Employers May Spend Fewer Job Ad And Resume Draft

Deliverable

A multi-page document composed of an annotated job advertisement and a version of your resume tailored to fit that job advertisement.

Description

Locate a job advertisement for a position for which you’re qualified or will be qualified for when you graduate with your current degree. Save a copy of this ad (most web browsers will allow you to export pages as a PDF). Based on your knowledge of your field and the research that you’ve already done for this project, make some assessments about which requirements and keywords on the ad are the most important. Highlight these areas of the ad, and include any notes or comments you have that will help me and your fellow students understand why those areas are ones to pay attention to.

Next, tailor your resume (or compose one if you don’t already have a resume) to match the job ad as closely as possible, bearing in mind all the information and advice you found during your research in the first part of the project. Make sure to include keywords and ideas that you identified in the job ad as being particularly important.

Remember the basics of resume-building:

• A resume includes your most relevant experiences, skills, and achievements, not a list of everything you’ve ever done.
• A resume is meant to be skimmed and understood quickly (a commonly cited fact is that employers may spend fewer than 10 seconds reading a resume before making a decision about a candidate).
• A resume is not to get you the job, but to tell an employer enough about yourself and your qualifications that they can decide to schedule an interview.

Upload both the annotated job ad and your tailored resume as a single PDF. There are any number of freely available programs that will allow you to combine documents into a single PDF, and you should have free access to Adobe Acrobat through USF.