Effective Resumes, CVs, & Achievement Lists

Courtney Santos Author

07/28/2025 Added

4 Plays

Description

Need to update your resume or build a curriculum vitae (CV)? Highlight your skills, experiences, and accomplishments in formats that stand out for fellowship opportunities. In this workshop, Courtney Santos, Director, Undergraduate Research & Fellowships covers how to emphasize key metrics for your achievements and tailor your documents to impress fellowship reviewers.

Searchable Transcript

Search:

[00:02:52.560]Courtney Santos: Hello, everyone! Happy Friday! It is fellowships. Friday. I'm doing well, and I hope you are, too. I'm Courtney Santos, the director of undergraduate research and fellowships. Welcome back. If this is a repeat visit to Fellowships Friday, and if it's your 1st time I'm so glad you're here.
[00:03:12.450]Courtney Santos: If you're here for summer. You care. Your attendance is being recorded automatically by zoom, there's nothing further you need to do but just hang out with me and enjoy the show. I also wanted to emphasize that we do have past event recordings. So if anyone has missed a fellowships Friday, you can check out recordings on our website.
[00:03:40.690]Courtney Santos: and today is also the last day for summer Ucare symposium registration. So if you're planning to present this summer.
[00:03:50.060]Courtney Santos: there's your go link there to get registered and share your poster title with us, so we can save you a spot at the symposium.
[00:03:59.530]Courtney Santos: All right. I think that's all of my big announcements that I wanted to share before we get started with today's awesome workshop.
[00:04:06.250]Courtney Santos: which is about effective, resumes Cvs and achievement lists. Right? And so we're going to be digging into what are sort of the differences, the different ways that you can curate your professional narrative
[00:04:21.200]Courtney Santos: for different audiences today. And we're going to focus, especially on competitive fellowships, is one possible application that you might be pursuing, either now or in the future, where you would need some of these documents prepared.
[00:04:38.410]Courtney Santos: So without further ado, I'm going to jump in. We are going to be talking today about how to tailor your documents for fellowships and other academic opportunities like graduate admissions, how to highlight key aspects of your experiences. Those would include your academic excellence, certainly, but also strengths like leadership service or interpersonal approaches that you might have.
[00:05:04.700]Courtney Santos: And so that's really going to align well with fellowship, selection, criteria, as we will see in a moment. We're also going to talk about how to emphasize your record of achievement and especially measurable results.
[00:05:21.070]Courtney Santos: So first, st I wanted to start us off with some definitions. Probably a lot of us have seen a resume before. Maybe you've prepared several, especially if you've had a lot of opportunities to apply for jobs or internships. Resumes are generally pretty short.
[00:05:36.320]Courtney Santos: right. But they are definitely highlighting your professional experiences to date right? And so they're things that you probably keep current, you know. Maybe you revisit them every time you're applying for a job, or perhaps every semester, if you're really good and diligent about updating your records.
[00:05:54.040]Courtney Santos: But it's definitely a summary of your experiences, and so usually every time we go to apply for a job or a fellowship, or some other opportunity, we would try to target what's on the resume. And so, as you go on and you build experiences across your undergraduate or graduate experiences, you're probably going to start swapping in
[00:06:16.680]Courtney Santos: activities that are the most relevant for the opportunity. Right? So you might start off with something that really represents everything you've done, especially 1st and second year students. But as you get further into your career. You start building up a greater track record. You're going to be able to be more selective, right? And so you would typically create about one to 2 pages
[00:06:38.840]Courtney Santos: right? And some will tell you that it's a limit of one page or something like that. So you want to pay attention to that
[00:06:46.520]Courtney Santos: usually pretty short. And it's going to highlight the most relevant academic, professional, or extracurricular experiences for the particular opportunity or role that you are seeking
[00:06:58.769]Courtney Santos: and so it's really an opportunity to put in some thought. You know, into what have I done that demonstrates these strengths that this audience is looking for right? And we're going to be talking a lot about audience today. Because because we are writing for an audience right?
[00:07:18.170]Courtney Santos: A Cv or a curriculum vitae
[00:07:22.130]Courtney Santos: is a longer form resume. Certainly
[00:07:25.770]Courtney Santos: the important thing to know about it is that it presents the full details of every academic and professional experience that you've had since college began.
[00:07:36.750]Courtney Santos: And so this is where you would want to really update it. Every semester I would suggest while you are in school, and then at least every year in your career, because your Cv. Should keep growing as you grow as a person and a professional right. Cvs have no page limit. If somebody requests a Cv. From you, what they want is as many pages as you need to be complete.
