How to Write a Resume and CV

Webinar Transcription

2020-08-30-How-to-Write-a-Resume-and-CV

[00:00:00] Hi, everyone. Welcome to the Bullseye admissions webinar on how to write a resume and the CV to orient everyone with the webinar tightening and different chats halves. I will start off with the presentation, then answer your questions in a live Q and a. Oh, it says that it’s going live in five seconds or five currently.

Oh, wow. I think your computer might have a slight lag, but we should, are you like, yeah. Okay. That should be fine. Okay. To continue then on the sidebar and in the public chat, you can download our slides in the handouts tab and you can start submitting questions in the Q and a tab

to introduce myself. My name is Juliana and I am a rising sophomore at Columbia university studying financial economics. Lily is also here for technical support. So feel free to message her. If you have any technical issues.[00:01:00]

So here’s the difference between a resume and a CV. A resume is a sum up. So it is a brief summary of your education, your skills, your work, history, leadership, experience, accomplishments, et cetera. Whereas a CV is known as course of life. So it’s a very detailed summary of your certifications, affiliations research, et cetera.

A resume is competency based, meaning that it’s focused on the skills and experiences that you have that can transfer over to the job at hand while a CV is credentialed based. So it really focuses on your education certifications, research and professional affiliations. A resume is also used for any job or internship.

Whereas a CV is used for jobs in academia, science and medicine. A resume you customized to the [00:02:00] position you’re applying to. So you’re going to tweak it based on what role you’re applying for. Whereas a CV is so comprehensive that you don’t need to tailor it at all resumes also in reverse chronological order, meaning that your latest experience is going to show up at the top.

However, if all activities are done at the same time, you can do chronologically, which is what you’re going to see in my resume later on. Whereas a CV is going to be chronological. A resume is going to be one page long. Some people say that you can do up to two pages long, but I say that it’s best to err on the side of air on the safer side and just do one page long.

Whereas a CV is going to be four to 10 pages long, sometimes even more, depending on your experience.

And the question you all might have is should you make a resume or CV in the us resumes are [00:03:00] typically preferred, but the rest of the world uses CVS and the U S CVS are generally reserved for graduate students. How to know which one to use it’s usually stated in the application. If it’s unclear, reach out to your point of contact, for example, an admissions officer, if it’s for college applications or a teacher, if it’s for rec letter.

And my recommendation is to start with a resume. If you’re applying to jobs or colleges here in the U S you can pretty much get by without a CV. I don’t even have a CV and most high school students I’d say don’t have enough experience to warrant such a long and comprehensive document. So as I go forward, I’ll be talking about the best strategies for crafting a resume, but these can certainly be applied to a CV as well.

And why does the high school student even need a resume? It’s a great way to dip your toes into the professional world. [00:04:00] You can use it to apply to jobs, internships, scholarships, and the big one I’d say are for letters of recommendation because in high school, this is what I primarily used my own resume for teachers know how you’re doing in class, but sometimes they don’t know what you do outside of academics.

When you ask for a letter of rec and provide a resume, they can speak to your accomplishments in your extracurriculars and provide a more comprehensive view of you as a student and an individual. It can also prepare you well for the common app activities, less where you’re going to be describing those activities.

And for college applications, colleges typically run on the spectrum of accept, require, encourage, and consider. Look it up for the schools that you’re applying to and see whether you’re going to need a resume or not. And for resume optional schools. You might be wondering if you should include one or not.

I would say if you can’t include certain accomplishments anywhere else in your [00:05:00] application it’s fine to submit one, but you don’t need to have one for those. Yeah. And here are the different resume sections, and this is roughly in the order, you should organize your resume. In a first, you have your contact information with your name, your phone number, and also your address.

Some people say you don’t need your address because that was used back then when people would mail you your acceptances. So you don’t need to have that on there, but you can also have it. And an optional section that in my opinion, could be helpful for a high school student, but isn’t necessarily isn’t necessarily required.

Afterwards is an objective. An example of this could be I’m aspiring strategy consultants seeking an opportunity to expand like problem solving and communication skills. Or I am a motivated team leader with more than two years of experience in community service, seeking a position in the, as a camp counselor.

I hope to develop my leadership [00:06:00] skills and enact positive change in my local community. So in here you say what you aspire to become in the future or how you aspire to apply the skills that you’ve developed in your experience in order to make a change in the role that you’re applying. This could be great for a high school student because people can’t necessarily tell what your career aspirations are from your resume, because you’re so early on in your professional career.

This section can be helpful to clarify that and also help frame your experiences through a more specific lens. After that you would include your education, which is your high school, include your GPA and standardized test scores. If you have them work experience leadership experience such as clubs, activities, volunteering, and projects.

If you have a service project that you’ve done, coding projects, et cetera, you can include them here. You can also have your achievements, awards, and honors, and then your skills followed by your hobbies and interests.[00:07:00]

Or I go through some examples. Here’s a question for you all. Have you started drafting a CV or resume?

Juliana, I’m going to trigger the poll so that everyone can put no vote and let us know where they are in the process of writing a CV or resume.

All right. Sounds good. Yeah. Those answers are coming in. If you haven’t started totally fine. This webinar’s here to get you started and show you the things that you do need to include in your CV or resume. So don’t worry if you’re completely just getting started in the process.

