I know that after finally turning your tassels and throwing your cap to the wind, making resume edits is the last thing on your mind. But it is a necessity.
You are now officially a professional.
I know what you’re going to ask me next:
- “What should I include on my post-college resume?”
- “Do I really have to delete all my college experience off of my resume?”
- “What if my college work experience is relevant to the job I want, can I keep it on my resume?”
Here’s my answer to those questions, and the other ones you might have: As soon as you leave college, you need to rebrand yourself (I know it’s hard!!), but everyone has to take their training wheels off at some point.
- If you just graduated you get a small pass, but just a small one. You need to be doing work (i.e. volunteer work, a personal project, etc.) that you can put in the place of that old college experience.
- If you’ve been out of school for a few months or years, it’s time to hang it up. Stop being lazy and using your college experience as a crutch! You should now have enough experience under your belt to completely remove that college experience!
Use the tips below to rebrand your college resume, and upgrade it to match the fiery professional I know you are!
5 Ways to Rebrand Your Resume for Your New Career!
1. Let Go of Your “Objective Statement”
Replace your objective statement at the top of your resume with a career-specific highlights section. It should read: “[job role name] + highlights” section.
So if you wanted to work in digital marketing, this section should say “Digital Marketing Highlights.”
Additionally, this section would include a quick bullet list of 2-3 digital marketing career accomplishments that makes you look like the BEST candidate for the role you’re applying to.
2. Remove All “Soft Skills” From Your Skills Section
Before you get nervous, I’m telling you this for your own good. Everyone says they’re a leader, have communication skills and know how to collaborate with multiple teams. You need to SHOW that you can do that stuff, not TELL.
Replace your soft skills with hard skills when possible. Can project manage or lead your team to victory? Great start listing the tools that you know how to use. Make sure you look at a few job descriptions to see what relevant tools you should be learning as well.
You don’t have to say goodbye to your soft skills completely. You can sprinkle in your soft skills in your job bullet points instead.
3. Treat Your Resume Edits Like a Blind Dating Profile
That’s it, that’s the Tweet.
With that being said, go ahead and remove all your pictures. Leave a lil’ mystery why don’t ya. Seeing and meeting you should be a privilege, and not any old company needs to see your face. LOL
Once you remove your images, you should have more space on your resume! Add another job role, or volunteer experience, or skillset, to really prove that you are the best candidate for the job!
4. Embrace Being a Professional, Not a College Student
You’ve graduated!! Yayyyy.
So that means that you are no longer a college student. You need to try to re-word the things that you have done on your campus to make it sound a bit more buttoned up and professional.
For example, instead of creating a section called “Campus & College Affiliations” and listing everything you did in college. Create a section titled “Professional Highlights.”
If you don’t have much leadership or community experience beyond college, it’s okay to list the impact that you made while you were on campus.
Here’s an example:
Remove arbitrary statements like “President of the Marketing Club” and instead list the impact you made (i.e. Co-led a team of 12 during the University of Georgia’s “Fight The Good Fight” Cancer Campaign, which successfully raised $100k to support Cancer Research.)
Here’s a picture example:
5. Get Your Font Sizes & Colors Together
The header font size on your resume should be around 9 or 10-point font. The bullet points are the bulk of your resume, and they take up most of the room so shoot for size 8.5!
Choose one accent color, and stick with it! You don’t need your resume to look like a rainbow! Oh and for the sake of everything you love, leave the background white, and the majority of the font black. Your resume is just a tool to help you get an interview, NOT land the job, so just keep it simple to get your foot in the door.
Hope that helps! You got this!
Up Next: Continue Editing Your Resume
The Anatomy of a Resume
Despite what people have told you about resumes…the purpose of your resume is to help you land an INTERVIEW.
“The Anatomy of a Resume” will help you add a lil’ razzle dazzle to your resume and land that interview!! 🙂
After That: Here’s Why You Aren’t Landing Interviews
