<aside> 👋 Welcome to Step 1 - Think of this as your preparation for Countdown 1. The goal for today is to help you strengthen your resume content. These resources are designed to help you identify common pitfalls and implement simple solutions to make your resume stronger.

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<aside> ‼️ An important reminder: Content is KEY. Since you'll be using our custom resume builder, format is not important right now. Don't worry, we'll show you how to use the builder in Countdown 1 (you can see an example of what that looks like here). Formatting is cumbersome and time-consuming, so we eliminate that step for you. Your focus should only be on making your resume content awesome.

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<aside> ⏭️ What's coming up next: During Countdown 1, we'll go over how to take your resume from good to great. Afterwards, you will upload your resume and submit for review.

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1. Resume Best Practices:

<aside> 💁 First, let's go over some resume best practices. These are the generally agreed upon do's and don'ts for any resume, regardless of industry. P.S. 👉 Here's a link to a google doc with this information (pin it to your browser or print it out

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  1. Your resume should provoke the questions you want to be asked 🧑‍💼
    1. What questions do you want them to ask you? What would you like to highlight, and what would you like to avoid bringing up?
  2. Formatting consistency is KEY 🔑
    1. Date format should be the same throughout all sections (e.g., Jan. or January, ‘19 or 2019)
    2. Em—dashes or en-dashes? Pick one.
  3. Your goal is an information-dense and concise resume 📇
    1. Be concise in your writing (e.g., no personal pronouns like “I” or “me”).
    2. There’s generally 3 categories of resumes that we see: Little content, needs expansion; Light on work, heavy on extracurriculars; Too much stuff, needs to focus/simplify.
  4. How far back in your experience should you go? ⏮
    1. If you are a freshman, totally fine to include high school experiences.
    2. If you’re a sophomore, it’s time to start phasing it out.
    3. If you’re a junior or above, try to drop it.
  5. The Education Section 🧑‍🎓
    1. List expected graduation year.
    2. We don’t recommend listing a GPA lower than 3.5 for tech jobs or small/mid-size companies. (Most partners we work with won’t care at all about GPA.)
  6. Strong 👏 action 👏 verbs 👏
    1. Assisted, made, helped → directed, facilitated, designed, created
    2. Served as a tutor → tutored
    3. Worked to design new → Designed new
    4. TIP: There are lots of online resources for this! This is a helpful resource for finding stronger verbs.
  7. Emphasize numbers-based results first, then skills 📈
    1. Ran agency’s Facebook and Twitter accounts → Increased Facebook following by 40% and total Facebook reach by 60%
    2. Managed events to educate people on Latinx culture → Managed a 5-person team to plan and run 10 events for 120+ people on Latinx culture
  8. Put on your recruiter hat, review it, and then review again 🔍
    1. Cut out any filler words and phrases. Evaluate each section and sentence to make sure that you’re painting a clear, concise picture of what you did and the impact of that work.
    2. Think about the “how” in your results. How did you increase the Facebook following? How did you spread awareness of the organization’s causes? How did you improve the company’s database?
    3. More detail is generally better. Are you sharing the full scope of what you did or built? If not, what more can you say about your experience or project?

2. Resume Review

<aside> 💡 Next we're going to walk you through some real resume examples and common mistakes that we see. Click each of the below to see what is missing on each resume and see the edits that would make them stronger.

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There are three types of resumes that we see:

  1. Little Content, Needs Expansion
  2. Light on Work, Heavy on Extracurricular
  3. Too Much Stuff, Needs to Focus/Simplify