Definitely.[00:08:00]

Awesome Julianna. Can you see those photos at all? And if so, do you want to discuss them a little bit before we move on?

My my wifi is being lit a bit strange, but could you tell me the results if you see that?

Sorry, your audio cut out for a second. Yeah, I can hear you. Oh, sorry. Okay, perfect. Yeah. So I’m unable to see the poll results right now, but it looks like about half. Everyone has not heard of yet, but they’re going to get started after the session is great to hear I’m about a fifth of people are starting, so they have a list of experiences already, but sewing to format it.

And then we also have a handful of people who either have started and have a [00:09:00] drafting process, or maybe have a draft we want to improve. Or do you have a draft that they’re finalizing? So places to be? Yeah, that sounds great. And you guys definitely aren’t behind or anything. This webinar’s here to help you all start on crafting your resume and I’m excited to help out with you guys.

So let’s go on to examples of my own high school resumes, which have undergone a lot of editing since. So it’s good that you guys are working on it incrementally because that’s one piece of advice that I have for you guys. It’s to constantly update your resume, try to make it. Update it with your latest experience and test scores.

See if you can format it better, always be changing your resume. It’s not a document that is permanent, and once you’ve done it, it’s done. It’s something that you’re constantly working on. So here’s a zoomed out version of both of my resumes. The left example is before I was accepted to college and the right example, I made the summer before entering college.

So you can see I’ve changed up my [00:10:00] formatting a bit. I’ve eliminated some unnecessary white space on the margins, but also try to space it out a bit more. I’m going to zoom in after this and explain each of the different sides.

So I have my contact information at the top and my education and awards and honors next. I also have my leadership positions. If I could go back in time, I wouldn’t have separated my leadership positions for my activities, which you’re going to see in the next slide. It’s redundant and occupies unnecessary space.

When you can just include it. Under the activity itself, I’d also probably condense my awards and honors into one line as well. It doesn’t need to be spaced out like this. I’d also add in my standardized test scores under education, but you can also put them at the very bottom it’s up to you, whether or not you want to showcase your test scores.

If you have a really strong test [00:11:00] score that you want to showcase, maybe put her up there, but if you don’t want your test scores to be shown like that, then you can put them up the bottom. Yeah

and here are my activities. As you can see, there are no bullet points under some activities. I would definitely add in some bullets. People say three to five, but you can have even less under each one, but just make sure that you have at least one under each activity to show your accomplishments in it.

I was also really big on community service in high school. So I had a whole section outlining that over here

and here’s my resume. Once I got accepted into college, again, I’d add my test scores here. I also did some summer coursework at Northwestern. I’d suggest adding that into the education section. Like I’ve done here, colleges like to see that you’ve been [00:12:00] taking advanced coursework. And it’s great to add that into your education.

Before my resume was very description and task base. And my bullet point, I basically just described what I did, what my role was, but now I try to make it more accomplished based. I showed the impact that I had within each of these roles. I also added in more numbers to quantify my achievements, which is definitely a practice that you all should be doing because people review resumes very quickly.

People say it’s 15 seconds maximum that they’re going to be seeing your resume. So I’d say definitely to have those numbers in so that they can quickly glance and see what impact you’ve made in each of those roles.

And here I have the remainder of my activities, skills and languages, as you can see, I don’t have much technical skills, but if you do definitely showcase that here, as well as languages, something I’d also add in is. [00:13:00] Which is something that you wouldn’t normally think to put in a resume, but sometimes it’s something that can actually land you the job.

My mentor told me a story about how he gave someone an interview because they attended the same workout class. You never know what common interests and hobbies you might share with your interviewer. So definitely put it here. And it also paints a better picture of who you are as a person, what you enjoy doing in your free time.

so general feedback for my high school self would be to use an actual template. This one I just typed up and the Google document. I didn’t have any formatting. And I’d say definitely do a quick Google search and find an actual template and use that. I also think I have too much white space in the margins.

So I’d say expand the margins here. Like I said before, try to condense everything. It’s one line and don’t have leadership positions as separate categories, but rather put them under each activity themself. White space, I’d [00:14:00] say is good to have though, because you don’t want your resume to just look like a block of information.

You want to make sure that the reader can easily guide their eyes through the page. So I definitely say put white space within the sections and make sure that your bullet points reflect that and aren’t blocks of information, but I’m just saying here that I could have expanded my margins

and I’d add those bullet points under each role. It’s important to explain what you did, what the impact was of those tasks. Standardized test scores are good to have as a high school student your skills and interests. And like I said, achievements over duties. Don’t just describe your role, show your impact, and really put those numbers in to quantify your achievements.

And I have more examples to come. So these are two formats that you can use as well. One thing that I will say is it is better to [00:15:00] err on the side of professionalism and the industry that I want to go to, which is finance or consulting. They’re very traditional and they don’t want to see all of this color or an artsy font.

However, it does depend on what industry you want to go into. I know you can experiment a bit with marketing or other creative fields. So I’d say just do a quick Google search to check and see what a resume typically looks like for the industry you’re going into. If you’re unsure what you want to go into, I’d say stick to the basics, something that’s black and white and something that is visually very simple, but it can, and it’s very simple and it can guide the reader’s eyes throughout the document.

And here’s another example.

