Help Zalo Review/Update his Resume & Cover Letter? :)

[TopHatFox]

Original Resume:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0-7l_ ... sp=sharing

Current Resume Update 1 (Need to Shorten):

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0-7l_ ... sp=sharing

Current Cover Letter:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0-7l_ ... sp=sharing

-------------------------------------------

I'd like encouragement to actually update my resume and cover letter and beging applying for jobs (at the moment I think it's in ~okay condition). I think posting the current form of my resume and cover letter would be useful as an encouragement, not to mention that the feedback would be plenty useful for me too!

I still need to change some of the descriptions in the resume. For instance, I've yet to create the SEA Semester, Williams Mystic, and Adventure in Adventure Out bullet points, and I need to add the MOSTEC bullet points too. Hopefully posting it here will get me going.

Thank you for your feedback and support to Zalo Inc! (:

-----------------------------------------------

RESUME NOTES:

Purpose:

The purpose of this resume and cover letter is to apply to business consulting (likely environmental consulting) or geology, oceanography, or environmental science jobs. I think at the moment, I am open to seeking a summer internship with energy companies, business consulting companies, and science research positions.

Academics:

I got my college associates degree concurrently with my high school diploma. Amherst College didn't accept my credits so I am now a third year in my fall semester at Amherst. I am unsure whether to include anything related to high school in the academic section, though the fact that I did my associates in HS makes me want to include the HS on the resume. I am also not sure whether to include my GPA, I think a 3.4 college GPA is worth flaunting.

Work Experience

My main work experiences as of now include being both a student and staff person at a research position at MIT with a program called MOSTEC, being a climate justice organizer and video coordinator with a non-profit called Better Future Project, and working as a outdoor facilitator and leader with a outing company called Adventure in Adventure Out.

I also have experience working as a Geology TA for a semester, working as a 40/w library staff person for a summer, working in a machine shop for a few weeks, and working at an organic farm for a year (two semesters). I'm not sure whether I should include these in any capacity.

Study Abroad Experiences and Campus Leadership

I will have two study abroad experiences by the end of spring 2016: SEA Semester and Williams Mystic. In SEA, I am living with 20 students in a shore component, and then sailing a 135 ft. research vessel through New Zealand, all while performing original scientific research, taking a full class load, building community, and adapting to a new environment. In Mystic, I will also be living with 20 students, then exploring through the US's North-West Pacific Coast, the Mississippi Ocean Delta, and sailing for a week with this group. Here I also will perform original scientific research while taking a full course load. Both of these programs carry prestige and "hella expense" (30k a semester for goodness sake!). Likewise, I think they offer excellent networking opportunities for REUs and consulting gigs.

Finally, for campus leadership, I have been a leader for my school's outing club, taking other students on hikes, bicycle rides, winter camping, a trip through the Smokies, a trip climbing frozen water falls, lots of trips canoeing and kayaking, one through a cave in NY, a trip peaking the Seven Sisters mt. range in a few hours, another learning about primitive living skills (we made our own shelter to sleep in!), and much more.

Skills and Interests:

I included all of my certifications and computing skills, as well as language proficiencies and interests. I think the interest list can provide talking points in the interview. I am not sure whether to spell out any acronyms in the resume, or whether my interest list is best tailored to the positions I am applying to.

-------------------------------------------

COVER LETTER NOTES

The cover letter is organized via

1. introduction
2. personal motivation
3. what relevant experience have I had
4. why I want to do the job
5. why I'm suited for the job
6. Closure

[thrifty++]

Wow this looks extremely well written and specific !!!

The only suggestions I would make are structural ones. Firstly in terms of personalising the CV I would suggest changing the location of personal information. The cover letter contains a lot of material about you as a person. I have always thought of the cover letter/email being primarily what I tell a prospective employer I can do for them and aligning my skills and experience with the job I am wanting. I have tended to leave out any details of my hobbies/interests or personal convictions from that document other than just a brief reason as to why I am interested in the job. I would suggest instead telling the prospective employer about you as a person under the interests section of the CV - which does not contain much detail at this point. That way it looks more like an aside to the application rather than the main focus - but they still get to find out about you as an interesting person.

Secondly you have grouped work experience and voluntary work under the same section. I suspect that many employers might have a bias toward seeing paid work as more relevant. If your paid work experienced exceeds your voluntary experience then I would suggest having two separate sections. But if your voluntary experience exceeds your paid work experience I would suggest leaving it as is.

[Slevin]

Zalo,

This is a very well put together Resume. I spent a good long time putting resumes together over the past year to get myself a job, and I have to agree with Thrifty here that most employers will want to see your paid for, relevant experience at the top of your resume, then the other stuff below (as they probably won't care about it directly, it just makes you accountable to the system for that amount of time). I'm not sure who exactly you will be applying to, but be sure to re-tailor your resume for each place you apply to. Also make sure to re-tailor your cover letter personally each time as well.

A piece of advice I have received numerous times from my father and his colleagues (all high level hiring managers in Aeronautics/Energy) is that if you haven't been in a field practicing for more than a decade, there is no reason your resume should be more than one page long. Even after 35+ years in the industry, it should never break two pages. Thus I would try to either shorten your descriptions of several of these things, or try and find something to cut out. Yes you have done tons and tons of cool things, try and include only the most relevant if you need to cut things out.'

[Chad]

Overall, it looks good. The one issue is the resume looks crowded. If you are going to use two pages for your resume and the second page doesn't even have 1/4 of it used, you might as well space everything else out. This will make it easier to read and easier to skim. (Selvin is correct that you should try to get it to one page, but if not follow my suggestion concerning spacing.)