[00:08:02.310]Courtney Santos: and so you can feel free to add lots of bullets to your Cv. Because it's really the full details, right? So there's still reasons to be strategic and put a lot of thought into how you phrase things on your Cv. And so on.
[00:08:16.360]Courtney Santos: But you don't need to be selective quite the opposite. You need to be complete.
[00:08:22.930]Courtney Santos: An achievement list is generally something that's asked for. It's kind of like a form field. Right? So you are filling out an online application. That information is going to a data database. And so they're trying to get you to put information from your resume or Cv into their format
[00:08:40.980]Courtney Santos: so that it can be saved in the database, and it will look consistent to everybody else who applies.
[00:08:46.770]Courtney Santos: So I think it's important to understand that there's often things like character limits on these responses, and that might mean that you have to abbreviate
[00:08:54.890]Courtney Santos: some of the things that you were putting on there. So it doesn't mean don't be complete right?
[00:09:01.250]Courtney Santos: but you probably have to maybe use some acronyms right? Or try to think of ways in which you can abbreviate your experiences so they fit the formatting required by the online application form.
[00:09:15.340]Courtney Santos: I would also say, with achievement lists, we tend to see that they emphasize your top achievements. So again, it's more selective, like a resume right? And they may
[00:09:26.850]Courtney Santos: break out different sections of the achievements that they most want to see. So I think about fellowships that support research or graduate study will often ask for a list of publications, presentations, things like that because they want to understand your academic output
[00:09:45.290]Courtney Santos: right? They may also ask about honors and awards specifically because they want to know if you maybe are the top student in your college or department.
[00:09:55.110]Courtney Santos: Maybe you have gone to a poster symposium and received a best poster award. Those kind of things, right? So a lot of time. There's going to be an emphasis on particular types of achievements that are important to that fellowship or to that opportunity. So hopefully that helps clear up some of the basic differences. If you want to see examples
[00:10:16.890]Courtney Santos: of Cvs versus resumes.
[00:10:19.860]Courtney Santos: Our friends over at graduate studies have made a little canvas course.
[00:10:23.870]Courtney Santos: and so they have sample Cvs and resumes that you can take a look at if you are preparing one for the 1st time, or if you just want to hone and refine the document you already have.
[00:10:37.940]Courtney Santos: I want to talk a bit as well about fellowship. Specifically.
[00:10:42.170]Courtney Santos: because I think a lot of students will think, well, I prepared a resume for a job. Recently, it's current. I'll just use this right. And I would argue that that's not always the most competitive strategy
[00:10:53.770]Courtney Santos: for a highly competitive opportunity. Right? So every fellowship has selection, criteria that are established by the funder
[00:11:04.390]Courtney Santos: right? And so it might be a nonprofit. It might be a government agency, or even a university itself, like, I think, of the Rhodes Scholarship. That's Oxford University or the Knight Hennessey Scholars program
[00:11:18.720]Courtney Santos: at Stanford. Right?
[00:11:21.600]Courtney Santos: but they all have their particular mission statement, their values. And then from those arise selection criteria that they use when reviewing applications. They're often using this even just like a rubric. Right?
[00:11:36.070]Courtney Santos: So they're usually scoring applications on the back end according to what they are asking for. So while every fellowship might have slightly different selection criteria, right? The National Science Foundation, probably going to emphasize things like academic research, experience, right knight Hennessy scholars is looking for
[00:11:55.440]Courtney Santos: agents of positive change in the world. So they're going to emphasize leadership a lot. Right? Still.
[00:12:01.110]Courtney Santos: we're looking at some common trends and themes here. And we see that they ask for evidence of past achievement and potential, pretty much across the board, right? So they might choose to emphasize academic excellence or leadership or commitment to public service like the Truman scholarship.
[00:12:19.610]Courtney Santos: right or even interpersonal and cross-cultural competencies like Fulbright.
[00:12:24.990]Courtney Santos: Right? So when you are looking at those selection criteria, if you can see these common themes, it can help you to generate a resume that you would use for multiple fellowships.
[00:12:36.770]Courtney Santos: Right? But you're gonna have to tailor it a little bit according to the selection criteria that they have, which are probably also very different
[00:12:47.220]Courtney Santos: from selection criteria for jobs and internships. Right? Because different organizations are looking at it as an audience.
[00:12:57.740]Courtney Santos: I also want to note that they are looking for connections to future goal achievements
[00:13:04.020]Courtney Santos: for a fellowship, and this might or might not be true of other opportunities that you apply for. But it's definitely there for fellowships. Right? They are looking to give funding to students
