Challenges
What have been some of your greatest challenges in assisting students with this type of résumé development, and how have you overcome them?
Most of the students are scared of looking bad to their piers. They have been talking about how well their going to do in life after graduation and now its time to deliver. My biggest challenge is getting them to complete it. They know as soon as its completed they might get rejected in the job market.
We tend to ask, if younger in age, what they did during high school. We will pull experience from sports that they have taken part in or volunteer events they may have participated in.
Most of the time we have situations where the student is changing careers and entering a field that is totally different from their past experience. Some are more than ten years, and I fined that they have difficulty tapering down thier resume
Hi Tara,
I think many who work in career services have witnessed that fear you mention. The job market is tough and so is competition so I think that fear is to be expected. Your approach is great since many individuals struggle with identifying and communicating past experience relevant/transferable to a new career. You have them simply focus on past experiences and you collaboratively help them identify the most relevant. Great coaching technique!
Robert Starks Jr.
Our age demographic is varied, but the common denominator is fear. Older students are afraid to write down all their experience & young students are afraid they don't have enough experience.
With the older ones, it's a matter of helping them weed through their experience to find the most advantageous highlights for the specific position.
With younger ones, it's helping them maximize on activities they have participated in.
The biggest challenges I am encountering with resume development since transitioning into this position are 1) Lack of work/educational experience 2) Lack of computer literacy, so creation of a resume is very time consuming + accompanying that with teaching new skills so they can learn for the future 3) Lack of proper use of grammar and punctuation 4) Receiving mixed messages on how to create and format their resume (from teachers, to friends, to family, to colleagues, etc.) 5) Using pre-established templates that are not friendly when we try to alter wording, layout, etc...6) Getting individuals to understand the importance of the "selling-tool" that is a resume and it should take serious thought, consideration and effort so they are given the best chance of maximizing opportunities for themselves.
Hi Viola,
I agree. Working with young students who are inexperienced both in work and in marketing themselves can be a challenge. Perhaps the biggest challenge is that we must teach them so much in a short amount of time while competing for their attention among so many other things during college. A combination of workshops, one-on-one appointments, classroom presentations, etc. helps tremendously in ensuring career marketing skills are addressed and that students get feedback while building confidence.
Robert Starks Jr.
The most difficult aspect of resume development at my school is working with young students who don't have any job experience, are not confident in their skills and sometimes unsure of what their skills are, especially soft skills.
I didn't realize how many people had no idea about soft skills until I taught a professional development class. I see that most students don't think about resumes and believe they can create one in a couple of minutes if they need it.
I think that assuming that students understand all the elements needed to market themselves is a big mistake.
Our CS dept does visit classrooms and holds workshops so students are exposed to this information on a regular basis.
Hi Madison,
This is a challenge for everyone because we, as career coaches can help students design and craft their marketing collateral but we can't invent experience! Beyond some of the questions provided in the downloadable resource, are there any types of questions you ask your students who have little to no experience that helps elicit something to work with?
Robert Starks Jr.
My biggest challenge has been when someone has never had any job experience and you need to pull information from experiences in life.
The challenge with my students is that they sometimes want to place their information into a template. However, once the resume is completed it doesn't reflect who they are. I have to remind them that if you are not proficient then don’t say that you are.
When you say you have them go to other people for further review, do you mean just proofreading, or does it also cover how you've told them to format, etc.?
I know we've had the problem that students will go to family members who haven't written a resume in years (if at all), and be given contradictory advice to what we've told them.
It can be frustrating because the student will then think we're giving them wrong instructions because the relative did not like how the resume looked.
My office has actually done several different things. I have created a resume workshop that discusses the items that most employers are looking for (as far as content, format, etc.)
I also reach out to my contacts in the business community to see what they best require. Google is a good tool, but knowing what local businesses want to see in a resume will help students create a resume.
We also stress how important it is to create a resume specific to each position being applied for.
And last, but not least, we also have a template that they can start out with, but we help them customize it to their needs.
It's interesting that you have binders of past resumes.
I have a question, do you also put resumes that weren't up to par in the binder, to show the students what *not* to do? It seems, to me, that would be a good idea as well. Sometimes, knowing what not to do can be just as beneficial.
Hi Jennifer,
Lack of any previous work experience can be quite the challenge. This is a reminder of the importance of early intervention to discuss how to address this issue so that students can develop a plan to gain experience necessary to compete. I am a big advocate of volunteering to create your own experience using relevant skills. The site, www.volunteermatch.org is a great resource to look for opportunities that I have instructed students to use. However, students can target organizations and see if they can volunteer vs. looking for advertised opportunities. Apprenticeships, internships, service learning, and many other types of experiential learning opportunities are also ways to help students get experience to reflect on their resume. How do you address this challenge?
Thanks for sharing!
Robert Starks Jr.
One of the biggest challenges I have found recently is that students have never worked a job in their lives so finding things outside of school to fill the page is a challenge. I don't think many massage companies are using the parsing tools so I haven't really had to deal with that aspect.
Hi Amber,
Whereas many career services departments likely have collected many resumes over time stored on their computers, I wonder how many use that information to create their own resume sample binder/book for their students to use. Great practical idea! Thank you for sharing.
Robert Starks Jr.
To be honest its a compilation of Google searched material and resumes collected over time. We have two programs we work with and actually have two separate binders with resumes & cover letters specific to both. Because my office does a lot of resume overhauls we usually ask permission of the graduates to make the resume anonymous and utilize it as an example. This way we have general samples of the chronological, functional and compilation as well as specific samples to the field we work with. The handouts that you also had in this presentation will also be used in the binder to assist with putting together additional information for our students and graduates.
Hi Amber,
What specific books do you use? There are so many out there, I'm curious which ones you use and how you decided up on them. Resume guide books can be really helpful to get additional ideas about layout, labeling headings, and format among other things.
Robert Starks Jr.
