Exercise - Build your resume
Creating a strong resume is your principal task as you're seeking an internship. A well-prepared resume can land you a job or at least spark enough interest for a company recruiter to reach out to you.
Before you jump right into creating your resume, though, an interesting question to ask yourself might be: What experiences do I put in it, and how do I describe them?
In this exercise, you'll learn how to recall experiences and describe them in various interesting ways.
Step 1: Get it on paper
It's tempting to just start pouring words into a text editor on your computer. But step back for a moment and consider taking a different approach: using physical sticky notes. Individual sticky notes can help you think about each experience without the distraction of having to format your text immediately.
Try this:
Tear off three sticky notes.
On each one, write a descriptive title that represents one of your most impactful experiences. Here are three example experiences:
3rd year project - course lab correcting software:
University IT Support
Master thesis - mobile app for restaurant serving personnel
Step 2: Describe the experiences
Flesh out each experience, describing it briefly and, most importantly, describing your impact on it.
Add a description of your experience and your impact on it. Here's how one sticky note might look:
3rd year project - course lab correcting software
Description: This software corrects a code lab and scores a pass or fail.
Impact: This software is used on all "intro to programming classes" which holds 100 students per class. An estimated 1500+ exercises have been corrected using this software.
Repeat the exercise on each of the other two sticky notes.
Step 3: Arrange them by impact
Consider your impact on each of these experiences.
Rank or grade your experiences according to their level of impact.
Your experiences are likely to vary quite a bit. They might be a mix of IT Support, software development, and leadership. It might make sense to rank these experiences according to the job or internship you're seeking. A project that produced, say, an app that was adopted for use by a company is likely to have a greater impact than a simpler project you undertook at school.
For example, if you're looking for a software developer internship, here's a possible ranking, from highest to lowest:
Master thesis - mobile app for restaurant serving personnel
3rd year project - course lab correcting software
University IT Support
The first two experiences are all about software development, and having actual code to show for them makes this ranking appropriate. However, depending on the nature of the role you're applying for, an IT support job can be a great experience to highlight because it demonstrates that you've put service-mindedness, empathy, and other skills to the test.
Create the resume
Now that you've practiced describing your experiences and prioritized them according to the roles you might be seeking, what's next?
It's time to write it all down by using Microsoft Word or another favorite word-processing program. We recommended that you find a resume template, but all you really need is a program that's capable of producing a layout, formatting type, and adding section headings.
- Select and download a resume template from a webpage of your choice. For example, go to the Microsoft Office Premium templates page.
- Transcribe the handwritten information from the sticky notes to the template.
Congratulations, you've organized your experiences, applied a resume template, and begun crafting an eye-catching resume.