Your resume is the main way that you present yourself to an employer either when seeking to find out about job opportunities or applying for an advertised position.

Learning about resumes

The Resume section of the EPC web contains advice, interactive tasks and model resumes to help you understand more about the purposes, style and language of resumes.

Writing your own resume

A good resume is targeted towards a specific job. It highlights the most relevant information and leaves out information that is not relevant. At this stage it may be difficult to target your resume in this way, so you should aim at producing a resume that brings out your competencies in relation to the field that you are interested in.

You should hand in the first draft of your resume in Week 3 and again in Week 4 after the lesson on resumes. Your teacher will give you feedback so that you can redraft it before sending it to your work-shadow contact for Career Exposure Day. Remember that every contact with an employer may aid your future job search, so when you are redrafting, be sure to target your resume clearly at the employer where you will spend your Career Exposure Day.

The language of resumes

Effective resumes are characterised by:

Clarity and brevity: Most student resumes should be no more than one or two pages in length (A4 paper). To meet this restriction on space, cut out unnecessary words.

Action words: Action words give a dynamic impression of your skills and activities. Remember the ten core competencies that employers look for and try to exemplify them.

Statements of experience: These summarise clearly and concisely what you have done in your career. Use action words and omit the personal pronoun ‘I’.

Click on Elaine’s photo to find out what she did with her resume after the course had finished.