The Career Development and Employment Services office created this guide to assist you in developing a professional technical resume. If you have questions or want to set up an appointment with a career counselor call 814-871-7680.

A resume is a brief summary of your education, skills, and experience of which the purpose is to gain an interview. Your resume needs to be organized, clean, easy to read, and error free. The average time an employer gives any one resume is under 30 seconds. Therefore you must create a highly effective and understandable resume.

WHAT TO INCLUDE

Identifying Information

Name
Address
Telephone number
E-mail address (be sure that it is a professional name)

Objective (optional)

Use an objective if you are applying for a specific position
Leave out jargon such as “rewarding” and “challenging”
Keep it short; it should be stated with the fewest possible words

Summary of Skills (optional)

Should include skills, achievement, and training
Should be brief, self-explanatory, and positive

Education

Your graduate degree
Major, minor, and any concentration areas
Name of the college/university, city, and state
Date of graduation
GPA (if it is above a 3.0)
Repeat above for undergraduate degree

Course Highlights (optional)

Include 8-12 of your most relevant courses

Employment Experience

Relevant information
Marketable skills and experiences
Related experience (may include internships or volunteer work here or have a separate category, see examples)

Each Employment Experience entry should include:

Job title (use your exact former title such as Engineer I)
Employer’s name
Employer’s location (city and state)
Dates employed (month and year)
Job description (each should begin with an action word)

Educational Projects

Project title and date created
Role and team size
A one to three sentence description of the project

Activities

College and community activities
Organizations of which you are a member and the dates of participation
Highlight career related activities/organizations

Honors

Indicate any honors that demonstrate academic ability

TIPS

Do:

Use cream-colored resume paper
Use action words and vary sentence structure
Use font size 11 or 12 point
Pack a lot of information in the shortest amount of space
Limit your resume to one or two pages in length
Have a counselor proofread your resume
Use a laser printer
Include a cover letter
Have all information in reverse chronological order

Don’t:

Use personal pronouns (I, me, my)
Tell any lies
List references on your resume; use a separate sheet of paper
Use exact dates
Forget your resume should be clean and easy to read
Mention your age, race, religion, sex, national origin, marital status or personal interests
List salary

Resume Sample ~ Mechanical Engineering

Resume Sample ~ Embedded Software

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