Don’t leave your short-term student jobs off your resume!
What do you do if you need a resume and all you have for your work history is a string of part-time summer or student jobs? Writing “May 2011-August 2011: Sandwich maker” isn’t going to help you get a law firm internship.
But don’t leave student jobs and other short-term work experience off your resume!
The trick is knowing how to describe your past hourly jobs in a way that emphasizes the skills you learned. Not your provolone-slicing skills – your communication skills, interpersonal skills and analytical skills. That’s what employers are looking for.
How to turn your student job experience into a killer resume
When preparing to write your student/ first job resume, take as much time as you need and make certain that you make a detailed and thorough account of all your professional activities to date, even the ones you may consider unimportant. These activities may include:
- part-time jobs while you were studying,
- events from your college years,
- such as short-term projects,
- periods of in-service training,
- research projects in which you have participated,
- term papers or documents you have prepared,
- presentations made at seminars, workshops, or other meetings.
You should identify skills you acquired by your participation in these experiences and label those skills according to the skills headings used in help wanted ads and job descriptions; in other words, you have to translate your duties into the headings of the corresponding jargon on your student resume.
You should also look for anything that might be acceptable as experience and emphasize it. Besides education, this might include volunteer work, training, military experience, or anything else that you can present as legitimate activities that support your ability to do the work that you feel you can do.
By following the recommendations above, your resume will stand out from the other students that have just entered the workforce and are unable to communicate their past experiences into a killer resume.