Academics:

I got my college associates degree concurrently with my high school diploma. Amherst College didn't accept my credits so I am now a third year in my fall semester at Amherst. I am unsure whether to include anything related to high school in the academic section, though the fact that I did my associates in HS makes me want to include the HS on the resume. I am also not sure whether to include my GPA, I think a 3.4 college GPA is worth flaunting.

First, listing your 3.4 college GPA is fine. Not fine to do 5 years after you graduate, but definitely considered ok at this point.

Second, you definitely want to find a way to mention your associates was done during high school. No need to list HS separately. I would put it in parenthesis like this:

Miami Dade College Kendall Campus
Associate of Arts Degree, Final Cumulative GPA: 3.90 (Completed concurrently with high school.)

Also, there is no one magic way to do a resume and cover letter. Some are even suggesting cover letters are past their usefulness. So, in the end, just make your best judgement.

Good luck with your search. You should do fine.

[jacob]

I use the same resume style as you and it has worked much better for me than the CV style.

I have four suggestions:
1) What Slevin said. If the resume is longer than one page, cut something out! Don't worry. People look at the average of your listed achievements. Not the total amount. Cut out the weak/irrelevant (for your employer) stuff. Tailor.
2) Too many words on some of the paragraphs. I prefer to fail on too few rather than too many words. Have mercy on whoever who dedicates an average of 30 seconds (most people don't read nearly as fast as we do) on skimming it (page 2 might very well be ignored) ... and particular on the ppl who interview using an annotated version of your resume and need to find something fast as they pretend to have memorized the entire thing. IOW, think more powerpoint than prose.
3) Quantify! Always quantify whenever possible. There should be a number in almost every item. And never use weak-ass terms like "participated" or "was on team". E.g. Bad: "Participated as a member of team under the guidance of Professor X" Good: "Used X software to improve Y by 30% and generated $$Z of revenue." Hard numbers(*) always beat association!
4) Simplify the language as much as possible. E-prime. Active voice/action-words. You're likely communicating with people who hate reading and yet have to deal with 500 resumes.

(*) Business people like dollar numbers, e.g. "oversaw a $5 budget". Engineers like percentages, e.g. "improved efficiency by 0.2%".

[TopHatFox]

What do ya'll think of adding a professional picture of me in the cover letter? Maybe something with my nice (JC Penny ) suit for business consultants, or with a lab coat on the research vessel for science positions.

From what I remember reading, many employers unfortunately subconsciously or consciously tend to discriminate non-American sounding names. My guess is they might be less inclined to discriminate my name if I add a picture of a "white-appearing", "middle class-appearing" dude. Plus, if they like diversity, it doesn't matter if I add a picture, because my background is still genuinely deviant from the norm. Adding a face to the paper might be useful in general for forming familiarity too.

Thoughts?

[Chad]

No. Make sure you have LinkedIn in account with the photo, but no photos for professional positions. Unless your an actor or some other profession of that type.

[JamesR]

Relevent skills first
Work experience second
Education third (i.e. I don't think it make sense to include education at the top, it's not nearly that important, they only check to make sure you have it in most cases)
Interests last (or not at all)

By the way, I like to use http://resume.linkedinlabs.com/ to generate my resume from my linkedin profile.

It would be considered quite inappropriate to include your picture in your resume for typical job applications. (It's illegal to require that for most jobs after all, so by including that you're throwing the company into an ethical grey area)

[henrik]

I like to use http://resume.linkedinlabs.com/ to generate my resume from my linkedin profile.

This is great! The PDF exported directly from LinkedIn is ugly and useless and I keep wondering if they have a business reason to not fix that..

[TopHatFox]

I've been working diligently every day polishing this resume. It's getting better, but I still need to work on being concise in the bullet points. Any advice on cutting down length while maintaining quality would be appreciated.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0-7l_ ... sp=sharing

-----------------------------------------

I've been using a powerful website called Career Beam to learn all about the job hunt. One thing they suggest is to provide my resume to knowledgeable people and ask this question of them:

Does this resume communicate my strengths and experiences in a manner that is compelling to a hiring manager in this industry/profession? [Business, Corporate]

--------------------------------------------

They also encourage me for those friends to answer:

"For what type of position is this person well-suited?"
"What profession?"
"What industry?"
"What are this person's greatest strengths?"
"What kind of compensation should this person expect?"

-------------------------------------------

Would you be willing to answer these questions so that I might have a greater understanding of how to improve my resume further?

[JL13]

I've been involved in hiring decisions for the past 7 years, and these are the first couple of things i look for:

1.) Direct experience (paid or otherwise) doing something similar to the position I'm hiring for
2.) An indication that the person is looking for this particular job and not just indiscriminately sending their resume everywhere.

A resume CANNOT exist by itself in a vacuum. It only exists in relation to a position (theoretical or actual). If someone asks me for a copy of my resume, I refuse until I find out more about the position, so that I can change the content to match the position (assuming i'm interested, of course). This is even the case in the same industry.

Can you link us to the specific position(s) you are applying for? My suggestions will go a lot further if I can see that.

[TopHatFox]

Can you link us to the specific position(s) you are applying for? My suggestions will go a lot further if I can see that.

Here are two that I'd really like to get:

Jetblue: https://amherst-csm.symplicity.com/stud ... =favorites
MassMutual: https://amherst-csm.symplicity.com/stud ... =favorites

[JL13]

Both of those require a sign in?

[JL13]

Print out that job posting and a copy of your resume. Take a highlighter and highlight each sentence in your resume that answers one of the qualification/requirements in the job posting. Once you get the the bottom, go back and redesign your resume so those highlighted portions are toward the top. Review the unhighlighted parts and see if you can rephrase them so that they match. Brainstorm if there are any other expriences you had that apply to those qualifications. Then eliminate the least relevant sections.