RESUME TIPS from Sundt

Tips and Tricks to Submitting a Successful 

Entry-Level Resume

Your resume and cover letter are the first (and sometimes last) impressions you will give a prospective employer. With these documents, you leave behind clues to your organizational skills, atention to detail (notice anything missing?), communications ability, life priorities, idiosyncrasies, and more. A good resume and cover letter don’t guarantee success, but poor ones may guarantee failure.

Top 10 Absolutes to Writing a Stronger Resume

1) Include Email address – (sounds simple, doesn’t it? But so many fail to include this).  Best to provide one independent of your college email, so that your information will still be accurate in an employer’s database after you graduate. And please, edit yourself. When your email address reads tapakegaday@dufus.com it doesn’t make you more marketable. We look at those things and make judgments. 

2) Include Phone number (cell is best)

3) Include your major, anticipated graduation date, and current GPA (if overall GPA is not stellar, candidates often include the GPA in their major – this is ok).

4) If you are a new graduate, your resume should be no more than one page long, unless you have worked or been in the military for a number of years before entering school, have been in a coma for more than 3 years, or have something very interesting to relate, such as your work as a roadie for a popular rock band.

5) Always include work you have done – internships relevant to your major are best (at least two is what we look for), but other jobs may also help you. A job at Home Depot means you likely have learned good customer service skills. A job as a bouncer for the local strip club, on the other hand, may speak well of your physical prowess, but not well about your career choices or perseverance in finding a more relevant job to your stated aspirations.

6) Always include dates of employment – if it was a three-month internship, note that, along with the months and year.

7) Always include extra-curricular activities. We look favorably on candidates who are well-rounded and have been part of a team, or led a group, so include track team, chorus, swimming team, student AGC vice-president, community volunteer, sorority president, etc., if that describes you. 

8) Exercise caution on religious and political affiliation. It’s fine to mention you are a member of a religious youth group or worked on a Presidential election campaign, but if all your extra-curricular activities are focused around this, it may send the wrong message about how well-rounded you are. Religious and political affiliation are also the types of things we’d simply rather not see or know about on resumes, since we don’t want to be accused of bias in one or another direction.

9) Write and present yourself in your own voice. Write as much as possible, the way you speak (unless you are incoherent, then maybe get some help). Third person blather (“Mr. Jones has extensive experience in construction management…”) is annoying.

10) Proof read!!! Especially your cover. Make sure you are sending it to the right company.  Many candidates write to tell me how excited they are to apply for an opportunity at Parsons or Turner or McCarthy – while these are great companies, we here at Sundt feel less than special to receive a misdirected form letter – it speaks to detail-orientation. If the candidate got this detail wrong, how closely will they be looking at the contract terms and conditions we put on their desk as a future employee? Make sure you spell everything correctly. When candidates tell us they are meticulous, but misspell the word meticulous, it’s bye-bye resume. Get a friend to look over your resume and cover before sending out.