A résumé or curriculum vitae (CV) (the course of one’s life) is an account of one’s education, qualifications, and career prepared by a candidate for a job and given to a prospective employer. It is a document that tells someone about you in a way that would interest them in giving you a job. It is a way to review someone by using a format that makes it easy to compare you with others.
Please note that a résumé is currently a common approach to marketing yourself to potential employers (someone giving you a job). There are other more creative ways to accomplish this – this is not the only way – you can also use a website, multimedia presentations, video, conversation etc.
A résumé normally has three components: education, experience and personal information. Our program has one more element – skills.
Education is important to show people that you can and have learned a range of topics – you are able to learn and you have learned skills. A good education will give you a broad perspective (view of things) and develop learning skills (time management, organization of your thoughts, communicating, working with others etc.)
Experience is learning by doing. The best way to learn is to take a good education and apply it to experiences which will further develop your skills and knowledge.
Personal information explains you as a person to help people reviewing your resume understand you as a person – things you like to do outside of work. This information will help you and an employer determine if you are a fit with other people who work in the company and the company in general.
Skill is a section we have added on our resume form. We believe that it is important to learn skills to help you in your daily life and to prepare you to work in a business. The way you organize yourself, communicate, your attitude, the way you think and act in general can be learned skills. Please see our resource center to help you develop skills. Remember, everything you do can be considered a skill which can be improved – reading, writing, talking, thinking, dealing with people – there are many skills you have – the key is to recognize your skills and try and develop your current skills and add to your skills daily.
Some tips on developing your résumé:
Education:
Set a plan to obtain a good education. Develop a good attitude towards learning – if you don’t like the subject, try and convince yourself that it is important to learn it and it will help you in your future. The fact that you can learn a subject shows you are capable of learning other subjects – therefore you can be trained for a specific job.
Search jobs and start to understand what education is needed -what courses will you have to take. Also, talk to people – ask them what education is needed for their job.
If you choose an easy path in school – easy courses in which you don’t learn much – you may restrict opportunities in the future – it may seem easy now but life will become harder for many more years to come.
Experience:
Everything you do develops your experience. Making your bed – yes as simple as this may be will help you develop the skills of discipline (doing it every day), responsibility (you take charge and do it), organization ( you and your space become more organized).
The more experience you can gain the better off you will be. Take responsibility for some things that your parents always do – do some cooking, phone calls for haircut appointments or order the pizza. Do things to gain experience – these activities are hard the first time but become easier as you gain experience.
Personal information:
This is a big challenge for people. Good advice is to broaden your interests to make yourself a more interesting person. Don’t focus all of your time on one or two things you like to do. Allocate some time to develop other interests and to help others.
Reading and what you read is important.
Your community service can be a good way to gain valuable experience and gain insight into how organizations and projects are managed.
Good luck with your résumé!