CMU School of Drama


Tuesday, April 25, 2017

10 Killer Resume Tips to Nail Your Dream Job

www.lifehack.org: Stuck in a job rut nightmare? It’s never too late to dig yourself out. And an all-star resume might just be the shovel you need.

Picture this: You finally get the chance to apply for your dream job. You already know what you’re going to wear to the interview. You’ve envisioned which pictures to hang in your office, and how you plan to decorate your desk. You just know that once they meet you in person, they won’t be able to say “No.”

10 comments:

Claire Krueger said...

Oh joy another top ten article, I’m sure this top ten resume tips is absolutely going to be much more unique than all the previous ones. But to my surprise it's practically a photocopy of all those that come before it. Mentioning popular tips like, don’t be an idiot and graphic design is not your passion. The author definitely didn’t create those resumes just for the sole purpose of the article, and most likely didn't get it off of shutterstock for bad resumes. Most likely the author pulled random people's resumes who uploaded them to the internet and used them. Image waking up to find your hard worked resume being trashed on the internet. Good job author, what creative, innovative and kind conent you chose to create, it resembles the macaroni picture made of noodles and glue your mother put on her fridge when you were 4 and quite talented.

Julian Goldman said...

I can’t believe I’m reading a resume tips article that suggests making the margins narrower to fit more on a page. Don’t get me wrong, I have done that on a resume before, but I’m pretty sure I figured that one out on my own in high school. Not all of these are obvious, for example, using the language of the job posting makes a lot of sense but might not be something people automatically do. I also feel like a lot of these don’t really apply to theater, since in the theater world there aren’t really descriptions of what you did in a given job. Everyone kind of understands what you did if you were the master electrician, so there is no point in putting the job description. Similarly, the advice about a computer reading your resume first doesn’t really apply in the theater world, or at least I assume there are very few theater organizations that get so many applicants they automate the process past perhaps filtering for a few basic qualifications, though I could be wrong about that.

Marisa Rinchiuso said...

Although a bit obvious, I did enjoy this article. Unlike most resume tip articles, this one not only spoke of the content, but also formatting, which I though was unique. I thought the idea of using bold, centered text to catch attention was nifty and straying a bit from the standard form in a good way. However, I did not like the example that was used for the article. I thought that if you are going to make it striking, you might as well make the color scheme more comprehensive and cohesive than just red and black. I did, however, really enjoy the "bad example that they put for the design tip. I definitely thought that there were only a very few jobs that would love that resume. Most other jobs would probably think it was too much and most likely would not result in an interview. Overall, I felt like the article was worth the short read and had some very unusual points.

Chris Calder said...

I was once told that it’s not the resume that will get you the job, but the people you know. It is an interesting phase to think about but at the end of the day, it makes a lot of sense. So every time I see a resume article pop up on the green page I wonder if it is worth reading. Ever since my freshman year, I have always gotten jobs from the connections that I’ve made and the people that I knew. The resume always seemed like an afterthought in the process. That being said, even if the resume doesn’t lock you in the job, it certainly makes you look professional. One thing that I like about this article is the sudden change from a printed to a digital copy. Everything nowadays is on the computer so it is about time we start implementing these features into our resumes. Overall, I would say this is a very good stepping stone to a good resume, but don’t forget to put your personal touch into it and really capture that viewer.

Alex Talbot said...

I find that I enjoy most content that LifeHacker produces, but this for me is a bit of a dud. While there were definitely important tips in here, but at the same time, a lot of it seems fairly obvious, and none of it was very helpful to me personally. I think this article could have been made much more effective if it was less of a list, which is a very basic way to organize tips like this, and instead an article of tips. I also think that a lot of it is repetitive and could be cut down into a more encompassing point--that resumes are all about branding yourself and making yourself look the best possible on paper. If they had structured the article around that idea, and broken that down into what that means and how exactly to achieve that--from design to complexity to content, I think that the article would have been much better at what it's trying to achieve. I appreciated the article overall, but found a few issues in it and a few points where it wasn't super helpful.

Emily Lawrence said...

There have been so many articles like this one before that I felt like I had already read this article. Most of the time, these articles offer the same tips and advice and I am just very ready to read one that has something new and different to offer. I am sure that for someone who has never been to an interview or made a resume this article would have been very useful, but there are also so many like this out there. You could simply type into google, good resume tips, and thousands upon thousands of articles would pop up. Do not get me wrong, when I first started making resumes and interviewing for jobs/colleges, I was constantly looking for tips like these and I would heavily rely on them. But after taking classes on how to perfect your resume and interviewing skills, this article simply felt like a broken record. I would recommend this for someone who is just starting out, but I would not rely on it myself.

Annie Scheuermann said...

This article had some useful tips on creating your resume, a would say that most of them are applicable to a theatrical resume, but some are not. I had a very interesting conversation just recently about resumes, three of the stage and production management graduates were talking about how they were told based off their resume they were over experienced for the job and at the same not experienced enough. As a student in the grad program they all have a good amount of professional work they have done, and now they are adding to their education work they are doing. From what they were talking about it, most theater employers thought it odd that they were applying to internships when they have already done professional work and don't understand why they are back in school for something they already working in. I think resumes are very important, but more than anything I have been questioning what experiences to include in mine to make it reflect me well and also look appealing to employers.

Megan Jones said...

I think that a lot of these tips are a little bit obvious, but they definitely could be good for someone who was just starting to create their first resume. I know that when I was making my first resume I didn't even know where to start, so it would have Ben nice to have some guidance about that. Molly's class on writing good cover letters and making a good resume was extremely helpful to me, and it really grateful that we did that project. When I was in an interview for a summer position recently they told me that they loved the format of my resume and I have Molly to thank for that. I also think that a theatrical resume isn't going to necessarily require the same content as a traditional resume. When I was applying for colleges my resume was much more focused towards getting a traditional job and didn't even have all my theatre credits on it. I'm happy that now I've fixed that and it seems to have really paid off.

Cosette Craig said...

Clickbait is back I see. Might as well pop-over to this top ten to see if I’m going to be wowed by any of this. I expect so much but they always deliver so little. Oh, bold words? What a revolution! This is so non-specific you can’t talk about the design being ineffective. Yeah, maybe for a job as an accountant your resume shouldn’t be blasted with color but I use a completely different resume to apply for graphic design jobs vs. tech theater jobs. I also think that putting buzz words in a resume is so cliché and vanilla so I’m not trusting this article. Putting wasteful talents in theater is not wasteful at all. We are required to do such strange and unusual things day to day that putting something weird that you can do may fit right into an upcoming season. This article was just filled with obvious things that everyone should know and things I disagree with. Confirmed clickbait.

Sasha Schwartz said...

Normally I think that articles like this that express job-getting or interviewing tips for the “real world” don’t directly apply to our very specific needs as people applying to creative/ artistic positions, but I actually think that many of these tips are fairly universal. For example, the tip about expressing hierarchy through font choices (like bolding/ italicizing important parts of your resume) is exactly what Molly taught us to do in Basic PTM class (also, that aligned-to-center resume example is definitely universally repulsive). I definitely also think that the tip about saving space is helpful, although I might add that if your resume is really cramped onto one page you should consider removing some of the extraneous stuff. The point to not “overdesign” is funny in the context of our majors, but I still think it’s a helpful tip: I think that overall the point of the article is that the art of resume making is to keep it simple, and legible, and highlighting your best assets.