Other tips that I have are to review resume samples, do a quick Google search saying, oh, high school student, resume examples and see how people have [00:16:00] described their tasks, how they laid out, what formatting they’re using. Use a template. Formatting is key. And also I’d say simplicity is also key and action verbs.

It’s something that people will always tell you is it best practice for your resumes? So instead of saying, held weekly meetings to share updates here, you say spearheaded, you spear headed weekly meetings with the board to produce status reports for the general member body here. You’re showing initiatives, you’re showing initiative through that action verb and through the product that you produce, which were status reports and why they were important for the general member body to be updated on.

What’s been happening with your club. Some other good action verbs are achieved. Capitalized discerned drove enacted. So search what actions. There are, and start incorporating that into your own resume and use numbers. When applicable, for example, if you’re holding a fundraiser, definitely include the amount of money that was raised.

And proofreading is also key. Make sure that there’s no [00:17:00] typos, no grammatical errors and just proofread to look out for those. And some resume mistakes would be going over one page. I know that some people do say two pages is fine, but I’d say most people say that you should stick to one page. Even the most accomplished professionals have it to one page.

So as a high school student, you can also keep it down to one page. Look out for those typos and don’t have blocks of information, stick to three to five bullet points or even less. Don’t have messy formatting and also save and send your resume as a PDF because if you save it as a word, doc, sometimes the formatting can get messed up when you send it to your employer.

So definitely keep it as a PDF. And another resume mistake with having two would be having too much elaborate formatting less is usually more. But like I sat in those creative industries. Sometimes you can experiment. So research what the formatting looks like for the industry you’re [00:18:00] going okay. Some other resume mistakes would be having an unprofessional email address, make sure that it just has your name simply there.

It’s easy to contact. It’s easy to find. It’s not a string of random numbers and it’s not something like I love cats, make sure that it’s professional. And the other resume mistake would be the failure to demonstrate results. Don’t just copy and paste your role description, really show your impact through those numbers.

And don’t have so many buzz words really make sure that every word you’re saying needs to be there. Every line in your resume is there for a reason. And you shouldn’t be adding buzzwords to sound more impressive because employers and whoever’s reading it can see right through that. And don’t include a headshot.

This is a common practice in the United States, but it might be different for whatever country you’re in. So just see what the resume looks like for your country.[00:19:00]

Some next steps would be to gather your information. You can outline your resume and categorize it into the sections that I said in slide six and those examples. And in terms of gathering your information also, I’d say you can start off with pen and paper list out all the activities that you’ve done, all the impact that you’ve made, all of those achievements, and you can start there and then you can start tracking.

So choose the right format and layout. There’s a bunch on Google docs, Microsoft word, Canva, just Google, and look for them. Add in your information. This can also change based on the job that you’re applying to. So you can highlight different aspects and different skills and qualifications based on whatever role you’re applying to.

But I’d say just start with a very general resume and you can tailor it after, and don’t worry about it. Don’t stress too much. It’s not too important for high school students that have it. If you’re watching this webinar, you’re already very early in your professional experience, [00:20:00] so you don’t need to stress about having the stock, man.

It’s just something that’s good to have and good to prepare you for the future. Also make sure to proofread you don’t want to have any type of typos of all. And have a trusted adult, such as a teacher, a counselor, look over your resume.

So that is the end of the presentation part of the webinar. I hope you found this very helpful and remember that you can download the slides in the handouts tab or click the link in the public chat. And we’re now going to be moving on to the live Q and a. So I’m going to read the questions you submitted in the QA tab and answer them.

And as a heads up, if your QA tab, isn’t letting you submit questions, just double check that you joined the webinar through the custom link in your email, not from the webinar landing page.[00:21:00]

We’ll give you guys some time to submit some questions into the Q and a Juliana, are you able to see the queue that’s slowly forming for your questions? My internet is being a little wonky again as well. Would you be able to just read those questions aloud to me and I can answer them as they come?

Yeah, for sure. So I’ll read them out loud and also paste them into public chat. So the first question I saw was, should you say much about your sport?

Sorry. Could you repeat that? You cut off a bit for me. Yeah. So I guess if you’re a student athlete, should you say much about your school? Yes. I definitely say to add your sport in there. Something that I’ve seen in different student athletes resumes is a line that says committed approximately X hours per week to training meetings.

It’s in competitions while also maintaining a full course load. And you can talk about [00:22:00] the different skills and competencies you develop there such as concentration, strong, worth work ethic teamwork. So that’s a way to frame your athletic experiences and definitely put if you have any leadership positions like your captain of the team, or if you have any awards, definitely include that there.

Awesome. Next question is, do we need a resume for college applications? So it depends on what colleges you applying to. Personally, none of my colleges required a resume, but like I said, it’s a spectrum of a recommendation of. We accept resumes, but we don’t require them or we require resumes. So just do a quick Google search and see if you meet them or not.

For the colleges you’re applying to. Awesome. Someone came in a little bit late and they want to know what’s the difference between both of your high school resumes, just as a really quick recap. And then which one do you recommend using? So the one that I had on the left, you can see it once you download the slides.

[00:23:00] Again was my resume while I was applying to colleges. And while I was asking for my Breck letters. So as you can see, like the margins were too large, it really didn’t make use of the space that I was given. I also didn’t use an actual format template. I’d say, definitely do a quick Google search and find a template that you like and use that instead.

