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University of Massachusetts Amherst

Resources

These are some of the resources we would like to provide that can be helpful in the future. Be it while reaching out and applying to labs, searching for jobs in the future, your Summer Internship hunt, BURC has got you covered!

Resumés

A resumé is your own highly effective professional marketing tool. It is a very important resource you must have in order to showcase your skills and who you are to recruiters and employers. This is the first point of contact someone will have with your past professional experiences, and it is a quick and efficient way to demonstrate to the person taking a look just how great you are. A good resumé should be:

  • Concise
  • Properly Formatted
  • Visually Appealing
  • A Representation of Who You Are

Styling

You might have seen resumé templates on the internet that look really creative and colorful. Unfortunately the standard for scientific resumés is to make it look plain black and white. Font choice is subject of debate, and while some people say Sans Serif fonts such as Roboto or Arial look better on screens, at BURC we are fans of the classic Times New Roman, especially when being printed. The old school font allows great versatility, and our recommendation is to have everything but your name at the top of the page be in font size 10. Another good tip is to expand the amount you can write per line by making the margins as narrow as possible, changing them from the standard 1 inch to a half inch can provide you with a lot more room to work with as we want to keep these to a page.

Header

Writing vital information in the header can save you some real estate when first getting started on writing your resumé. The styling looks like it is hidden in a shallow grey, but when you go to export it, the file prints just fine. No need to write out your street number on the page. Our recommendation here is to have your name be styled in font size 14, and have information such as your phone number, email, Linkedin profile, and Town right below, each separated by | vertical brackets |.

resumeheader

Education Section

Our first section for a resumé as University students is the Education. The first thing is to write out the school you go to, as well as where it is located in bold. It is important to make the writing flush with both margins as it helps the visual aspect of the page. Here you should also list your degree type and major italicized, along with your expected graduation date. If you are minoring in a different subject, feel free to also include that here. The first bullet should be your relevant coursework, if you are a freshman you can list out all of your classes, and the older you get, the more specific your class list can be. The next bullet can range from a variety of different topics. It can be affiliations on campus such as (Biology Undergraduate Research) clubs, organizations, committees, Greek Life, among others. You can also cite more specific case studies or repeated positions such as "Teaching Assistant/Peer Tutor for X amount of semesters" to minimize the used space. The High School section only applies to freshmen, if you are no longer a first-year, that section should allow room for other shenanigans further down on the page.


Experience Section Headers

The Experience Section Headers are the most versatile parts of any resumé. It is here that you are able to concentrate specific topics for the different kinds of experiences you have acquired throughout the years. This is super important because you can make them as specific or vague as you wish, and they should be in FULL CAPS to really emphasize this. Examples can be Work, Laboratory, Research, Healthcare, Dental Care, Volunteering, among others. This allows you to shine a spotlight on a specific topic, as well as to group things that work nicely together. An example of this is if you are looking to go to Graduate School in the future. With a Laboratory Experience section header, you are able to list out all of the different lab experiences you have had throughout your time at and before school. The same goes for EMT, CNA, Dental Assistant, Vet Assistant, or any sort of specific area of knowledge you might want to highlight.


resumeexperience

Individual Experiences

These are the bread and butter of any resumé. This part of your document is crucial to demonstrate to the employer or whoever else that might be seeing it how great of a person you are. Experiences are not meant to be job descriptions of your previous positions. They should be demonstrations of the different actions you performed and the great skills you learned during your time at the position. These are usually laid out with the Company Name and location on the first line in bold, followed by the position and date range on the next line in italics. The next step are the bullet points, and these are the most crucial part of your resumé, it is here that you will be able to showcase all of the different skills you have acquired over the years of hard work you put in. It is important to follow a couple of different patterns when writing these bullets. They are supposed to start off with an action verb, and while quantifying things makes your bullets better, it is not a requirement. A good metric is to write your best bullet first, followed by 4-5 more depending on the different actions you performed at the position. Another important aspect is to match the tense of the verbs with the time period that the position was held. If it is ongoing, present tense should be used, however, if you are no holding the position, the verbs should be in the past. Another key aspect of writing about different experiences is that they should be in reverse chronological order, with the older positions being positioned further down on the list, and the ongoing ones at the top.

resumeexperience

Skills Section

This section is usually at the end of the page. It is used to showcase specific HARD skills someone has. These can be things like languages spoken, coding languages you know, certifications, or softwares you have mastered, among others. A good one to start you off is "Proficiency in Microsoft Office Programs", as most people are familiar and can effectively operate things like Word or Excel. This section is not, however, for SOFT skills. These are things like leadership, strong work ethic, effective communication, or anything that is non-technical. The reason behind this is that those skills should already have been demonstrated in the other experience sections. You are able to demonstrate things such as quality leadership with a bullet point talking about the way you managed to run the team of 7 people you worked with during the Summer. The skills section is important because you can highlight technicalities you know and understand, and can even be sectioned off and highlighted as something very crucial, such as a list of all of the different lab techniques you might know.

Links

You can get a copy of our Resumé template in pdf format or in document format.

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