This week, I am sharing resources that will help you with your resumes, cover letters, and other job application materials, based on a request included in the midterm evaluations you submitted.
Lynda.com Login Help
Lynda.com videos are free to Virginia Tech students with your VT.EDU login. Start at the VT.EDU login page to access these resources.
You can find a treasure trove of tutorial videos that will help you apply for a job or internship on the Lynda.com site. You will find courses on LinkedIn, on improving your resume, and on conducting a job search.
I’ve created a Lynda.com playlist of Job Application Resources, from which you can choose a course or video that will help you with your job application process. Overall, there are 12 courses, consisting of 287 videos. You would need 16h 37m to watch them all. Of course, I don’t expect you to do that. Instead pick and choose whatever will help you.
One of the videos I like focuses on Tips for college grads and early career (3m23s), which discusses issues such as what to do if you do not have any work experience and how to use formatting to pad out your resume without padding too much.
Note: This video has closed captioning, so it does not need a transcript.
10 Comments
I was slightly confused at first since the video began with a couple suggestions that they did not recommend. I was beginning to think there would be no useful information. However, by the end, I had more substantial takeaways. I had never considered moving something above my education. I thought it was almost necessary to have it so early on. However, I have been taught to prioritize my sections from most relevant to least from the top down, While I will still choose to include my education first, as I feel that it is something I have worked hardest at and am most proud, it is nice to know this isn’t mandatory in the workforce’s eyes.
I found the video called “Tips for college grads and early career” to be super helpful at talking about what to avoid formatting wise on a resume. It mentioned that you don’t want to have your margins too large and also you have to take into consideration the font you use and the size. You also make sure that everything is relevant in your resume and not just add random stuff to fill in the empty white space. I feel like these different things to avoid on a resume will help me improve my resume. I tried to click the Job Application Resources link that is provided above, however it did not take me to the correct page.
Resumes are extremely important in the work world, so being able to not only format correctly, but also know what to put on it is super helpful. With that, the video talked about how to make a resume stand out. While I think it’s important to have a different font and headings, I think people can easily go overboard with this. You want the potential employer to enjoy looking at it, but not be too overwhelmed or confused when looking at the resume. I also watched this video called “Tips for Job Hoppers” because it looked interesting and something they mentioned that I think can be applicable on a regular resume is showing the functionality of the jobs you’ve done before you show the time frame, or without mentioning the time frame at all. That way the employer knows the skills you possess.
I thought the video on “tips for college grads and early career” was helpful with the advice it gave on formatting a resume, especially when you do not have a lot of experience. It gave very specific advice on what size to make your margins and how section titles should be no larger than two font sizes above your body text. I have also included a section on relevant coursework on my resume because I don’t have a lot of professional experience. Additionally, I have used a website called Canva to format my resume because they have free templates. I believe that the formatting on that program takes up more white space and helps my resume to stand out from others.
The video “Tips for college grads and early career” gave great advice for how to format a resume so that it looks more full without using strange margins and excessive information. It discussed that altering font size and font type can help with making the resume look more full, while providing limits on what size it should be so that it doesn’t hurt your resume. I learned from a career advisor that you should try to only include recent information that is relevant to what job you are applying for and to avoid using things from high school when making a resume. Employers are going to be more interested in what you have been doing during college and the internships/research that you have been involved with.
I watched the recommended video for a little while, but I realized that I’m having the opposite problem–too much stuff on my resume. While looking for a video to solve that problem, I came across one regarding thank you notes. Now this is something I always struggle with after interviews–who I should send it to, how I should send it, what I should say, etc. Needless to say, I found this topic much more appealing. The lady in the video placed an interesting emphasis on handwritten thank you notes, but used in conjunction with email. It makes sense that not a lot of people handwrite & mail notes these days, but I always thought that even an email seems a bit too “needy”, so doing that and a snail-mail seemed like way too much. But, she brought up a good point: recruiters are highly unlikely to receive actual mail, so it’s way more memorable. I’m definitely going to try this next time I’m applying for a job.
I watched the Tips for College Grads and Early Career video but nothing stood out to me. I already knew about the font and margin advice so I really didn’t learn anything. What stood out to me was the part about the objective because I always hear different things about it. I was taught to keep it short and basically just say what position you are applying to. My advisor hates objective and thinks they are a waste of time. After watching the Using Your Objective to Focus the Reader video, I think that objectives are useful if done correctly. To me, it seems like what they would put in the objective, I would put in my cover letter. The video talked about how you should “infer” what a company needs from looking at the job posting. I tried this out with a position I had saved to apply later. The company description mentions they are internationally involved and have a very “global perspective.” There focus is on healthcare but perhaps I could mention that I have a global perspective on health care or that I am looking for a position to help promote access to healthcare everywhere.
The “Tips for college grads and early career” video was great. I thought it was geared towards people without a lot of experience and the information was very helpful. On how to get rid of white spaces, I always utilized different font sizes on section headers. I always knew different fonts have different sizes but I always stuck to Times New Roman. I’ve always thought that education comes after objective but there was a great explanation on why experience could follow objective.
Overall, I believe this video is fantastic, even for people who have never written resumes. The little information however, can easily make your resume stand out for the better.
This video is really helpful, and I have read all of the comments on this articles. I think all of these are really significant to me, and I will graduate in one year. The resume is the first impression of me, I need avoid making mistakes on it. Before I watch this video, I never put my education experience on the front of resume. Rachel Cannon said that we can use a website called Canva to format my resume, which is really smart method to build a beautiful resume. I think I will try it as soon as possible.
The video provides helpful comments on improving the look of a resume. I had some gaps on my resume before landing internship, especially when I was told I can not use most of my high school experiences. I had to stretch things out just like the lady said in the video. If some of us do not know, the students service center has free resume reviews for students. That is how I was able to improve my resume to land my first internship.