And in terms of actual content, I changed my bullet points to reflect the achievements versus the duties. So don’t just detail all the tasks that you did really show your impact them. And so I’d recommend using my second resume as an example instead of my first one. Awesome. Next question is, did you send in your resume when you applied to Columbia?

So I did not send in my resume when I applied to Columbia. It might be different now, just do a quick Google search and see, but I didn’t send that in. Awesome. Next question is where do you put athletic awards? So it [00:24:00] depends on what you want to do. If you put it as an activity under your leadership section, then I’d say, add it in as a bullet point there, but you can also have a separate category for achievements, awards, and honors, and you could put it there instead.

It just depends on where it fits best in your resume and whatever way you want to frame your athletic experiences. Awesome. Another question is, should you still include the common app common app activity activities on your resume? Isn’t it. So that’s why most colleges actually don’t require or look over resumes because you already have your activities in the common app activities lists.

But what I’d say is it’s always good to have resume on hand, whether you want to apply to a job or internship later. It’s also good for those rec letters. Like I said, so if you are a freshman or a sophomore in college or something like that, and I’d say, get started with that resume and keep building on that, just [00:25:00] so you have that to look for and look at while you’re crafting your common app activities list.

So it’ll just make the whole process easier in the future. Okay. Next question is what’s more important to highlight volunteering or work service. So this really depends on you. Me personally, I actually didn’t have any work experience at all in high school, which you can probably see from my resume, but I was really big on community service.

So instead of having a work work section in my resume, I just had leadership activities and community service, and I really highlighted those activities. So it depends on whether you have work experience or not. Next question is how do I create a resume when I have very limited experience? So I would say just like I said before, I didn’t have any work experience when I was applying to colleges and when I first crafted my resume.

So really just focus on your extracurricular activities, your [00:26:00] projects that you’ve done, whether it’s a coding project, a service project, focus on things that you’ve done in your academic. I’d say, try to focus, whatever you do have, and don’t try to fret over what you laugh. Next question is some universities allow you to include your CV when applying, but it is optional.

So should we include our CVS? So what I said before is if you can include your achievements and activities anywhere else in your application, and it is in your resume, then include it. But you really don’t need it if it’s optional, unless you have that exception. Awesome. I know you covered this a little bit earlier in your presentation, but someone asked when do you use your resume?

so what I use my resume most in high school was for rec letters. So teachers knew how I was doing in their class, how I was doing generally in school, but they didn’t know what activities I did outside of school. And. A strong Reckler is really important to getting into college. Like I [00:27:00] know my rec letters were strong because I built a relationship with my teachers on the side and I showed them what achievements I had in my extracurricular activities.

So I’d say was most important there to get like a holistic and comprehensive rec letter. Awesome. This question is if given the option to use the application format, so applying with whatever application portal you have or attaching a resume separately, so which one do you recommend? I guess it does depend on like the job or the school.

I think it doesn’t matter either way, like when I’ve applied to jobs, like this is the situation that I faced and when I’ve applied to jobs, I just use the like upload resume and have those sections upload to the application portal. But it just depends. I don’t think it matters too much.

Next question is, does it hurt if you’re not an honor society or things like that? Like I said before, I think it really is about focusing and highlighting what you have and not what you lack. [00:28:00] So if you don’t have many awards, you can focus on your extracurricular activities, your work experience, focus on what you have and not what you don’t awesome.

Probably one more question before we get to a break in we’ll have, we’ll tell you more about other webinars that we have. So next question is for a first job in retail slash non-professional job is some color on a resume from a high school student sign. Would it be better to have an interesting format for a non-professional.

So it really does depend on sorry that this is like very generic advice, but it really does depend on the job or the industry that you’re applying to. I’d say, maybe look at their website and see, does this website look like it’s more professional or look like it’s more artsy and out there and tell from there, based on my own experience, I think it is better to err on the more conservative and professional side and try to stick to a simple resume a layout.

Awesome. So I guess before we get to the next question Juliana, I’m going to flip the side real quick. And do you want to tell everyone [00:29:00] about some of the other webinars that we have that might be helpful to you? All right. Sure. So we have a couple more webinars coming up in September. We have types of supplemental essays and getting started.

Now the application timeline for seniors career talks. Pre-medicine oh, I see that those have passed, but you can look at those webinars in our archives. In September we have some about the different application types career talks such as pre law and civics letters of rec the holistic review process and how to stand out, playing as an underrepresented minority career talks, visual talks, visual arts and architecture, and they also have some college panels demonstrated interest applying with AEs with BS and CS.

And yeah, we have a lot of nice webinars coming up, so definitely tune into those as well. Awesome. So guys, I’m going to send everyone a link just to if you want to register for any of these times. Then a few of them we’ve highlighted as specifically like 10 foundation series webinars, [00:30:00] and then the rest, we have a few college panels and other sorts of embarrass that we’ve been running in the past, but hopefully that is helpful to you guys.

All so next question I have for you, Juliana, is how do you get a college coach to look at your profile when writing the resume? Should you ask him the resumes? Sorry. Can you repeat that? Yeah. So this one’s more about the recruiting process. How do you get a college coach to look at your profile and writing the resume?

