How to Write Your First Resume - Volunteer Experience Does Count!

Writing Your Very First Resume

I met with a young person who emailed me asking me for assistance in creating his very first resume. Since we were to be in Waterloo this Sunday, we drove to Waterloo earlier and met with this university student for three hours on Saturday evening.

This young person is a university student who has done a lot of volunteer work each summer in the summer camps I directed. However, because this has been volunteer work, he did not think he has any valuable real work experience to put down on his resume. To help him see the valuable skills he has accumulated through his various volunteer work and summer jobs, we did the following in helping him to come up with a resume that is worthy and ready to be sent to potential employers

1. Asking him questions of what he did so that he could recall and elaborate on his different job experiences

2. Recounting and write down all the different tasks and responsibilities in his summer, part time work and volunteer assignments

3. He had a rough copy done and printed out before I arrived. By thinking over of what he did over the years, he was able to remember a lot of the tasks and responsibilities in the many summer and part time jobs he has had in the past.

 4. I asked him to categorize all the experiences he wrote down under different headings according to the jobs he would be interested in applying. 

5. Since this young person is interesting in a teaching job in the future, we created four big headings where he categorized all his information and experiences:

A. Education - List all education and certification here

B. Teaching Related Experience

- Any volunteer and summer job assignments such as summer camps, tutoring etc. went under this heading in reverse chronological order with the job title, organization and responsibilities clearly stated

C. Employment Experience  

- Any jobs that were not teaching related were grouped under this heading. Again with the job title, company and responsibilities clearly stated

D. Other Skills and Talents

- This includes computer skills, musical skills, talents and extracurricular leadership 

After J. wrote down everything, we worked on refining some of the words used in the resume, making sure that the most important and relevant information was at the top under each job and removing irrelevant information from it.

We ended up having a little bit more than two pages. However, it is very important to keep a resume under two pages. We did more editing, having the titles underlined and the spacing aligned. 

J. did achieve a very polish and professional looking resume after our three and half hours meeting! He was delighted because at the beginning of our meeting, he did not think that he had much to offer. After our discussions, he was happy to discover that he in fact has lots more to offer to his potential employers.

The next step is for J. to look for jobs in the municipal government and related websites in his hometown and come up with a covering letter. 

Finding that first job takes a lot of hard work and persistence.I encouraged him to send out as many applications as possible. J. has done the most difficult and time consuming task of creating a professional looking resume. He is on his way to land the very first job in his career!

R.T.
Waterloo, Ontario