[00:13:16.100]Courtney Santos: to do something, whether that's to study abroad or go to graduate school, or, you know, commit themselves to a leadership development program
[00:13:26.530]Courtney Santos: right? But fellowships are very much thinking about the future potential of the applicant in a way that is maybe different from, say, a job or internship where they are hoping you're
[00:13:39.780]Courtney Santos: connection to. That employer is longstanding
[00:13:43.410]Courtney Santos: right fellowships very much see themselves as taking a role where they are giving you resources on a short term. Temporary basis, right? Maybe for a semester to study abroad, or maybe for 3 years, to go to graduate school, but they are trying to serve as a launch pad for future achievement. And so they are going to look at your resume very differently, because they are looking for thematic connection to the future goals that you state on your application.
[00:14:11.500]Courtney Santos: So what could some of those themes be
[00:14:14.170]Courtney Santos: well, I would say one thing should be ambition, because all of the fellowships value that.
[00:14:20.350]Courtney Santos: And so they're probably looking for an upward trajectory across your experiences.
[00:14:26.360]Courtney Santos: Right? They are probably thinking, well, if this person started here as a 1st year where they go next.
[00:14:32.910]Courtney Santos: how strategic were those moves to increase this student's leadership
[00:14:38.590]Courtney Santos: or this student's academic achievement or their research achievement. Right? So they want to see that you are when you are offered opportunities. You are incrementally moving up. They don't expect you to be class president as a 1st year.
[00:14:52.190]Courtney Santos: right? Or to be a published researcher at that point, but especially as you're moving toward graduation. They want to see that upward movement.
[00:15:00.876]Courtney Santos: They also want to see sustained and focused investment of effort.
[00:15:06.530]Courtney Santos: And this one's hard for the students, who maybe have changed our major often.
[00:15:11.800]Courtney Santos: or maybe like to pursue a lot of different types of opportunities, always excited and saying yes to everything right. If you are an explorer, this one is hard for you, right, but remember that a resume is a narrative that you curate.
[00:15:28.240]Courtney Santos: and so you want to look for common themes as you're being selective and teasing out
[00:15:35.720]Courtney Santos: those particular investments of time that you have made so that others can see the thematic connection.
[00:15:43.040]Courtney Santos: Right? So I think about students who maybe have 2 major areas of focus and a few minor ones where you probably want to highlight the ones that relate most to this application
[00:15:56.660]Courtney Santos: right? And so hopefully across your activities, we can see sustained investment of effort.
[00:16:03.920]Courtney Santos: You know, they don't usually get so granular that it's like, Oh, this student had a state legislative page internship, and then did a Federal 1. 0, that's too different. It's not. It's not usually at that level of granularity. Right? So sometimes students will stress over things that aren't problems right. But if a lot of your activities are truly in different areas. You need to help reviewers find the connection
[00:16:31.000]Courtney Santos: that could include using your personal statement to explain those connections. But I would suggest that you find ways to organize your resume so that we can see that maybe all of them were leadership activities or all of them were public service right and using things like sub headers to show that it was sustained.
[00:16:50.020]Courtney Santos: I would also suggest that if you, as you get further into your education, that you do start to narrow to one or 2 major things that you're really invested in, and that you're doing over the long term rather than kind of thinking week by week, or semester by semester. How can you start to invest more deeply in a few things as you get closer to graduation or to graduate school.
[00:17:14.980]Courtney Santos: or the next steps in your career.
[00:17:17.990]Courtney Santos: And then, finally, I would say, they look for students who have a desire for positive impact that is communicated in the work they have already done.
[00:17:26.040]Courtney Santos: and that positive impact, what students value is the right thing to be impactful about? Right? You know. But
[00:17:34.270]Courtney Santos: I think that we see commonly that they look for students who maybe are advancing the scholarly field.
[00:17:41.510]Courtney Santos: So perhaps that's students who are doing a lot of things that are research focused
[00:17:47.570]Courtney Santos: right? Have particular questions or topics that stand out across the different experiences.
[00:17:55.160]Courtney Santos: Or maybe it's a bit more about personal values in a community orientation. So perhaps all of the students activities start to coalesce around a particular benefit to the general public, or maybe to a group that they are a member of, or something like that.
[00:18:14.410]Courtney Santos: So again, helping people see those connections and see the values that drive the actions and investments you choose to make. That's what a really great resume will be able to do.
[00:18:29.470]Courtney Santos: The other thing we need to do is think like a scientist a bit.