Should you ask in the resume? So I actually don’t have any experience with that as I’m not an athlete, but I’d say, definitely ask your counselor to see I don’t think it would hurt to S give an email to the coach at the college you’re applying to, I’m really not sure how the recruitment process works, but maybe you can email them and include your resume.

Sorry. I can’t really give much of an answer. Yeah. And I’m just my 2 cents here. I think maybe for the overview, it’ll be useful to, highlight that you’re a student athlete and you’re really interested in that school. But probably the actual [00:31:00] asking, I would maybe revert to an email or a phone call if you’re able to.

All right. Next question is, would it be bad if all of your extracurriculars, like summer courses in research were only done in one college when applying to other schools? I don’t think so at all. Sometimes your work and experience can be at one college because of a location issue. Proximity to that college.

I think it really doesn’t matter. As long as you show your interest in the college you’re applying to within the application itself and in those supplemental essays. That’s what I would say. Awesome. Next question is, should you include the honors and AP courses you took if you’re a high school student so I’d say that’s optional.

Sometimes if you’re applying to a certain job. Like for me, if I was applying to an economics research assistant position, I would include a relevant coursework under my education and I’d show all of the economics courses I took in high school, but I don’t think that it’s necessary to have [00:32:00] on there otherwise.

Awesome. Next question is, as a student athlete aside from giving your resume to schools, where else should I be giving this out? So I’m not sure exactly for student athletes where you should be sending your resume in, but for me it was really helpful for those letters of rec or if you’re applying to another job or internship.

Awesome. Okay. So this is a question from a freshmen. So what should I include my resume as a freshmen in high school or freshman year early to start a resume? So I actually built this resume at the beginning of freshman year and I added on from it after that. So if you’re a freshman. I’d say it is pretty early and you don’t need to have a resume, but if you do want to dip your toes into the professional world and also just get started on doing that resume, then I’d say you can include activities from middle school whatever you did in [00:33:00] middle school, early high school.

And that’s definitely helpful if you’re applying to jobs as well. Awesome. All right. This question is if I take a Harvard course from idexx.org, so one of the online course systems that they have but I did not receive a certificate for it. Can I still lift it on my wrist? This is a question that people, my age actually have as well too, because with COVID everyone’s been taking all these online courses on, at X and Coursera, but I’d say you can definitely put it on there.

You can put it under the education section, but you can also put it under that skills and interests section at the bottom that I have. So you can put like certifications or you can put like like online coursework and put it there. I know you don’t have an actual certificate for it because you have to pay for it and everything.

And you don’t want to go through that, but you can still put it under there as a certification of coursework that you’ve completed. Awesome. On this one is, does it matter what format we use to write a resume? [00:34:00] So I’d say it doesn’t matter what specific format you do use, but so long as it’s simple and it’s easy to read and sift through.

And like I said, sometimes you don’t want that elaborate formatting, a lot of colors. To something that’s simple unless you’re applying new creative industries. Awesome. This one is a little bit off topic, but Juliana, since you also do essay work, someone asks, do you have advice for the personal statement?

I’d say for the personal statement, really just showcase who you are as a person, like people write personal statements about the most random things like Domino’s pizza or one different experience that they’ve had. So I just say, make sure that you’re really passionate about the topic that you do choose.

And it’s something that you can write about with a lot of detail, with a lot of imagery, something that would make the story flow and something that says something about you that you want to relay. Awesome. Next question is how did [00:35:00] the teachers, you asked to write your recommendation letters, use your resume in the.

What I did when I asked for recommendation letters is I would send them an email with my resume and also just talking about what different things I’ve done in their class or outside of their class to show that I am an accomplished student and I’m a good fit for college. So my do tell like legalities, I actually couldn’t see the letter that was sent out, but I do know that my recommenders included different achievements that I had in my community service work.

And they talked about how I was passionate about helping students my peers within the classroom, through group work and also outside of the classroom through community service. Awesome. And while you’re on the topic of rec letters, we do have a session on recommenders it’s coming up pretty soon.

So we’ll have a link to that later on. Someone also asked, so I know you went over things to avoid, so what’s the main thing that you should avoid when [00:36:00] writing. I’d say main thing to avoid really is the formatting. And also just having typos, like a lot of people don’t proofread well enough, their resumes.

And if an employer or an admissions officer sees a typo, like it shows that you don’t have attention to detail, you didn’t care enough to proofread it. So really just make sure that everything sound put it through Grammarly, have people read it over and over again, print it out, look over and see if there’s any typos.

That’s something I really emphasize. Awesome. So when I asked in a resume, should I include personal information as well? Or keep it simply achievement? What exactly do we mean by personal information? So at the top, like you’d have your contact information and then you’d have your like achievements and skills and otherwise.

So I don’t know. Like exactly. They mean by personal information. But what I’ve also seen is with siblings, if you’re an older sibling and you take care of your younger siblings, that’s [00:37:00] also something that you can include on there. It doesn’t need to be strictly like work experience if that’s what they’re asking.

Awesome. And then the students who submitted that question, if you want to clarify and feel free to just send something in the Q and a, and I’ll be able to follow up. So the next question was, what’s a good way to build a relationship with your teachers so that they can write a letter. So a little bit off topic again.

So one of the recommenders that I asked to do my letters was someone that was a sponsor for two of the clubs that I was in. And I would also talk to him outside of class. I was so basically my school had these like colloquiums, so it’s. Academic classes. It’s just a class where you can do whatever you want basically, and learn whatever you want to learn.

