be necessarily put on the resumes and vice versa. But there are some key areas that everyone agrees upon, some of them are discussed below.

Helpful tips for resume organizing

Accomplishments V/s Duties

Most college students fail to understand the difference between their accomplishment and typical jobs or duties performed by them. In your attempt to cover as much detail as you can, you often point out boring, irrelevant tasks that convey no real sense of accomplishment. More often than not the accomplishment section fails to state the nature of work you carried out to have felt a sense of accomplishment. Accomplishments are meant to highlight your skills and learning that you gained to help you improve your personality.    

Most Important Comes First

A lot of resume formats state that your accomplishments or any work experience should be organized in a chronological order. While this may work for working professionals it is not that effective in the case of fresh college graduates. Just think, there are so many resumes that a company receives from fresher's like you. The HR possibly can't go through everyone of them thoroughly, most times they happen to scan through the important sections. In such a scenario, they look at the initial points more closely than those at the last. Mentioning your achievements or your skills or even your experience gained in a chronological order might lead to them missing out on the points that matter the most. The end result being your application might be deemed unworthy even if you had a great potential for the position. Hence, always put the most important points in the initial few bullet points of any section.

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References

A lot of students state at the bottom of their resumes that, 'reference are available upon request.' Doing that is nothing but a waste of valuable space. Employers anyways prefer clear, concise and short resumes and putting such irrelevant things is just waste of space. If you have references when you are sending out your resume, clearly state them on it. If an employer is impressed with a set of resume they will try to shortlist the best out of the list and if you already have sent a list of references they can save themselves time and straight away contact your references. Indeed you have to make sure that your references are relevant and they are aware that the people might contact them regarding you.

Alternatively, you might not mention any references anywhere on the resumes. For a lot of employers overlook the references you send them and conduct a background test on your profile through their own means. Mentioning your LinkedIn profile might be a better option than it. Bottom line the employer knows that if requires he can get references from you, you need not specify that especially to him. 

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Objective: Whether to include or not

A lot of students today are confused when it comes to writing an objective in their resumes. They are unable to decide whether to include it or not because a lot of resume formats today suggest to do away with an objective statement. Although, there is no hard and fast rule about including objective statements but if you do, you must understand the purpose of it. The reason the objective statement was done away with the first time was because it had become a repetition of meaningless general statements. But if you can tailor your objective statements to be something unique and customize them to the application you are sending out.

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In Summation

A good resume is the key to getting noticed by the employer and leave a positive image in their minds. The tips mentioned above will help you design and organize your resume in manner that will help you ace the first step of the interview process with favorable results. For more such interesting articles on tips for resume writing and other stuff on college life please visit, www.jagranjosh.com/college. Alternatively, you can also get such articles directly in your inbox by submitting your email id in the form given below.