Resume Resources

By Emma Giarracco with Beth White, Emory Career Center

Writing a cohesive, professionally formatted and well-done resume can be challenging! Emory has lots of resources to help. Start by using a template. Like this one!

For competitive applications, resumes are sent through a word processing program and improper formatting will result in an automatic rejection. Using the Emory BBA template is easy and already done correctly!

Once you have your resume properly formatted, make an appointment or submit your resume online to be workshopped at the Emory Career center. Make sure to also review their resources first.

Good resumes…

• Are tailored to the job and emphasize the most relevant parts of your background
• Do not include everything you have ever done
• Include #s, %s and $s when possible (quantify your accomplishments!)
• Use an easy to read font
• Prioritize bullets by relevance

Resume Sections

Experience Section:

This section may include:

• Paid or unpaid internships and work-study positions
• Part-time or full-time employment
• Independent study
• Research
• Volunteering
• Extracurriculars (Greek organizations, Professional societies, clubs)

Tailoring the experience section of your resume is the most important part of the application process. Sending the same version of your resume to every position you’re applying for does not work if the roles you are seeking are very different from each other. Tailoring is a result of how your experiences are grouped and how you describe the experiences in relation to your reader’s key needs.

Resume bullets should answer the following questions:

1. What did you do?
2. How did you do it?
3. Why did you do it and what was the outcome?.

Whenever possible use action verbs to describe outcomes and quantify results using numbers.

Here are some words that could help demonstrate the quality of your work and its impact:

• Effectively
• Efficiently
• Excellent
• Increased
• Reduced
• Improved
• Streamlined
• Transformed
• Overhauled
• Eliminated

Activity Section:

This section of the resume highlights campus and community involvement or leadership roles. Activities include student clubs, volunteering, greek life, athletics, and honor societies. First and second-year students may include high school activities, but juniors and students should keep to collegiate experiences.

Skill Section

This section is often included to help employers easily pinpoint areas of expertise. This section can include software skills, foreign language, laboratory skills (spectrophotometry, PCR and Gel Electrophoresis for example), multimedia skills (Adobe Premiere, FinalCut Pro), and social media skills. This section can also include interests that can be facilitate small talk at the beginning of an interview or creating a personal connection

Here are examples of some action verbs you could use to describe skills:

• chaired
• orchestrated
• programmed
• established
• spearheaded
• expanded
• improved
• merged
• regulated
• shaped
• acquired

These verbs were taken from this resource that has 185 total examples!

Example resume:

For more support preparing your resume, visit the Emory Career Center.