Résumé Building

Before the Newhouse Career Development Center reviews your resume, we recommend that you attend the resume and cover letter writing seminar to learn the basics or watch the tutorial video. After you have taken the seminar or watched the tutorial, you can email nhcdc@syr.edu with the subject line “Resume or Cover Letter Review.” Due to the high volume of requests, it will be at least 2-4 business days before you receive feedback.  

Coursework can be used on a resume! Here are some tips on how to do it:

• It can be used as a filler or to fill a gap. What is the difference?
  • When you are “light” on experience, you can use coursework to fill in any gaps. Consider your past courses and if they are hands-on and relevant. If so, be sure to add them.
  •  An example of using coursework to fill a gap is if you are applying to an internship or job that calls for a certain skill and/or experience, but you’ve only gained that experience in a class. Add it! This way, the employer knows that you have hands-on experience, but in a classroom setting. See our examples on how to put this in your “Experience” section. 

In the communications industry, a one-page resume is standard. If you have been out of college for more than 10 years and/or have high-level experience, it is acceptable to have a multi-page resume. 

If you are running short on space, there are a few things to consider: 

• Do you have optional sections that could be eliminated or condensed?
• Could you eliminate any not-so-relevant experience?
• Can you tweak your layout (margins, font style, headers) to fit more items onto the page?

This is a common feeling, but you probably have more than you think. Creating a word bank will help, and so will using coursework as a filler (see above). 

No! Your resume does need to be easy to read, but it doesn’t have to be fancy. If you can design a resume, then great! But if you need to use Microsoft Word, that’s fine. The most important element of a resume is the content. Without that, the most aesthetically pleasing resume won’t be successful. To make a modern-looking resume, select a sans serif font for the content of your resume and a contrasting font for your section titles and your name at the top. Once you save it as a PDF, no one will know which program you used to design it!