By: Joe Norton
In this post, I’m going to discuss the ”Resume Critique” portion of the CSPD Process… oh the terror…
Someone is going to tear apart your resume! How awful, right? they are going to tell you everything you formatted wrong, everything you worded poorly, and even tell you whole sections which need to be removed or added. Sounds terrible, right?
Actually… isn’t it exactly what you want? Don’t you want a recruiter, a professional resume reviewer, to critically analyze your resume and make it as good as it can possibly be? Of Course!
When I went to CSPD to get my resume critiqued I was alittle nervous but I also had the feeling I was going to do pretty good. I had worked hard on my resume and it’s subsequent re-writes and I was sure that I had honed this draft down to a science.
I waited a few minutes before being greeted by the professional recruiter, that’s one thing you must understand - CSPD gets local recruiters of prominent corporations to come in and give up some of their expensive time to help you get a job.
It wasn’t long before we were in one of CSPD’s little offices and he was going at my resume with a red pen. Sure, it was alittle gruesome to see so many red marks you’d think he was drawing a volcanic eruption - but at the same time I knew that each of those marks was him letting me know “fix this now, or pay for it later”.
He asked me a few times to discuss things on my resume, which it should go without saying - you should be able to intelligently discuss EVERYTHING on your resume. You need to be able to discuss why you transferred, what you do in so-and-so club, how you like your boss at X job, etc. It went pretty well though, I knew that he was helping me get prepared for the interviews with corporate recruiters that would really matter - this was just practice.
The critique ended well, and I had a list of slight corrections to make to my resume. He gave me his card and told me that I was welcome to send him my further revisions of the resume to perfect it more, and he wanted me to keep him informed where I got a job.
I ended up writing him back and forth a few times, sending him revised resumes and him helping me slowly get my resume to it’s ideal state. It wasn’t more than 3 versions later when he said - that’s it. It’s perfect.
All in all, the CSPD resume critique was a great experience and I made a friend of a local HR professional.
Jena joined the CSPD as the Assistant Director of Recruitment and Professional Development with over 4 years career services experience including a background in corporate recruiting. She is excited to work collaboratively with the Fox School students regarding career search strategies and hopes students gain some additional insight into the job search through “Opportunity Knocks”.
Kel is an undergrad majoring in Management Information Systems, graduating in 2010. He is very involved and hopes to share some of his experiences with other students. His goal is to motivate others to do their best. He believes that with a little inspiration you can get where you want to be. Through this blog, he wants to show you that opportunities are out there.