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Help! I need a résumé!
Résumé Writing for Science Majors
As science major, you may find yourself in a unique situation. Unlike humanities majors, statements such as "I have great organizational skills" does not accurately reflect the skills that science recruiters are looking for. Recruitment for many science-related jobs and internships are driven by the student having knowledge of certain techniques and instruments. Unfortunately, you may list your courses in your "Related Courses" section of your résumé, but this does not provide the recruiter with enough about your background. Why? Science curriculums vary from college to college, so what is taught in XYZ University may not be the same as what is taught at your college. Hands on experience with instruments is one of the greatest variations. Mount Holyoke College students have a remarkable access to use sophisticated instruments, be sure your résumé shows this. So, while your transcript lists your courses (and your grades), it does not list the experiences that you have gained from those courses. Therefore, it is up to you to convey your experiences to the reader in your cover letter/personal statement and résumé. This section details methods by which you could build your résumé so that it is a strong presentation of you.
Developing your résumé.
For basic information on résumés and résumé formats, review the information on the Résumé and Sample Résumé webpages of the Career Development Center.
In order to begin writing your resume, you should ask yourself at least a few of the following questions:
What am I applying for? Am I applying for a job or an internship?
What are my strengths? What are my weaknesses?
What are the good qualities about myself that I would like to get across? How do I make what I perceive to be weaknesses become strengths?
What are my goals? What do I hope to accomplish by sending out this résumé?
Who will read my résumé? Will she/he be interested in reading a general résumé or a detailed résumé?
You may be thinking, "I just want to write a résumé. Why bother with all of these questions?" Having well-planned goals in mind prior to writing a résumé often helps the writing process go faster. Where you may have initially said to yourself, "I need to get this résumé done," you can say after some serious thought, "I want to write a résumé to get a research internship at X State U. because I am interested in molecular biology." Having a goal in mind helps you to write your résumé and concurrently organize your résumé according to your interests. A cleverly crafted résumé will reflect the thought and effort that went into its writing.
Now that you have a goal, make a list of all of your experiences on a piece of paper. Remember to include the dates. There is no need for descriptions, you can work on that later. Why? When you actually start working on your résumé, you want to focus on organizing it, not on trying to remember the exact name of the hospital at which you shadowed a doctor. Putting your experiences down before you get to the computer actually saves time.
After you have made a list of your experiences, sort them into columns of relevant and irrelevant. These are not the headings that you would use on your résumé but rather a method of determining what experiences you can bring to your target job/internship. Would being HPC of you dorm be relevant to a working in a genetics lab? Perhaps in intangible ways, but most of what you would put into the relevant column should come from your science-related experiences. Organizing your experiences in this manner comes in handy when you are organizing your résumé. As a student, you will not have enough related work experience to place into the standard "Work Experience." Therefore, it will be necessary for you to 'create' categories that allow you to showcase your experiences. This may include expanding your 'Skills' section of your résumé to include categories for your laboratory skills. This will be discussed in further depth later on.
Okay, can I start writing now?
Now that you have figured out what experiences you have and how to organize them, you are ready to start creating your résumé. Decide on a suitable layout. Take a look at our sample résumé, or those displayed Career Development Center webpages. Once you have decided on a format, stick to it for the remainder of your résumé (This may sound obvious, but it happens). Make sure that you are typing your entire résumé in the same style font. Check your previous entry to make sure that you are using bullets, bold type and italics in the right place. If you make a point of punctuating your subheadings, make sure that your subsequent subheadings are punctuated also. Don't forget to proofread for errors each time you modify your résumé, and get a friend/professor/CDC counselor to proofread for errors that you may have missed. Your friend/professor/CDC counselor could also give you feedback on the flow of your résumé, what reaction you would get from a science/nonscience reader, and whether or not you have effectively listed your experiences. Do a spell check!!
Vonetta T. Sylvestre '99
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