Do's and Don'ts
WHEN CREATING A HIGH SCHOOL RESUME FOR YOUR FIRST INTERNSHIP
Mochamad Maulia Giffary
It is okay not to wait to obtain your first professional experience until you reach the later years of a college education. In fact, there are several merits for starting to explore the job world as a part-time employee when you are still in high school. It is an opportunity to make sure you choose the right major by having first-hand experience in the related professional field. You can also get practical skills valuable after graduation. You may also get a recommendation from your employer that can be utilized when applying to college and full-time jobs. Lastly, there is an excellent chance that you will get some amount of salary as well.
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The first and, sometimes the most perplexing as it is exhausting, task to do when looking for an internship is making a great resume. A resume, along with its more comprehensive version, CV, is usually all prospective employees' opportunity to make a first impression to the hiring party. As such, its significance is not to neglect. A superb image has to be made in a limited space (usually one page), requiring job seekers to be highly efficient, and making it just more challenging. However, several best practices to increase the chance of being noticed have been noted among experienced professionals, and you can use some of them even to support your application for an entry-level job. Here are some things you can do to make a stellar resume.
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DO: READ THE REQUIREMENTS
A very rudimentary tip, but too often overlooked. Reading the requirements for the position is vital for several reasons. Firstly, making sure you have met most of the conditions listed on the vacancy announcement allows you to be confident that you have a realistic chance of getting the job. It will prevent you from making all the tiring efforts for something out of your reach. In addition, understanding the experiences and skills needed to be met will also give you an idea of what to write on your resume. You will have an opportunity to know what kinds of information you should tell and what others can be better left off.
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DO: STICK TO ONE PAGE
It is tempting to write an exhaustive report of all your past accomplishments to make a great impression on the hiring officer. However, more often than not, recruiters deal with hundreds of applications for a position that they do not have sufficient time to read your five-page-long CV. In fact, statistics showed that, on average, hiring managers only take seven seconds of their time to read one delivered resume (O'Donnell, 2018). Thus, showing every one of your experiences on multiple pages will most likely be ineffective.
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DO: USE NUMBERS
You may hear it often that "numbers can't lie," and in the case of the professional realm, too many people believe it for you to ignore. Showing how many people you have helped, how many engagements you have created, how often you have made something, how much amount money you have saved your organization from losing, how many people have you coordinated, how fast have you ever designed something – illustrating your impact throughout your service in your community and organization by using numbers can give your prospective employer a clear idea of what you are capable of doing. Indeed, there are times when you are not sure how much influence you have created quantitatively. When such a case happens, a rough yet realistic approximation can be made.
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DON'T: MAKE A CANVA RESUME
Seeing many of your peers composing their resumes with Canva can entice you to do the same. However, myriad recruiters warn us that it is not a best practice to do for job seekers. More and more companies are using cutting-edge technology to scan words on resumes before they are read further by human recruiters. Using Canva to write your resume will render you disadvantaged since the templates offered on the website frequently make it harder for the technology to scan the information you enter. In addition, such a template may give you much less space to fill in the relevant experiences and skills that make you fit for the job you are applying for. Thus, a modest and plain white paper with black texts, although might be less appealing to the eyes, is better to be used for your resume.
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DON'T: ENTER WEAK VERBS
This tip also has something to do with the high-tech scanner. Some of these technologies can find the verbs you use when explaining your impact in every experience your report on the resume. Usually, some verbs are valued more highly than others. These verbs are oftentimes called strong action verbs and include words like planned, directed, initiated, reduced, improved, exceeded, among many others. The others, the ones usually called weak verbs, will be perceived as red flags to the scanner. Words like helped, responsible for, managed, or assisted belong to the category and should never be used.
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DON'T: SHOW THE SAME SKILL OVER AND OVER
You may have successfully directed five different school projects or organizations, and this may indicate how good of a leader you are. Nonetheless, most job vacancies you will find on the internet will not require the applicants to have only one skill (such as leadership), but multiple competencies in different areas. It will be a loss then if you fill your whole resume with information showing your leadership capability when you can also enter other experiences illustrating your other relevant skills in different fields. As a general rule, just tell the recruiter with your resume the most significant experience and achievement that you have for each of the requirements of the position you are applying for. With a strong resume, there is a likelihood that you can still inform them of other experiences later when you are invited for an interview.
Those are among the essential tips you can implement when writing your resume to support your internship application. However, some other caveats for you who want to apply for a part-time job should be noticed. Firstly, make sure that you are legally eligible to have a job and get paid for it. There are age restrictions enforced that hinder the young from working in certain fields, and you do not want to get in trouble because things go wrong. In addition, make sure that it will not negatively affect your study at school. Knowing and setting your boundaries right are, in fact, essential skills useful for every job, and you should develop them as well.
References
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O'Donnell, R. (2018, November 8). Eye Tracking Study Shows Recruiters Look at Resumes for 7 Seconds. HR Dive. Retrieved November 19, 2021, from https://www.hrdive.com/news/eye-tracking-study-shows-recruiters-look-at-resumes-for-7-seconds/541582/.
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