Wednesday, March 31, 2010

College Student and Intern Resumes

Having just reviewed over 200 resumes for an intern position on my team I have a few words of advice for college students writing a resume.
  • The two most important things on your resume are your education and interesting projects you've done.  And by interesting projects I don't mean homework, as I've just seen at least a dozen resumes from USC students with the same list of projects from their classes.  I have no way to distinguish whether you did a better job on the "Flickr-Facebook Mashup" than your 11 classmates.  I mean something unique that you worked on.  Be specific about the tools and technologies you used, and if you were working as part of a team what specifically you contributed.  Your unique and interesting projects could be unique classwork, work experience or just things you've done in your spare time.  Don't be embarrassed to list spare-time projects on your resume, they're just as real as work.
  • Skip the Objective statement, I know you want a job or I wouldn't be looking at your resume.
  • A Skills list is good, as long as you limit it to stuff you know fairly well and don't list everything you've ever heard of.  If your Skills list is longer than mine would be I'll just assume you're lying.
  • A little section at the end with extra-curricular activities or interests is good, it makes your resume interesting and tells me a bit about you the person.  Hiring someone is as much about personality fit as technical ability, some give me a reason to think I'll like you as a person.

Friday, March 26, 2010