And so within that, I would just have personal conversations about how has weakened, why? Because your teachers are people too. They want to get to know you on a personal level. I think a good practice as well is maybe send an email after class one day and say hi I’m really interested in this topic that you mentioned in lecture today.

Do you have any [00:38:00] resources or books that I can read up on to learn more about this? And they like that. You’ll take the initiatives to learn more about their class and explore outside of class. Awesome. Going back to the previous question so much a clarification for personal info. So they met family history and childhood types of things.

So in terms of family history and childhood, I’d say that’s something that you can talk about in your essays, but not something that you would include so much in your resume, but if you do babysit and you do take care of your siblings, I think that’s something that you can add on. Awesome. Okay.

Next question is in a resume, should I include the amount of hours spent on each activity? So I’d say as a high school student, you can add that in so basically I’d say a high school student resumes slightly different from a resume that you’d use in college and afterwards where there’s some things that you can do that you wouldn’t normally do in a resume after.

So that’s something that you can add because I know some [00:39:00] applications have that, where they want to see how many hours you put into it, especially for student athletes, I’d say, because I know that you have a lot of commitment there. So definitely put like how many hours you’ve been practicing and training and competitions and things like that.

Something that you can also change for a high school resume that you wouldn’t put for like a college resume otherwise is instead of having them as yours, you would have what grades you did those activities in.

Okay, next question is, would you put family responsibilities under work service or something else? So I would just put it under leadership activities. Last question is how would I say I’m the captain of my team? So I guess where would that information go? So you can either, it depends on how you put your resume, whether you have the, your roles as a different section from your activities.

But like I said, looking back on it now, I would probably merge those together. So I [00:40:00] would put like women’s volleyball team and then you can put captain other under that and I tell sized. Awesome. All right, this one’s more job based. So what should I expect during a job? So in terms of job interviews, there’s a lot of different practices.

And especially right now with everything virtual, I feel like there’s a lot of shifts that we need to do to accommodate to that space. But I’d say just the night before, remember to de-stress because as long as you’ve prepared for it, by going over your resume and making sure that you can explain each and every bullet point on there then you’re prepared for it.

Us another good one practice is also sometimes employers will ask what’s an example of a time that you failed. What’s an example of a time that you’ve worked on a team and just have those situations ready. So I’d say just have an Excel spreadsheet or document compiled with those, as well as looking over your resume and making sure every bullet point.

And those are definitely good practices you can do for job interviews. All right. Someone said, I’m thinking [00:41:00] of a gap year. So how do you spin a one or two gap from employment or applying for college in a positive light presidencies, time off to find myself. And then for more context, you said, I will work odd disparate jobs for the money.

So for gap years, I’d say you can include that in the education section and say that you have a gap year. And I know that this happened with a lot of people’s internships. This summer they were canceled because of COVID. So in place of that, on their resume, they put what projects they’ve done on the side, whether it’s taking an online course doing online, volunteering, definitely put that on your resume, just to show that you were doing something during that time.

And it’s something that you don’t need to overly explain on your resume. It’s something that you can talk about in your interview itself. And in terms of having those like odd disparate jobs, I feel like that’s definitely something good to put down on your resume. I was actually talking to someone who’s high up at bank of America and they were talking about.

They were working retail and working at [00:42:00] restaurants up until that point. And they spun it by talking about how they really develop those communication skills, those work ethic skills, and dealing with customers like on the resume. And that’s something that you can definitely spin to a more professional job later on.

Awesome. So may I ask what stats for my sport are most important? Sorry. Could you repeat that? It cut off a little bit. Yeah. So what stats for my sport are most important or most relevant. So I’d say it depends on the sport. I don’t know too much about sports, but probably like your average, like I know for golf, like you have an average as a player.

Like it, it does depend on the sport you have, but, or you could talk about if you’re a captain, maybe the number of students on the team that you’re the captain of like how many wins you’ve had things like that. I’d say, definitely look into that more just Google search, like student athlete resumes and see what kinds of numbers people put on there.

Or if you want to get in [00:43:00] touch with someone after that’s a student athlete, definitely send me a note and I can link you to someone for sure. Really quick note, someone asked if this is going to be recorded. Yes. And then you’ll be able to you’ll get an email with the recording link in one to two days.

So you can refer back to this session. All right. Next question is, so when during high school year, should I begin this process of making a resume or CV? So I’d say it’s probably best to do it junior year, because that’s when you’re starting to get in the swing of things with those college application, standardized has, I feel like that’s when you like, usually get on top of your things.

So I would say junior year is good, but never hurts to do it early as well. Awesome. Next question is can a resume be too much information? So if it exceeds one page, I’d say it is too much information and promise you, you can condense it down. Like even professionals with years of experience of work can condense it down to one page.

So I’d say definitely keep it to one [00:44:00] page and also don’t have blocks of information, make sure that it’s bullet points. Okay. Someone said, is it advice to only use file format resumes like that docs or on that PDF, et cetera? Or can you post a resume online, like on a personal page or professional page like LinkedIn.

So some people do set, put it on their LinkedIn, but I’d say you don’t need on your LinkedIn because LinkedIn is basically already an online resume, so you don’t need it there. You can post it on your personal website or blog if you have one. But mostly I feel like you would just be sending it out to your letters of recommendation teachers and jobs and internships are applying to.