[00:18:34.370]Courtney Santos: We need to engineer a great resume. And so one of the important things that we know about the sciences is that phenomena need to be observable and measurable right. That's how we can really perform our best work.
[00:18:49.541]Courtney Santos: So we need to think about.
[00:18:53.490]Courtney Santos: how can your achievements go beyond sort of the basic description of a role?
[00:18:59.170]Courtney Santos: I was a resident advisor
[00:19:02.385]Courtney Santos: you know, could be a bullet, sure. And then you explain what a resident advisor does. Trust me. Everyone with any knowledge of higher education whatsoever already knows what a resident advisor typically does right. But if you can
[00:19:18.600]Courtney Santos: show us the novelty and the impact of your work.
[00:19:24.450]Courtney Santos: you are going to have a much better resume bullet right? And so you can actually delete all of the things from your resume that are obvious from your title.
[00:19:34.660]Courtney Santos: But what we want you to do is surprise us right? And so a great structure to use here is to think about metrics. So
[00:19:43.650]Courtney Santos: action, verb might metric a metric would usually be numeric or countable. Right? We're trying to make it measurable.
[00:19:54.230]Courtney Santos: And then an outcome from your work
[00:19:58.560]Courtney Santos: right? And so those outcomes could be, you know, either
[00:20:03.870]Courtney Santos: creating new resources. So giving the example of money. Money is a resource. Right? Dollars raised dollars saved
[00:20:12.850]Courtney Santos: right. Those would be really great metrics, another could be influence
[00:20:18.650]Courtney Santos: right? It's very hard to make influence quantifiable. But if you think carefully, you probably can
[00:20:25.380]Courtney Santos: have you brought new members into an organization. They're countable.
[00:20:30.990]Courtney Santos: Have you created an event?
[00:20:33.900]Courtney Santos: Can we count the attendees?
[00:20:37.530]Courtney Santos: If you created a video, how many views does it have
[00:20:43.740]Courtney Santos: another one that's key for many students is knowledge sharing right? And so here's again, to our student researchers, things like publications, presentations
[00:20:54.540]Courtney Santos: in the arts, performances and exhibits.
[00:20:58.750]Courtney Santos: Those are ways of sharing your knowledge right?
[00:21:02.417]Courtney Santos: So think about in the areas where you have the greatest strength.
[00:21:08.570]Courtney Santos: What ways can you make it measurable?
[00:21:13.490]Courtney Santos: Right? And so a lot of students activities focus on outreach. Can you say something stronger than that, though something like co-led a voter registration initiative that reached 900 students in 2 weeks. Well, here we have 2 metrics. Actually, right? We have 900 students.
[00:21:34.830]Courtney Santos: right? And so that's the amount of influence happening there. But then we also have duration. 2 weeks. Wow! That was a really short period of time, right? So we have to assume this initiative was probably very effective right? And then, as the person reading this resume, I want to interview you now and find out how you did that
[00:21:55.770]Courtney Santos: right. I want to bring you in because you have skills that my organization probably needs
[00:22:03.770]Courtney Santos: so drilling down a little bit more on the different types of selection criteria that fellowships have
[00:22:09.615]Courtney Santos: and how you can make it countable or measurable. Right? So, gpa, that's a measurement in and of itself, right? That's that's going to show us your achievements in class.
[00:22:22.690]Courtney Santos: The honors and awards lists right? Those are countable, you know. Student has won 3 poster awards.
[00:22:30.658]Courtney Santos: We can count the number of research projects that you've had, or the number of Ucare semesters that you've had
[00:22:38.235]Courtney Santos: publications, presentations, exhibits anything that you can put in a list format is countable, right? And so we can create bullets that say things like published article in an undergraduate law journal.
[00:22:52.985]Courtney Santos: And if it's a digital journal. Maybe we can say how many views it had right?
[00:22:57.420]Courtney Santos: Or maybe we can say how many conferences you have presented at.
[00:23:02.040]Courtney Santos: And so that's giving us again
[00:23:04.700]Courtney Santos: some idea of how much knowledge sharing is going on. If we can get views or something like that, we might be able to say something about your level of influence, too.
[00:23:16.920]Courtney Santos: Leadership is one that I think students often sell themselves short.
[00:23:23.800]Courtney Santos: a lot of students will say, well, I haven't had any leadership, roles or titles. I'm not the President or vice president of anything.
[00:23:30.320]Courtney Santos: And that's okay, because leadership is a behavior.
[00:23:34.640]Courtney Santos: right? It's a behavior that we choose. It's not a role or a title.
[00:23:39.440]Courtney Santos: right? And so it really involves more the conscious decision to act.
[00:23:50.850]Courtney Santos: So if we think about it that way.
[00:23:53.970]Courtney Santos: Leadership is doing stuff like taking responsibility for owning rather than abandoning a problem.
[00:24:00.670]Courtney Santos: And haven't we all done that?
[00:24:05.960]Courtney Santos: Most of us stepped up when we noticed a gap and filled it.
