Resume Assignment

Grading Form

Overview

You will create a resume as a part of this assigment and have some discussions with your academic advisor and career services about your resume and future plans. You may think, "Hey, I am only a sophomore. Why do I need a resume?" I'm glad you asked. Believe it or not, you have marketable skills. You now know more mathematics and/or computer science than most of the billions of other people on this planet. Those skills are great for internships or other summer opportunities. Revising an existing resume is always easier than starting from scratch. This is your excuse to create a solid resume if you have not already done so.

Resume

Create a resume following the guidelines in the Career and Internship Center. See their Resume Handout for information about writing a resume. You can write your resume in either Word or TeX/LaTeX. There are many job sites that contain information on resume writing.

You job as a resume creator is to help the reader (potential employer) easily find the information they are seeking. Here are a few suggestions as you prepare your resume.

• Keep it to 1 page—you may only have 10-30 seconds to impress an employer!
• Be concise, using bulleted lists as needed.
• List items in reverse chronological order
• Avoid using a vertical line | as a separator character. It looks too much like a normal letter and hinders readability. Instead consider using one of the following characters (with ample surrounding space):
  ♦ • ·
• Make good use of whitespace.
• Single space in sections, double space between sections.
• Align items in and among sections. Indent to show inclusion in a section.
• Use a professional-looking font (not comic sans or papyrus) and use it consistently. Use a combination of larger fonts sizes, bolding, and italics to emphasize sections, subsections, and other text; reduce emphasis as you go from headings to specific details. AVOID USING ALL CAPS (with the possible exception of your name at the top of the document). If you like the look of capital letters, consider using a small caps font.
• Use black text on a white background. Avoid colors and shades of gray that may not print or copy well enough to give sufficient contrast.
• An electronic version should be saved as a .pdf and include your name in the filename, such as YourName.pdf.
• Use uniform 1/2 inch to 1 inch margins.
• Use a file name that contains your name, such as DavidReimannResume.pdf to help the reader in finding your resume.

As for the structure of your resume, I encourage you to use the following structure with sections in the following order:

• Your Name
  This should be in the largest or most emphasized font because you want the reader to remember your name.
• Contact Information
  Include your email, phone. Optionally include your mailing address, professional website, LinkedIn profile link, and/or GitHub repository. This should not be a labeled section.
• Education
  Include your expected graduation date, major(s), any minors, GPA (if you are proud of it), academic honors (thesis information, latin honors, etc). You might also include relevant coursework in your major (topics, such Mathematical Statistics, not course numbers). Don't include high school information unless it was remarkable and generally omit after college graduation. This should be a labeled section using a font that has less emphasis than your name and the same as all major sections.
• Work Experience
  List your job title, company (perhaps department), and dates of employment. Usually there is no need to include a description of your job duties. List any internships here (paid or unpaid).
• Publications/Research (optional)
  List any research, especially if has led to a publication or conference presentation.
• Awards and Honors
  List the award, source of the award, dates of award, and a very brief description if not obvious. You could also include any scholarships here.
• Leadership
  List any leadership roles you have held, omit if none. For these items, list the position, organization, dates, and a very brief description if not obvious.
• Activities (optional)
  List any significant activities, including specific activity (athletics, music, theater, etc), organization, dates, and a very brief description if not obvious. List participation in math or CS contests (MATH Challenge, Putnam, LMMC, Math Modeling, etc) here. You can also list volunteer work or community service in this section.
• Technical Skills
  Include things like Python, Java, JavaScript, Mathematica, R, LaTeX, any foreign language proficiencies (and fluency levels), other programming languages and technical software knowledge.

This is a multistage process. It is best to write a draft, then discuss it with me, your academic advisor, and career services. Your final will incorporate any suggestions they made and their signatures on the above form.

Students interested in an academic career can also opt to create a Curriculum Vitae (CV) instead of a resume. See The Ultimate Guide to Writing a Curriculum Vitae for some advice on writing a CV. You can see my CV for an example. You still might want a resume if you plan on applying for non-academic jobs.

Living a purposeful life

Part of the goal of this course is to have you be a little introspective about yourself and your personal goals. A good exercise as you evaluate your academic plan and contemplate your future is to consider the diagram below. Ask your self the following questions:

• What are you good at?
• What does the world need?
• What can you do that will allow you to earn money?
• What are your passions?

One way to identify a purpose in your life is to look at the intersection of these sets, as indicated below. Read more about this process at the page Purpose Venn Diagram from Human Business.

Personal Elevator Speech

Print your personal elevator speech on a separate page.

Rather than having an career objective section, you will include a personal elevator speech. This should be a short statement that includes something about your passion for mathematics and/or computer science. You can do a web search for personal elevator speech to get some ideas about this area of your resume. You can also think about this as a short (30-60 second) talk about yourself. This is useful as a business icebreaker or in a networking setting. A good target length is 75-150 words.

Here is my elevator pitch:

One place to use your elevator pitch is on your LinkedIn profile (see below) in the About section.

Resources

Career Development

Visit the Albion's Career and Internship Center to learn about Albion's resources and programs. The Career and Internship Center is located in the Ludington Center, second floor. Open to all students and alumni! They look forward to working with you!

The Briton Network

Alumni are eager to share their experience and expertise with current students. Albion's Briton Network lets students message alumni and request advisory calls to learn about careers, industries, graduate school programs, ethics in the workplace, and more. Meanwhile, students develop the networking skills needed to succeed in the modern job market.

Mathematics and Computer Science Professional Society Career Resources

• The Mathematical Association of America (MAA) Career Resource Center has information about mathematical careers.
• The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Career and Job Center has information about computer science careers.
  Their Crossroads Magazine has a column on Careers.
• The Society of Actuaries and Casualty Actuarial Society has information on becoming an actuary (beanactuary.org) that has a jobs page.
• The American Statistical Association (ASA) JobWeb has information on statistics related careers.
• The Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) has a Career Resources page.

LinkedIn

See the LinkedIn Extra Credit assignment page.