Emergen March Challenge

Resume Writing – March Challenge

When was the last time you updated your Resume?

Emergen is encouraging you to do it now as well as enter the March Challenge.

Lack of experience in a preferred area is a common challenge for many young professionals.  In your resume though, you’ve got to make the most of what you’ve got.  Clearly you need to lead with your Education and Qualifications section.  This is going to be your biggest selling point.  It should be the most significant feature of your resume – so give it all the attention it deserves.

Following this, you should pick out skills you’ve acquired during your studies – regardless of whether or not you’ve yet had a chance to apply them in the workplace – and feature them as bullet points with a Key Skills section.  This should come immediately after your Education and Qualifications section.

Even if your work experience has been intermittent, part time and principally for the purposes of helping to fund your studies rather than having any relevance to your future career, you should still find it worth mentioning.  Some workplace experience is always better than none.

In my resume I have a section titled Key Skills; here I dot point some areas I explored during my uni days – such as project management, secretariat work, volunteer work etc.  Whilst I have never held a position in the workplace that has needed me to project manage people or to supervise others – showing that I have learnt the necessary skills to do so means that potential employers won’t discard my resume for “Lack of Experience”.

The other reason for little or no relevant work experience is when you are changing career paths.  If this is the case then I suggest firstly stating clearly your objective in moving into a different industry and then focusing on key skills and key experiences you may have gained in your past career life.

Obviously, writing a resume has many challenges, and I hope I have been able to provide a little light onto one of the challenges that face many young people find when writing their resume. 

Your Challenge This Month:

As we all need to update our resume from time to time, the challenge for you this month is to update your resume and post/comment on the best change or improvement you made – whether it was content related or style related.

How to Participate:

Add a comment below or write a blog post titled March Emergen Challenge with your answer to enter this competition.

Prize:

The best response will win a copy of the book “The CV Book –a definitive guide to writing the perfect cv” by James Innes. 

Challenge Closes:

Entries close on March 31st, 2011 at 11.59pm WEST and the winner will be announced first week of April.

Questions:

Please send to Ally Millington - AllyMillin956@emergen.com.au 

Congratulations to Marisa for winning this month's challenge!