Build your resume while you study

A ‘Catch 22’ situation exists for many younger graduates – employers often require that you already have relevant work experience before they’ll consider hiring you, but you need to secure that first job to gain experience.

Achieving a high-distinction average in your undergraduate studies or mastering your taxation law units is likely not enough to help you land the job of your dreams. While recruiters and hiring managers seek candidates who show academic rigour, many also require that you demonstrate passion, focus, drive and initiative in a practical environment.

There’s no reason to despair, however, if you’re still studying for your degree. There are countless ways to begin proving to your potential employer that your contribution to their business will go well beyond balancing the books.

Here are four strategies for building your résumé while you study – because it's never too early to begin your career in a ‘real world’ sense.

Résumé red flags to avoid

A recruiter or hiring manager may look at your résumé for only a few seconds before they make a decision about your application.

Human resources staff are trained to look quickly for disqualifying factors. With just seconds to impress, you need to ensure your résumé doesn’t contain mistakes that may harm your chances of selection.

Here are four glaring red flags that tend to vex recruiters and may prompt them to weed out candidates at a glance.

A resume to help you secure your first job in tax

A sparkling resume can be a one-way ticket to your dream job. In a competitive profession like tax, hiring managers use resumes to separate promising candidates from the rest.

That’s why you need a resume that shines the best light on your skills, qualifications and achievements.

Here are five useful tips for writing a winning resume.

How to customise your resume

Photo credit: flazingo_photos via Foter.com / CC BY-SA

Accounting and legal graduates often make the mistake of using the same version of their resume in all their job applications.

Better to customise the content in response to the selection criteria and responsibilities of the position you’re interested in. That way you demonstrate, from the beginning, that you have what it takes to succeed in that position.

CV writing advice: Using language to frame your strengths

You have a wealth of new knowledge alongside a catalogue of desirable attributes – everything you need to earn the job of your dreams. Transcribing these assets to paper, however, can be daunting.

Language sets the framework for how you present yourself to a potential new employer. Here are a few dos and don’ts to make sure this important document promotes your best attributes.

DO

 

Use the active voice: This is passive: The project was completed successfully. This is active: I completed the project successfully. The latter not only emphasises you as the agent in the role, it articulates your contribution.

 

Be specific: Short examples of your achievements are more informative than throwaway lines. Something like I am a fast learner can be improved by saying I started the role not knowing how to use the system but became an intermediate-level user within a week.

 

Highlight initiative: Even if your previous roles or experience haven’t been illuminating, you can frame it in a better light. Don’t describe the role that was given to you. Instead, narrate what you actually did. It’s the difference between answered phones and drafted emails for my manager and dealt with 30 to 40 customer enquiries a day and provided executive-level written correspondence.

 

Be positive: If you have a blight on your CV – for example a poor performance in a role – you can turn this around with the emphasis on the lessons you learnt rather than the negativity of the incident. Avoid words like struggled and use overcame, focusing on the outcome rather than the issue.

 

Be confident: Be upfront about owning your skills, knowledge and achievements, and use testimonials and other evidence to support this. Instead of writing managers have told me I'm good at writing reports, try I have strong written communication skills and managers often highlight the high standard of my reports.

 

DON’T

 

Use buzzwords you can’t support: It’s good to be positive, but don’t burden your writing with clichés or jargon that you don’t understand or can’t support with examples. Instead of using team player, for example, explain what you brought to the team.

 

Overuse lists: Bullet points are handy and they make a CV scan well, but overuse makes it look like you’ve handed them a list. Keep it to no more than five points per subheading and always add a concise explanatory note of no more than one line to clarify points if required.

 

Forget to conduct a spelling and grammar check: Small things like poor punctuation could put you out of the running if you’re coming up against a candidate of equal strength. One tip is to read the whole document aloud, or ask a friend to check it once you’re ready to send it.

 

Remember that a CV is a document that sells your skills and knowledge to a potential employer. By using the right language, they will understand what you can do and then use that information to decide if you should progress to the next stage.

 

 

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