Resume Writing
Purpose
Writing a professional resume is more than simply putting information regarding education and experiences down on paper and sending it out to prospective employers. Resumes written for specific position(s) and a specific employer will set your resume apart from the others and provide the perfect vehicle for translating past experiences into the language of the reader - the prospective employer! 
There are three types of resumes including chronological, functional and a combination. When some past experiences are directly related to future goals and some are not, the combination resume is most effective. Its structure allows for experiences to be separated into different categories - related and unrelated - thereby making the strongest impact. The Combination Resume is the most common format for recent college graduates. Because of this fact, the tutorial will focus on teaching you how to put together a Combination Resume.
Goals and Objectives
Upon completing this tutorial, you will be able to:
- identify the sections of your resume
- select the best language usage for your resumes
- format each section of your resume
- create a basic resume
Activities
The tutorial is set up in a linear fashion, so you can work straight through from the Overview to the Summary. If that does not fit your preferred learning style, you can use the Menu to skip from section to section. The choice is yours.
Open the Resume Writing tutorial. (Opens in a new window or tab.)
References
Content was used with permission from Career Services a unit of the Division of Student Affairs. For information about the complete course and acommpanying Career Planning Certificate, go to http://edge.psu.edu. (Opens in a new window or tab.)
Image Credits
A Sample Resume
- File: Resume.pdf
- This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.
Summary
There are many books, websites and other resources for learning how to write a good resume. This tutorial was intended to teach you how to create a your first Combination Resume. As you get more experience or take a more in-depth course related to creating resumes related to your chossen field, the look and feel of it may change. This is a good first step for you to build on.