[00:24:12.740]Courtney Santos: Certainly you've acted with purpose and intention
[00:24:16.460]Courtney Santos: at particular moments in your life.
[00:24:20.700]Courtney Santos: I think, too, that students should really consider
[00:24:24.690]Courtney Santos: the extent to which they work with teams, whether that's leading from the front
[00:24:30.780]Courtney Santos: leading from the side leading from behind. Right.
[00:24:34.450]Courtney Santos: But if you work with groups and in some way persuade or mobilize others toward a shared goal. You are demonstrating leadership strengths, right? And so you can actually lead from any seat in the room that could be in class on a team, a volunteer, a worker.
[00:24:51.160]Courtney Santos: really anywhere you go.
[00:24:52.940]Courtney Santos: Right? So leadership is a behavior. It's a verb. It's an action that we take.
[00:24:57.780]Courtney Santos: And so here are some examples of actions, right initiating
[00:25:02.120]Courtney Santos: a new project, a new campaign
[00:25:06.380]Courtney Santos: forming a team, perhaps to pursue a shared goal, influencing other people to act.
[00:25:13.960]Courtney Santos: or maybe entire groups to act.
[00:25:17.600]Courtney Santos: solving a problem that others have overlooked, or even
[00:25:22.630]Courtney Santos: things that are a little bit quieter, like persevering through setbacks and challenges
[00:25:27.730]Courtney Santos: that could be a demonstration of leadership. It kind of depends on the example right? But it is really in the stories that we have to tell.
[00:25:37.340]Courtney Santos: and in the actions that we have taken.
[00:25:40.140]Courtney Santos: that people can see our leadership and make it measurable.
[00:25:44.990]Courtney Santos: So I challenge you to think about the ways in which you are already a leader.
[00:25:51.740]Courtney Santos: Some examples would be identifying efficiency inefficiencies in a lab process right? And proposing a change. If you can quantify that, say it reduced processing time by 30%.
[00:26:04.500]Courtney Santos: Right? Then you improve that lab process for everyone.
[00:26:08.160]Courtney Santos: That's a pretty big influence
[00:26:11.340]Courtney Santos: mentoring 3 peers through their 1st year of college, with all 3 returning and earning honors.
[00:26:17.830]Courtney Santos: Fine. So here we can see it's quantified. There's 3 of them. We've got duration a whole year.
[00:26:24.540]Courtney Santos: And then the impact.
[00:26:27.250]Courtney Santos: All of them stayed in college. And they're doing really well, right?
[00:26:34.202]Courtney Santos: That's a definitely interpersonal influence. But we've made it measurable.
[00:26:42.050]Courtney Santos: it could be something that you do frequently. But you just haven't thought of it as a leadership activity.
[00:26:47.940]Courtney Santos: And so maybe you've worked with something like a campus discussion series, right? And attracting lots of participants.
[00:26:55.870]Courtney Santos: That's probably something where someone has the numbers, even if you don't. And you can ask around and get them
[00:27:01.080]Courtney Santos: right. But again, bringing people together
[00:27:06.520]Courtney Santos: right is going to be a type of influence that you're exercising, and it makes for real world change.
[00:27:14.400]Courtney Santos: Now let's talk about service.
[00:27:17.317]Courtney Santos: So some fellowships really strongly emphasize this, others. Not so much right. But if it's something that you need to talk about, either for a fellowship or a job application, or perhaps for certain types of graduate admissions. Here's how you can do it
[00:27:34.360]Courtney Santos: right. We might be looking at things like volunteering right? A lot of the time. You'll see a long term preference on those not just alternative spring break, or a 1 day event, or something like that. But they want to see that sustained
[00:27:50.492]Courtney Santos: in-depth experience with a volunteer organization.
[00:27:53.670]Courtney Santos: It might be other types of civic engagement projects or charitable work.
[00:27:58.230]Courtney Santos: It could be things like nonprofit or government internships, maybe things where you had the chance to work on policy or advocacy right? But whatever we choose for public service, we probably need to be demonstrating that there was some benefit to the public or to the community
[00:28:14.720]Courtney Santos: right and so again, I would challenge you to make it measurable right? And so I think a lot of folks will do something like sort of reporting hours. This is how much time I have spent, or this is how many months or years I have.
[00:28:29.820]Courtney Santos: Right? And that's certainly countable. We're we're starting off on a good foot there. But I would also say we got to follow that up with the outcome right? Because it is true that you can do work and toil away and produce no results. Right? So we want to try to to communicate that
[00:28:48.580]Courtney Santos: right? So even here, I would say these these examples could be amped up right because I still don't necessarily know what the impact is. So as we're going along, I want you to start thinking about? Where are the gaps? How could I make these things even better? Right? So if we organize financial literacy workshops for 200 community members.
[00:29:10.000]Courtney Santos: how many of them started a savings account after that, or how many of them were able to file their taxes
