Chapter 9: Ready For The Real World? Helpful Resumé And Interview Hints

No matter how well you were able to network into an organization, there is usually a formal interview process that must be completed. But first, you have to be one of the handful of people that is granted an interview. Even better, wouldn't it better to be in the driver's seat to have your choice of organizations to work for?! How do you do this?

Have one heckuva resumé that makes the prospective employer say, ‘We want this person!’ Your resumé should highlight your education, co-curricular activities, job experience, and any noteworthy accomplishments. Including your grade point average is optional. Their first impression of you will be based on what they see on paper.

With respect to co-curricular activities, be sure to include leadership positions held (i.e. VP of a club), committees you sat on, as well as community service (i.e. Red Cross clinic co-ordinator). Don't be afraid to put something on your resumé if you only went to two meetings or if you created a position. Just make sure that you can highlight results if asked about what you did or accomplished.

Recall that a copy of my graduating resumé is enclosed in Appendix A. For your information, I used the term Curriculum Vitae, which is really only a fancier term than resumé and the term primarily used by college professors to detail their education and published work. This is not the only format, and while numerous books highlight various resumé styles, it is the one that worked for me.

Which Co-Curricular Activities Should You Highlight?

Remember that anything you put down on paper is subject to a question. You must be able to justify its existence! The more items that you can put down that can illustrate experience applicable to your desired profession, the better off you will be. I would like to highlight and discuss a some of the items included on my resumé to better illustrate what was included and why.

First, I would like to discuss items under the ‘Co-Curricular Activities’ heading. You may recall that I was elected to the Senate and to President of the marketing club. But that was not the case for the ‘Marketing Advisory Council.’

I created the Marketing Advisory Council and conveniently became the Chairman. The council was created because we had a lot of competent people who were not elected to the executive of the marketing club. As the marketing club had a full plate of activities to coordinate, there was a gap because our group could accomplish more, but we needed more people who were reliable and motivated.

I hand picked qualified people and we branched into areas such as doing market research for a community group, as well as coordinating and promoting all of the Red Cross Blood Donor clinics on our campus to increase their unit yields. In return for these individuals donating their time and efforts, they had something of substance to put on their resumé.

One other thing that our club initiated in order to keep the momentum rolling upon graduation was to get freshman and sophomore representatives elected to assist in promoting our club’s activities on campus activities. These reps also assisted the Advisory Council in its mandate.

What this did was allow us to find people who could gain experience and continue the momentum we had established after our graduation. Like Real World organizations, people are replaceable, but the people who replace you must continue or speed up the pace. I was asked about my marketing club accomplishments in several interviews, and the points highlighted above were the reasons and the results I gave.

One other item that I also included was ‘Undergraduate Representative on the Business Advisory Council of the Faculty of Business.’ Sounds pretty fancy, huh? If a prospective interviewer read this, they might have presumed that I was the only representative because of the way it was worded.

What I did not include or mention in an interview, unless asked, was that every president of a student business club was automatically on this council composed of community business leaders and senior faculty members. We attended only two meetings. However, to back it up, in one meeting, the other student leaders and I offered valuable input on our faculty's direction, so if asked in an interview, I could justify its existence on my resumé.

One other notation that I made was that I sat on eight committees. That was true; however, I only made a notation of it for two reasons. First, four of the eight were committees that only met once or twice a year and three of the eight were committees I was automatically assigned to because of the positions I was elected to. No matter, everything counts! (CAUTION: The old 'when it rains, it pours' syndrome can catch you very easily if you take on too much. The committees may only meet once or twice per year, but it happened to me that all of the committees met during the same week, the week that I had all of my mid-terms. This was not a fun week.)

The second reason why I did not include each committee I sat on was because my resumé already had enough substantial information…