Awesome. So I’m gonna ask when we talk about our sports, we play, where do we put that in your resume? So I guess we covered this, but quick recap. So I’d say put it in your leadership activities, because if you’re a part of a sport, that’s probably a big time commitment and it’s something that you’re dedicated to.

So definitely put it there in leadership activities.[00:45:00] Someone asked, how can we reach out to you with further and further information? So if you want to, I can type in your bulls-eye email if you want. All right. Yeah. You can type in my bull’s-eye email so you can reach me on email or also through the bulls-eye platform, if you want to set up a one-on-one video chat.

Awesome. All right. So I think we’re actually through a lot of the live questions. I’ll give you guys some more time to keep so many more since Juliana you’re going super fast. So I think we should actually be able to get through every single question that’s there. All right. Sounds good. Thank you. And sorry again, everyone that I don’t have much information for student athletes since I’m not a student athlete myself, but if you send me an email, I can definitely connect you to some student athletes at Columbia.

If you want to know how they did the resume in high school and how they went about the recruitment process. Okay. So when something should you mention your GPA and sat scores if they aren’t a 4.0 or a 1600? They’re pretty decent, but not stellar. So I’d [00:46:00] say it’s a pens on what colleges you’re applying to look at that range for GPA and test score and see if you lie within that range.

And if you do, I’d say put it on there. If it’s a bit below, it’s fine. You can still put on there. Something that you don’t want to show because you have more strength than your activities instead of your GPA and stats, then you can showcase that instead and just leave it out. It’s not too big of a deal to have one, like even in college, some people don’t have the best GPA and they don’t want to put it on their resumes.

And that’s not something that you need to do. Like you can focus on whatever you’re most proud of. Someone said, how far back do you include the activities that you did? So freshman year of college, I still had some of my high school activities on there and entering my sophomore year. I only have one high school activity still on there.

So I’d say it’s probably a similar practice in high school as well, maybe freshman and sophomore year. You can still have middle school activities, but junior and senior [00:47:00] year, baby, take those off unless you’re still doing them. And unless there’s something. If it’s an activity that you talk about in your personal statement, then definitely include it there because they want to see that like you’re committed to it.

It’s on your resume. It’s there. You can explain it in more detail, but if it’s something that wasn’t really formative for you, it’s not something that you still do or you’re still committed to then I’d say leave it off. Awesome. Okay. So I’m going to ask what should be the first thing that you list on your resume or CV?

So I include it in the sections before the typical order that you’d have, but you’d have like your name, your contact information, your education, and then from there, it varies depending on what you want to showcase. Awesome. Someone said, so this is going back to some testing stuff. Can I hire a CT re competence and average GPA?

Can I hire, sorry, could you repeat that? Yeah, can I ask you to compensate for an average GPA? I sat score. Is that what you said? [00:48:00] Okay. Yeah, no worries. Can a high sat score? Yeah, definitely. I think that’s something that people say you should explain and like the other category, if there is there any additional information that you want to talk about and you can talk about why your GPA maybe took a hit a certain year, whether it’s because of a personal experience, a family experience, but then you can talk about how you’ve grown and improved from there.

And you studied really hard for the sat and you have a high score now. Awesome. Similarly or similar topics, someone said, what should you do if you don’t have your GPA or sat and act scores to put on your resume? So if you don’t have your sat or act scores yet, don’t worry about it. You don’t need to include them on there.

I didn’t even have them on my own resumes. In terms of GPA, I feel like you can include it on there and yeah. Depending on whether you have it or whether you want to showcase it or not. I think it doesn’t really matter what matters more is like the leadership activities and your achievements.

They’re awesome.[00:49:00] So when asked, how often do you update it? So how often do you update your resume or CV? So in my own personal experience, I update it whenever I had a new test score. Whenever I had a new job that I was taking on or new certification and new skill, that’s when I would update it. And I’m also constantly trying to update it with like better formatting, trying to see where I can fit information better or how I can phrase things better.

So I’d say you can do it as frequently as that, or only as much as new information comes in.

Someone said, what made you decide not to send in your resume to Columbia and other colleges? So for me personally, I think My strong suit was in my essays and my writing and one specific activity. It wasn’t all of my activities that made me a strong applicant. It’s one community service activity that I did.

So I didn’t feel like I needed to [00:50:00] send a resume in because everything that I wanted to say was already in my essays. Awesome. So when asked should be including objectives. So if you can talk more about the optional objectives section, right? So what I said before is that I don’t think an objective is needed past high school, but I think it could be helpful for high school students because based on your resume, you’re really early on in your professional experience, they might not be able to tell what you aspire to become the future.

So if you can include what you want to be in the future what job you want to take on what kinds of skills you’ve developed through your experience? It’s good to have that short summary there. All right. The next few questions are really similar, so I’m going to read them together. So should we include how we handled distant learning during coping 19 on our resume and how it impacted your grades?

And then similarly, should you write in the other section, how COVID impacted your GPA? So I don’t have personal experience myself with having [00:51:00] update that on my resume, but I think it might be something that you include in the additional information section, not something that you would put on your resume, but if you’ve done online volunteering, or if you’ve done maybe a project to help out with COVID-19 at your school, then that’s where you would put on your resume.