[00:29:16.870]Courtney Santos: on time? Right? What what financial literacy, skill did we teach? And then where did it go? Right?
[00:29:26.350]Courtney Santos: you know, if you've been serving with an after school stem program, how many of those students are enrolled in college, or how many of them moved up a level in math the next year
[00:29:38.390]Courtney Santos: with interpersonal and cross-cultural competence. We're really getting into the soft skills. Now, right? How can we communicate these things well, on the resume? We know that employers value them. They're actually a part of the nace competencies. Right?
[00:29:55.180]Courtney Santos: dig that up for you, just for the fun of it. So Nace is a national or association of colleges and employers. So this is sort of like the gold standard for career centers right? And they identified these 8 career readiness competencies, and several of them bear on this particular theme right things like communication, equity and inclusion
[00:30:21.570]Courtney Santos: teamwork. Right? All of those are soft skills.
[00:30:26.080]Courtney Santos: We want those on our resumes. Right? And I think about international fellowships in particular is looking for things like previous study abroad. Experience
[00:30:35.080]Courtney Santos: right the maturity and the flexibility to cope with life abroad
[00:30:39.530]Courtney Santos: right? And to get to know the people of a host community, or, I think about language learning and skills that are very valued for something like a successful, full break.
[00:30:51.880]Courtney Santos: English teaching assistantship. Where, right? Where you're going to serve as a role model for others who are learning the English language
[00:30:59.450]Courtney Santos: right and hopefully get the chance to communicate with the host community.
[00:31:04.608]Courtney Santos: Even just working with the public right? You know, being an ambassador for your college, or being a guide at a museum
[00:31:16.000]Courtney Santos: or a National Park tour guide, or something like that, right?
[00:31:22.530]Courtney Santos: In what ways can we make those strengths, those soft skills measurable? Right? And I think here it comes down to putting the people first.st
[00:31:33.500]Courtney Santos: Right?
[00:31:34.931]Courtney Santos: You're probably going to get the chance to explain these skills further elsewhere in the little stories that you tell about yourself in an interview or a cover letter or personal statement, right? But if we put people
[00:31:46.980]Courtney Santos: as a highlighted
[00:31:48.950]Courtney Santos: bullet right? We're probably moving in the right track here. So things like serving on a bilingual public health team.
[00:32:00.031]Courtney Santos: With 500 clients. Right? That's getting your language skills in there. Right? It's got the public in there. So that's emphasized. It's got an educational function. It's public health.
[00:32:12.390]Courtney Santos: right? And we're serving all these clients right? So we're gonna assume that if you are on a bilingual team you are serving the general public, there's probably a lot of people who need assistance. In multiple languages. Right? And you are meeting those needs
[00:32:32.410]Courtney Santos: or things like planning an event. So take an international dance festival, for example, there's cultural sharing happening there.
[00:32:40.420]Courtney Santos: right? And all of that is tied together with the richness of the lives of the people in it. Right? And so 40 students from 10 countries. It really communicates how much you've tried to bring people together so they can share.
[00:32:58.980]Courtney Santos: All right. Now, we're going to start looking at some weak examples
[00:33:02.760]Courtney Santos: together. And so here's where we get into the workshop activity.
[00:33:08.740]Courtney Santos: So we are going to rewrite some resume bullets using action verbs, metrics and outcomes.
[00:33:16.990]Courtney Santos: So pick 2 or 3 of these and rewrite them.
[00:33:27.050]Courtney Santos: So these would be weak ones right? They're too general, helped organize a fundraiser.
[00:33:35.220]Courtney Santos: or volunteered at an animal shelter
[00:33:39.620]Courtney Santos: or worked in a campus office or participate in study abroad.
[00:33:48.270]Courtney Santos: Tutored high school students manage social media
[00:33:56.070]Courtney Santos: or presented at a student conference
[00:33:59.660]Courtney Santos: so hopefully, there's something relatable here to all of you.
[00:34:03.150]Courtney Santos: Pick 2 or 3 and rewrite them. We'll take 5 min.
[00:36:45.100]Courtney Santos: just a reminder that we can make these bullets more effective by using an action verb.
[00:36:52.840]Courtney Santos: followed by a metric followed by an outcome. Right? If you need a list of action verbs, I've popped one in the chat.
[00:38:34.250]Courtney Santos: Alright, I see we're starting to get some great submissions in the chat. Thank you. Bailey.
[00:38:40.590]Courtney Santos: Bailey says, volunteered for 10 h per week for 2 years at the local animal shelter, helping hundreds of pets find new homes.
[00:38:51.320]Courtney Santos: can just feel the specificity there, right?
[00:38:54.620]Courtney Santos: And there's the outcome, right? The satisfaction of the pets and their new owners
[00:39:01.380]Courtney Santos: participated in a study abroad program in Japan, where I learned new language and culture while sharing my language and culture to others.
[00:39:10.791]Courtney Santos: That value of the mutual learning is being communicated there
