When you get out of college the world can feel a little upside down. Freshly qualified grads usually have a lot of questions to answer and it’s not always easy to find the answers at first.
7 Common Resume Questions for Graduates Answered
This is especially true when it comes to writing a resume for the first time.
To make life a little simpler, let’s look over 7 of the most common questions graduates have when they first start preparing a resume and explain how you can answer these queries.
Why Do I Need a Resume?
Of course, a fundamental question many people ask is why they need a resume at all. Simply put, you need a resume to give recruiters a quick summary of your professional profile.
Ideally, this will give them enough information and an incentive to pick up the phone to arrange an interview with you.
Resumes normally only provide a brief glance of your abilities and experience, but enough to show that you’re up to the job.
This helps with the assessment process so that the recruiter can make an informed choice between all the candidates that apply.
Of course, it’s also great for applicants too as you can use it to give yourself more of a chance in the process, as long as you tailor your document properly.
How Should I Design My Resume?
One of the hardest things about starting out on your first resume as a college graduate is getting the design right.
Fortunately, these days it’s much easier to get past these doubts with the help of tools like online resume makers.
Fundamentally, the design of your resume needs to focus on prioritizing information and readability. You don’t need to go crazy with lots of colors and graphics.
A good layout that organizes all the details into clear sections is your best friend here.
Most of the time this will involve using a chronological format that focuses on your recent experience and tracks back in time.
However, you may also find functional formats, which focus more on your inherent skills a better option in some cases.
How Long Should My Resume Be?
A resume needs to trail a fine line between detail and brevity. However, most documents don’t go beyond 2 pages in length.
There’s a simple reason for this, recruiters only spend about 7.4 seconds looking through each resume on average. If you make your document too long, they’re going to miss crucial bits of it.
Most resumes reach a length of about 2 pages in the United States, so it’s sensible to work towards that criteria.
How Do I Cut Down My Resume If It’s Too Long?
It’s important to keep your resume from getting too long. That way it’ll be much easier to read for the recruiter.
To do this, there are a few options you can choose from to shorten your document.
First of all, you should reduce all your work experience entries down to bullet point lists of about 6 lines in total. Using bullets is a great way to save on space whilst keeping plenty of details on the page.
Another important tip is to be choosy about what extra sections you add to the layout.
If you’re being particularly minimalist, you might even just stick to the core sections such as:
- Name and contact details
- Resume summary
- Work experience
- Skills
- Education
Having too many additional subheadings and sections for awards or languages could clutter the design and potentially make the resume go on for too long.
This is especially a problem if they aren’t relevant to the job you’re applying for.
With white space at a premium on the page, you should be very selective in what you use and what you don’t use.
Therefore, ask yourself if you really need that extra section or not before sending in your application.
How Many Skills Should I List On My Resume?
Generally, it’s more important to make sure the quality is more important than quantity when it comes to skills on a resume.
However, the common wisdom is to fit between 5-10 abilities on the page.
When you add skills to your resume you need to make sure that they respond best to the job that you’re applying for.
Therefore, each point you do add ideally should help do the work of selling you to the employer.
This takes a little research but it is well worthwhile. By understanding the needs of the employer you can choose the best 5-10 skills to feature on your resume for the individual position at hand.
What Should I Do About My Lack of Work Experience?
When you’re new out of college, you’re not going to have as much work experience as other candidates. It’s just a fact.
That said, there are some ways you can work around this disadvantage effectively and still get in contention for great job opportunities.
Here, you’ll have to be tenacious and use as much previous experience of any and all related work that you can. There are a few ways that you can do this.
Some possible examples of experience you can use when you’ve never had a full-time job before include:
● Internships
● Part-time jobs
● Volunteering positions
● College projects
All of these can be used to plump up your experience section. Of course, like with your skills, you’re going to have to work to make these more relevant to the employer in question.
By using the experience you do have – even if it’s limited – and making it fit the profile of the employer you’ll have a much better chance of convincing them to give you a chance.
What’s the Worst Resume Mistake?
There’s no one simple answer to this, in most cases it depends.
However, there are plenty of mistakes you won’t want to make. These will either prove embarrassing or could even ruin your reputation amongst employers.
One of the most obvious choices for the worst mistake is probably lying on your resume. This is usually found out fast and can seriously damage your credibility.
However, other mistakes like errors in spelling and grammar will also cost you dearly if they appear on your resume.
These may only be small in scale but they can obliterate your chances unless corrected.
Getting hired straight out of college isn’t easy. There are so many new realities to adjust to, in addition to job searching, which can make the whole process feel overwhelming.
Conclusion
However, by using the answers to the questions above you can help cut down on some of that stress and move towards your new career much faster.
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