ASSIGNMENT 02: Initial Resume

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In this assignment you will provide us with an initial resume that you will then adapt and modify over the course of the semester as you learn about different ways of "narrating" your experiences, your goals, and the value you bring to a prospective employer. If you already have a resume that you've used for a previous job, great -- you can go ahead and use that for this assignment. If not, don't worry if you don't have much outside work experience or you're not quite sure what to put down in this first draft of your resume; that's kind of the point.

Read this first

• L&S Career Services handout: Building a resume Download Building a resume
• Phyllis Korkki, "Writing a resume that shouts 'hire me,' Download Writing a resume that shouts 'hire me,'
  " New York Times (January 28, 2010).  Good advice from a recent NYT job search series of articles.

Steps to complete

1. Create a resume of no more than one page (or dig out the last real resume you used to get a job of any kind). Make sure your resume includes the following basic elements:

• Your contact information
• Your education history
• Your paid and unpaid work history
• Selected non-work experiences that you think are relevant

2. Proofread your resume, and then ask someone else to proofread it as well. There should be zero typos in your resume.

3. Upload your resume to get credit for this assignment.

4. Don't forget to bring a printed copy of your resume to your next discussion section!

Tips for completing this assignment

• Your initial resume will grow and change over the course of the semester as you discover new strengths in yourself and learn new strategies for telling your story.
• Feel free to edit your resume even outside of the formal assignments, up to the point where you turn in your final revised resume at the end of the course.
• And you can always ask your Career Mentor to take a quick look at your resume or to give feedback on a specific item on your resume -- they have a great deal of experience with this!

Questions for discussion

• What kind of job do you think this resume qualifies you for?
• What do you think is the biggest shortcoming or silence in your resume so far?
• Are there any important qualities that you would bring to a job that are not represented on this resume?
• What would you like your resume to include by the time you graduate from university?
• Your TA may ask you to swap resumes with a fellow student to see how others approached this assignment.  

To learn more

• Orville Pierson, "How hiring really happens Download How hiring really happens
  ," in The Unwritten Rules of the Highly Effective Job Search (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2006).  A how-to job search guide by a career consultant insider.
• Lauren A. Rivera, "The paper Download The paper
  ," in Pedigree: How Elite Students Get Elite Jobs (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015).  A study of college recruiting practices (and predjudices) within several high wage occupations like investment banking and management consulting.