[00:39:17.340]Courtney Santos: presented. My research findings on spruce grouse, genetic diversity at a student-led conference 3 times with professional researchers present. Right? So we can see the impact on the field from that research.
[00:39:32.950]Courtney Santos: Right? It's countable. Did did conferences 3 times.
[00:39:37.760]Courtney Santos: Good job.
[00:39:39.350]Courtney Santos: All right. Tyler has got a couple here as well advise 12 high school students to an A in math. That's way better than just tutored high school students. Right now we have the scale as well as the success right, the grades they wanted to achieve
[00:39:56.060]Courtney Santos: coordinated a company. Wide social media account, based on market research trends.
[00:40:08.290]Courtney Santos: no. Problem.
[00:40:10.990]Courtney Santos: I like this.
[00:40:12.420]Courtney Santos: Jc says, completed 3 week intercultural communication course in Italy, visiting 9 local towns and conducting interviews with local residents to develop a final group research project on health narratives.
[00:40:27.820]Courtney Santos: Yeah, so such specificity. Right? I I got to visit 9 local towns. I conducted the interviews right? So we see all the actions that were being taken to really get to know the host. Country culture
[00:40:46.510]Courtney Santos: tutored 5 high school students in writing for 4 months leading to improved Gpas and 3 students receiving academic awards
[00:40:57.130]Courtney Santos: created and scheduled content for university affiliates, Facebook and Linkedin accounts, growing followers by 60% and increasing engagement by 3 times in one semester.
[00:41:08.940]Courtney Santos: Yeah.
[00:41:10.130]Courtney Santos: again, I love those ones that include some duration or some percent increase right growing followers by 60%, right? Because again, that shows impact. It also shows, you know, sort of the speed right? How efficient
[00:41:29.788]Courtney Santos: was the action taken to create this change.
[00:41:36.290]Courtney Santos: Great job.
[00:41:40.670]Courtney Santos: all right. It's clear to me that you understand
[00:41:44.590]Courtney Santos: how you can do this right.
[00:41:48.160]Courtney Santos: we got pretty much an example of all of these, I think maybe the one that I didn't see was maybe worked in a campus office. Right? So here my example would be managed. Communications reaching 1,200 undergraduates launched a newsletter with a 45% open rate.
[00:42:05.560]Courtney Santos: you know. So again, having some reach or influence on campus, but I think
[00:42:11.670]Courtney Santos: folks pretty much touched on all of the other examples here.
[00:42:19.530]Courtney Santos: So now it's your turn.
[00:42:21.300]Courtney Santos: If you have a resume already.
[00:42:23.960]Courtney Santos: or if perhaps you are in the 1st stages of creating and brainstorming. One
[00:42:30.170]Courtney Santos: rewrite one of your own bullet points.
[00:42:35.340]Courtney Santos: So we want to include what you did, who benefited and how many were involved.
[00:42:41.010]Courtney Santos: or some other metric. Right? And then what changed? What was the outcome or result?
[00:42:55.820]Courtney Santos: Let's take about 3, 4 min to do that
[00:46:30.510]Courtney Santos: so hopefully, we all have an experience that can benefit from this.
[00:46:36.840]Courtney Santos: Tyler shared a great one, starting out with tutoring students in math and guiding them to a new understanding of complex topics.
[00:46:45.470]Courtney Santos: Good, but not great. Right? How do we make it great? We make it measurable, created and organized study plans for underprivileged students. So now we have a specific population
[00:46:56.130]Courtney Santos: along with guiding them through the curriculum to achieve passing grades in calculus. And then what was the measurable impact? All 100% of the students achieved a passing grade.
[00:47:08.060]Courtney Santos: Great job.
[00:47:12.900]Courtney Santos: And then I shared an example from my own. Resume right, built a canvas course for fellowships, advising.
[00:47:20.040]Courtney Santos: That's true. A lot of you were in it
[00:47:23.690]Courtney Santos: created a canvas course with strategy, advice, and resources for fellowships, applicants increasing. Fulbright, Us. Student program applications by 50% over 3 years.
[00:47:34.160]Courtney Santos: That's a lot more interesting to a potential employer of myself. Right?
[00:47:40.222]Courtney Santos: If you're not already tracking your own metrics, it's something that can really help you out as you launch your career, and I encourage you to do it right. You might not think that all the little attendance lists from events, or
[00:47:55.250]Courtney Santos: you know, all the little things that you do are really that big a deal, but they are right, and they can help you argue for your own success.
[00:48:06.300]Courtney Santos: So I hope that's helpful to you. Okay.
[00:48:10.530]Courtney Santos: sometimes students ask me about resume and Cv formatting. Right? And I want to tell you that there's no not really a wrong way to do this.
[00:48:21.100]Courtney Santos: But
[00:48:22.360]Courtney Santos: what you should be thinking of is the fact that your resume will be read, not just by a machine. It might be read by a machine, that's true, but by a human
[00:48:32.400]Courtney Santos: right. Looking at examples of resumes
[00:48:37.410]Courtney Santos: from others can help. You see what you like and dislike, and what's easy for you to navigate
