Communication is of paramount importance professionally. The way you present yourself professionally can determine if you get a job, a promotion, a raise, a leadership position at work, and more. Resumes and cover letters, and professional portfolios can be effective tools for presenting yourself professionally.
Resume
Resumes are intended to provide a snapshot of you as a professional—your achievements, jobs, skills. All resumes should contain:
- your name and contact information
- employment details
- education
The rest of the information, and the order of all of the information categories, are up to you. Some people include work highlights/achievements, skills, references, and other information. Understanding your job context and the audience for the information will help you identify content and structure of a resume.
There are different kinds of resumes, chronological, functional, and combination. A chronological resume uses reverse chronological order (most recent first) to list work experience and education information. A functional or skills resume focuses on special skills and examples of those skills as its main section. A combination resume may include features of both the chronological and functional resumes, again in whatever order you think best given the job context and audience. Know that a resume is not a set, stable document—although the information remains essentially the same, the way in which you present that information can and should change, given the position for which it’s intended. Make sure that your resume relates to the job at hand and fulfills the needs of the audience as much as possible.
Resumes are both paper and electronic. It’s important to have searchable terms in your resume, because it’s very likely that it will be scanned, especially if you are applying for a job at a large corporation.
Resume Writing Tips
- Identify your job title first when providing information about your work experience. Time and again, writers list their employer’s or company’s name first, yet the focus should be on their function within the company, as that’s what the reader will want to know.
- Break information into small pieces that can be read and easily retained. Avoid big blocks of type. Bulleted lists and phrases work much better than paragraphs and sentences.
- Use parallel action words. “Parallel” means that all of the words within one category have the same grammatical form (e.g., they all end in “-ed” or “-ing”). “Action” means that the words themselves show direct activity (e.g., “managed” instead of “responsible for managing”).
- You may delete dates of education from the resume, and employers cannot legally pursue that information. This may be to your advantage if some of your formal education is old. On the other hand, adding dates may give you an advantage if you’ve had recent training. Gauge the situation and your audience to decide about using dates.
- Stick with just a few margins throughout the resume. Too many margins and indentations make the resume hard to read.
- Don’t send overly long resumes. One page is ideal, and two pages are acceptable. If you really need to include more information, do it in the form of a separate attachment that can be read or not read (e.g., a list of projects, new products developed, publications, etc.). Don’t assume, however, that everyone concerned will read the attachment—or even that it will get distributed to all of those who make the decision about hiring!
- Err on the side of formality, even if you know your audience. For the resume, that means that it’s best to create a traditional-looking resume without fancy border designs, brightly-colored paper, or fancy typefaces (unless you are in a field that requires creativity, such as publication design).
Watch the following videos, which talk about contemporary resume writing. The first is a brief discussion. The second is relatively long, but useful in the concepts it presents.
Cover Letter
Cover letters, or introductory information, help to introduce your resume. Cover letters always need to indicate the specific job for which you’re applying. And cover letters should always focus on the benefits that you bring to the company (and not benefits to you). A reader will not care if your job objective is to move into upper management, or if you want to relocate to be closer to family members. Your audience for a resume just wants to know how you can contribute to the workplace. Watch the following video about cover letters, or information that introduces your resume.
Professional Portfolio
A professional portfolio is increasingly useful in the contemporary business environment. In addition to providing more information for prospective employers, a portfolio can house samples of your work for annual performance reviews, lists of your certifications and trainings, and artifacts that provide evidence that you have acquired specific competencies. According to Middleton:
A professional portfolio enables you to assemble, in one place, many or all of the important details of your career – past, present, and future – and any special achievement that you have made over the course of your working life.
The portfolio provides evidence of learning, experiences, and achievements, and demonstrates your current knowledge, skills, and competency. The portfolio also encourages reflection and self-directed learning, based on real experiences.
Reflection is a powerful learning tool; even if you do not intend to use a professional portfolio to seek a new job or advance in your current job, it’s good practice to maintain one for yourself, to store artifacts that represent knowledge gained, to consider that knowledge and figure out next steps, and to support lifelong learning. A professional portfolio may have a private space for reflection. For example:
- What do you think about certain ideas, concepts, work experiences?
- What was easy or difficult for you to learn and/or do?
- What learning/doing processes did you use and what changes do you think you might implement in the future? Why?
Read the following articles for more information on professional portfolios:
- Building a Professional Portfolio by UC Berkeley Extension, provides a good overview of the purpose and contents of professional portfolios
- 51 Items For Your Professional Career Portfolio + Examples, by Pete Kistler on the website Brand Yourself, offers additional ideas about professional portfolio content
You may decide to create a print or a digital portfolio. Sites such as LinkedIn allow you to add certain categories and information to create what is essentially a professional portfolio. Their benefit is that they offer a standard structure and prompts, and they are used widely. Blogs and other free tools are also appropriate for professional portfolios, and offer the benefit of organizing and presenting information more individually. However you decide to create a professional portfolio, keep in mind the following usability characteristics:
- logical organization of information, with similar types of information grouped together
- clear, concise, representative headings
- easy navigability
- clean page layout
- visual enhancement of text
initial learning activity
Identify a job for which you would like to apply, and copy the job announcement. Then create a cover letter and resume targeted toward that specific job.
Apply the cover letter and resume concepts, creating a cover letter that, like the resume, can easily be scanned.
Submit:
- job announcement copy
- cover letter
- resume
in-depth learning activity
Create a professional portfolio in a digital format.
Apply the professional portfolio concepts that you read about, and tailor your portfolio to your current and potential future professional positions.
As you create the portfolio, consider the following questions:
- What types of information might employers want to see in a professional portfolio?
- How much information is too much for a professional portfolio?
- Can you articulate some guidelines about scope and amount of portfolio information?
Submit:
- the link to your professional portfolio
- a brief (2-3 page) rationale discussing the reasons why you chose certain examples and contents
Related college Learning Goals
Communication: Express and receive ideas effectively, in multiple contexts and through multiple strategies.
Information and Digital Media Literacy: Critically access, evaluate, understand, create and share information using a range of collaborative technologies to advance learning, as well as personal and professional development.
For more information, see the College Learning Goals Policy.