Confusing RR4

After reading the many readings for this week, I feel like I am back to square one. The first reading gave me a lot of confidence and I felt like my resume would be easy to write if I used its tips. Then I read another and began to question myself. After a couple more readings, I am still quite scared to start writing my resume. I had written all of my past resumes mostly based off of sample resumes, and didn’t make use of the many resources out there to help. Before reading this week, I thought that a resume would be easy to write if I just followed the rules and tips offered by these resources. I now realize that I must have been dreaming. There is so much conflicting information coming from so many different credible sources that there really are no exact set of rules to define a resume.

The readings did offer tons of tips for writing the resume. I just need to decide which ones are the best for me to follow. After thinking about it for a while I realized that this decision goes back to our reading for week 1 about audience. I need to figure out the type of person who is most likely to read my resume and which of these tips they might recommend. For instance, some sources say to list interests, hobbies, and activities. Others say that this is just cramming useless information. But how would someone hiring for a biology research associate feel about this information? I personally think that they could care less about it unless I spent my free-time dissecting frogs or something of that nature. Now I just need to answer that same question regarding the rest of the contradictory tips.

I did learn a lot from these readings. I feel much more prepared on how to word my experience to fit the job description and use buzzwords that will actually make sense. I also feel more knowledgeable about the general layout of the resume, including margins, headings, and fonts to use. While the readings definitely advanced my understanding of the resume, it also left me with more questions. I now realize that I have a lot of work ahead.

R4 Audience

secolema's picture

I think the best way to go about thinking about your audience in terms of what sections to put on your resume is not to think about it. You can't know exactly how the reviewer is going to be going through resumes so the best tactic is to include all the basic sections that are used. Even if you don't have activities or prior work related to the career the reviewer might still be looking specifically at those sections for candidates that stand out. So, I think the best root would be to still cover your bases because it would be tragic if you didn't get your dream job because you didn't put down that you had work experience flipping burgers.

Shane