Most of us have learned how essential resumes are to the application process, whether you’re trying to secure an internship or attain a career position. Resumes showcase your professional branding better than a job application can, and they are an opportunity to highlight your background, experience, and skills for a prospective employer.

Rather than just listing your information, this is your chance to explain your positions and present your background in a way that reflects who you are and why you’re a good fit for that particular role. However, constructing a clear, concise resume that effectively describes your experience and skills can be difficult, so here are a few tips to help you out.

Conventions of the Resume Genre

A genre is composed of certain conventions that make the genre unique. For example, a letter is typically defined by the following elements: a heading that addresses its audience, e.g., “Dear…,” a body of information, and a closing, such as “Sincerely.”

Here are the conventions, in the order that they may be seen, of a resume:

• Name
• Contact information
• Objective
• Education
• Work Experience
• Leadership Experience
• Volunteer Experience
• Activities
• Awards
• Skills

While these elements are typically found on a resume, they’re not all required. Here are some tips to consider as you go through each section.

Name and Contact Information

The name and contact information is designed at the author’s discretion. You can adjust the size and style as you see fit. However, you’ll want to add this information at the top of your resume and make sure your name is large and in charge so people notice it quickly and don’t have to search for it.

Objective

The objective is optional, but you may choose to include it if you’re looking for an internship or entry-level position. If so, make sure that you cater the objective section to your prospective employer to display your understanding and connection to the position being offered, but it’s not necessary.

Education

The education section is pretty self-explanatory in that you’ll list your highest education, including school name and degree. If you’re in college, make sure to include your school and add your prospective graduation date. Because space is limited on your resume, try not to use more than four lines when listing it all.

Work Experience

The work experience section is a core part of your resume, and you’ll want to make sure that it effectively describes your experience while being concise and easy to digest. You should list your experience in chronological order with the most recent professional experience first.

Each listing should include the company name, job title, date of employment, location, and a description of the duties performed. Think about how to highlight the important parts of this section. When you add your job duties and responsibilities, use bullet points to list them in a clear and concise manner. Make sure and list the most important or relevant duties first.

Activities

The activities section is an optional section that can be used to include other extracurricular activities that are related to the job. You could also use this section to present your volunteer and leadership experience if it makes sense. The format of this section should match the format of the “experience” section.

Leadership and Volunteer Experience

The volunteer and leadership experience is an optional section that may or may not make sense to add. You could potentially combine this section with the Activities section, or it may make sense to add these under the Work Experience section.

Awards

The awards section is an optional section. If you have any school awards or honors, you’ll want to add it to your resume.

Skills

The skills section is for listing things like languages and technical skills that maybe retain to technology.

More Practical Tips for Your Resume

• Do not exceed one page
• Use different action words to begin each description
• Write out all of the month that correspond with the dates of experiences
• Do not use punctuation at the end of your bullet points
• Be consistent to keep the format of the resume clear (for example: use bullet point for all of your work experience descriptions)
• Use past tense verbs when describing your experiences

Say you are having some trouble keeping your resume to one page, here are some ways to make it all fit.

• Use smaller text and certain fonts to fit more words in
• Decrease the margins of the page
• Choose the most relevant information that pertains to a particular job, even if you want to show off more experience

If you are having some trouble filling in one page of information for your resume, here are some tips to help.

• Make the titles larger than the description – not too large but a little larger – and bold them
• Add an objective to fill out more space

I hope these tips help you to create a great resume that will ultimately lead you to a career that you aspire to achieve. Take your time while crafting your resume, and it never hurts to look up examples or get advice from someone with career experience.