[00:48:44.190]Courtney Santos: but I would challenge you to think a little bit about the user experience of your resume right? And so to do things like using clear headings and subheadings.
[00:48:55.390]Courtney Santos: Right? A lot of students will just pack it all under experience. Can we break that out? Maybe work experience, leadership, experience service experience. Right? Those kind of headings can help people see the themes in your work and navigate a long list of experiences.
[00:49:13.753]Courtney Santos: Consistent formatting right? So this could be beginning every bullet with an action verb. Why not right? It's going to put your resume in active voice. It's going to excite people and give your resume energy. So that's 1 thing. If you put a period at the end of one bullet you got to do it to all of them.
[00:49:31.990]Courtney Santos: right? So just being consistent with your formatting that little attention to detail, right. It's all kind of striking people at a deeper psychological level, where they are seeing how professional and how tailored your work is, and how much you've invested in creating a great experience for them.
[00:49:49.720]Courtney Santos: And then I would say, white space is more important than students think. Sometimes there's a temptation to again cram everything into one resume rather than to be selective, and then we lose all the white space. Right? If you have a 2 page limit and you're shrinking the font down to 9, and then eliminating all the white space between the sections. Right? It just looks like a wall of text. It's not easy for the reader right? And really, what you're doing is you're eliminating all of the potential
[00:50:19.550]Courtney Santos: for emphasis on key points, right? When readers are just swimming in letters and and characters.
[00:50:28.130]Courtney Santos: and not able to navigate right? So if you give them the white space to pause.
[00:50:35.590]Courtney Santos: if you think about your 1st bullet and your last bullet as being the most impactful ones. Right?
[00:50:44.330]Courtney Santos: The introduction to a topic and the conclusion to a topic
[00:50:49.710]Courtney Santos: right? And then give them that white space in between. They're going to have a chance to reflect before they move on to the next activity. And that is really going to help your words resonate with the reviewer.
[00:51:00.860]Courtney Santos: and then I would say, remember that this is not an essay, right? You want to keep your bullet points concise. It really is enough usually to have just one line per bullet.
[00:51:12.050]Courtney Santos: So if you're finding yourself running over a lot, you probably are cramming too many words in
[00:51:18.500]Courtney Santos: some key takeaways from today's workshop. Then, tailor, your resume to the selection criteria.
[00:51:24.880]Courtney Santos: prioritize the most relevant and the highest impact experiences that you have.
[00:51:31.910]Courtney Santos: Make your work measurable. Use those action verbs convey the impact and outcomes of your work.
[00:51:40.730]Courtney Santos: And remember, it's a competition. You want to look novel and interesting. You want to stand out from the stack. So surprise the reviewers.
[00:51:49.830]Courtney Santos: Tell us what we can't guess from your job title, right?
[00:51:55.190]Courtney Santos: Focus on the original and novel contributions that you have made above and beyond the basics of your roles.
[00:52:01.950]Courtney Santos: Right? And that goes back again to we all choose leadership right? It is not a title.
[00:52:08.120]Courtney Santos: right? It is a decision, a behavior, a choice to act.
[00:52:16.570]Courtney Santos: If you have been having fun today and you want to keep working on your career development, I also have some resources to share with you. 1st want to share my favorite free ebook.
[00:52:26.580]Courtney Santos: Picture your career. If you found today's workshop a little dry. This has some more fun reflection activities on your strengths that you can use to generate resume bullets, certainly, as well as personal statements and lots more.
[00:52:42.091]Courtney Santos: It has things like creative projects and vision boards and ways to imagine yourself role playing an interview and all kinds of cool stuff like that. So check it out.
[00:52:53.450]Courtney Santos: And then, if you are interested in getting some personalized feedback on your resume, that's
[00:53:00.080]Courtney Santos: generally a little out of my domain. I love to talk about resumes in the context of a fellowship. But you can get advice on any resume for any opportunity from an expert career coach in your college. So there's the link. If you would like to book a consultation, to hang out with them and get some really in-depth personalized feedback on your resume, and even more great tips.
[00:53:24.580]Courtney Santos: Alright, that is all the content that I have for today. I'm gonna stick around for a few minutes for questions.
[00:53:31.740]Courtney Santos: And again, if you're here for summer. You care. Hello! I'm recording your attendance, and you are good to go.
[00:53:44.580]Courtney Santos: Thank you.
[00:53:46.550]Courtney Santos: It was good to see you today.
[00:53:50.240]Courtney Santos: Have a wonderful weekend. Everyone.

The screen size you are trying to search captions on is too small!

You can always jump over to MediaHub and check it out there.

Comments

0 Comments

Effective Resumes, CVs, & Achievement Lists

Description

Searchable Transcript

Comments icon comment

Related Channels

Comments