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overview
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researching jobs
developing a profile
designing resumes
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So you've been looking at (and studying) job postings—now what? Now you need to do some professional profiling to consider how you can best fit your abilities and experience to companies and their expectations. There are four parts to that process.
Make a master list of your experiences
Brainstorm categories for your experience and knowledge
Arrange your experience to fit the patterns you identified earlier
Identify what is next
(Note: This page is set up with anchor links, so you can click down to the section you want and return from it to this table of contents for the Profiling section.)
The first step in profiling is to create a profile; makes sense, doesn't it? Your profile should be a big list of everything you've ever done—and I do mean everything. (Well, almost. You can leave out kindergarten.) The first time I did this, I generated a seven-page document in Microsoft Word. Write down the details of each experience. Although in the end this will serve you more than anyone else, that is the point. Many people think they've done very little with their lives, but find after writing up a profile like this that they have actually accomplished quite a bit.
You don't really want to put everything in this list, but you do want to list everything that is potentially relevant to your job search. Begin with college-level (or post-collegiate) stuff, and move on to high school later. What do you include? Here is a possible list.
All jobs. List all the jobs you have ever held, even part time, even one-shot deals. Describe each in as much detail as you can recall. You don't always know what will be important later.
All volunteer and community work. Same as above.
All classes. List the content, projects, and key topics. Track down your papers and projects from the class if possible. You may want these later as well.
All extracurricular activities. List organizations, positions held, projects you worked on, key issues discussed during your time there. Did you attend any conferences for the organization? What can you remember about them?
All hobbies, interests. You never know when this might come in handy. Some work absolutely requires that this information be provided.
Anything else you can think of. Just what the heading says. Describe anything else that might matter, but that does not fit the other categories I listed. You can even create your own categories if you choose.
Example. A student applying for jobs in international business once asked if it was worth mentioning somewhere that she had been to Europe or Australia every summer for the past seven years. Yup. How? Create a category for the resume (see Designing Resumes), or put it in the cover letter somewhere.
You've studied job postings. You've made a master profile of your experience. Now put it all in perspective. Examine the patterns you saw in the job postings, and generate a list of headings for your resume that correspond to the kind of experience and knowledge that employers want to see.
Be creative, proactive, and descriptive when generating categories. If you have three or four kinds of jobs in your past, all of which you want to include in your resume, then generate categories that will speak most eloquently of your accomplishments. "Work Experience" is not really descriptive. It provides some information, but nothing specific. Try "Accounting Experience" or "Information Design Experience" if you have it. And generate a category like "Other Experience" to gather up the parts that are less centrally significant to your present search. And think about the words you use. "Employment" and "Jobs" connote work for pay. Maybe that fits. But "Experience" might include significant projects you completed for classes or on a volunteer basis that still fit the category. (Not all of our relevant experience comes from the workplace.) Whenever possible, use the language you see in the job postings to which you are responding.
Example. My resume is broken down into several "Experience" sections, including at times "Teaching," "Administrative," "Editing," "Consulting," and "Project Management." I use categories that fit my needs and the audience's expectations.
Begin piecing together resume bits that fit the patterns you identified earlier in your study of job postings. Don't worry too much about design yet. For starters, put together one resume for each kind of job you want to apply for. In each, emphasize your information according to what is most important and what is least important in relation to the job postings you are responding to.
Example. When I applied to faculty positions, I arranged information according to tradition. My education was first, followed by publications, presentations, faculty experience, other kinds of experience, community service and committee work. That fit the expectations of my audience. When I send resumes to consulting clients, I don't provide the same kind of information; I give them material relevant to my proposed work with them, and ordered appropriate to their expectations. So, editing might appear first, or information design, or whatever. I don't like to waste people's time, so I consider their needs always.
Once you have thought about what you have to say about yourself, it is time to think about designing the resume. That topic is addressed in the section on Designing Resumes.