Okay. This one’s more specific. So someone says, I have to submit a creative resume as a requirement for my intended undergrad, visual arts major. So do I include the arts related extracurricular slash summer programs, et cetera, just in the creative resume or do I list them on the common app extracurriculars portion as well?

Focus on putting it on the common app activities lists. But if you run out of space, then you can detail those more in the resume because mainly colleges are going to be looking at the activities list and the resumes kind of an add on

Next question is what information could you use on a [00:52:00] resume if you’ve never had a job? So I never had a job in high school either. So I focus on my extracurricular activities, the honor societies that I was in, as well as my community service, which is what I was big on. So really just focused on what you do have and not what you don’t have.

So I just didn’t even put a work experience section on there. I just had a leadership experience section. Awesome. Someone said, how do you make your resume stand out? So in terms of standing out, I’d say. Definitely have those action verbs on there that I detailed because it shows the impact of your achievements.

Put those numbers on there, so it stands out and just have a simple, easy to read formatting. Awesome. Someone said, what is most important for one page? If you have multiple volunteering charity descriptions to add for athletics award scholarships and et cetera. So I’d [00:53:00] say highlight the activities that you spent the most time on that you’ve done for the most number of years.

And I’d also say that it probably won’t be hard to condense it into one page, as long as you’re smart with the space that you’re using. Like I said before, I had my honors all listed out one line each, you could condense that into one line. So try to see where you can minimize the amount of space are using.

And if you do have to take some stuff. Take stuff out that’s not relevant to the job that you’re applying to and take stuff out that you haven’t done for as much time, or is it much, or isn’t as impactful as your other activities. Awesome. Sounds similar. So what is more important to have job related experience or volunteer experience?

It really does depend on the student. If you’re a student that has had to work throughout high school, you didn’t have much time for extracurricular activities because of that. And really highlight that in the resume. But if you didn’t work throughout high school, you were volunteering for most of it, [00:54:00] then highlight that.

Or if you’re a student athlete, then highlight that and the amount of hours you put in that cheapens you have from that awesome. Someone said on the common app activities lists, do you describe your activities as well? Or do you just list what they were activities as well? But I know there is a very like small word limit that you can use, but definitely make use of those words that way.

Awesome. Okay. Someone said, should I include how I’ve taken action and helping me reach my goal for a major, like volunteering summer programs, et cetera. Definitely. If you know what major you want to do, what jobs you’re looking for in the future, then definitely have your resume through that lens.

If you’re interested in economics and put a lot of the economics volunteering projects, activities that you’ve done or similarly for other industries. Awesome. So when asked, what should the main highlights be to keep it concise [00:55:00] into the point? So I’d say, just make sure that you’re hitting like education leadership activities and your skills and qualifications at the bottom as well, or work experience.

If that’s what you’re, you were focused on doing. Awesome. Okay, so this one is what should our main categories on our resume be? I know this wasn’t your site earlier, so I just sent the link back to the slides in case you guys missed it earlier. Yup. So those sections are probably most important.

And like I said, definitely put interests and hobbies there as well, because you never know what kind of commonalities you can have with your interviewer. So definitely put that on there. So I’m gonna ask, is there a specific order to prepare a resume and a CV? So one that you would do first? So I’d say definitely do the resume first because.

At least in the U S that’s what you’re going to need for college applications for your rec letters for applying to jobs and [00:56:00] internships. CVS aren’t really used here in the U S but like even if you’re in another country, I think a resumes bass, if you’re applying to us colleges, so I’d say start with a resume.

I like, I don’t even have a CV, but it might depend if you want to go into research or like a more STEMI field later on. We can probably get through a few more questions before we wrap things up. Maybe one more question. So someone said, what awards community service clubs next extracurriculars.

Should you add if there’s an abundance, not related to your admissions slash intended major? So I think that’s actually best to put on your resume actually, because if you have stuff. If you’re talking about your interest in your major and like those activities in your personal statement, then you can include other things in your resume.

So it shows another side of you, but I think that’s actually good to put on your resume. And maybe our last question for tonight someone said, I understand the resume is a summary, but who we [00:57:00] are, but if our background isn’t exciting, what can we add to make them feel more competent and a reliable person?

So if you don’t think you have as much strong activities on there, I’d say maybe see what, like during this time of COVID what online opportunities there are for you to get involved in your community or for you to develop your technical skills. If you want to learn coding, maybe take a free online course online try to develop skills that are relevant for your intended major or what you want to go into or what kinds of jobs you want to apply to.

So if that’s coding, if that’s community service, try to look for opportunities online and get those services. Juliana, I’ll let you flip the slide and wrap things up. While you’re doing that, someone asked about, volunteer activities. We do have a webinar about like summer opportunities during COVID-19.

So if you go to dot com slash webinars, you can actually view all of our Passovers there.

All right. That wraps things up [00:58:00] for this webinar. Thank you everyone for joining us. If you’re interested in working with me in the future with one-on-one videos calls, or also for resume reviews, you can feel free to book a session with me. And Lee has also posted my email address as well on the chat.

So if you have any questions at all, don’t hesitate to reach out. Awesome. And then, so we’ll be sending out a feedback form tonight. If you had a question that Juliana wasn’t able to answer, you can also submit that there.