Contact Information
List your name, address, telephone number(s), and e-mail address. Make sure your e-mail address sounds professional or neutral. If necessary, set up an alternate screen name to use for business contacts exclusively. Above all, make sure that any potential employer can easily contact you! Other personal information such as religion, age, marital status, etc. should not be included.

Objective/Summary of Qualifications
There are differing viewpoints as to whether an objective will help or hurt your chances in the job market.
Check with your career services office for their recommendations. If you decide to use an objective, state the type of position you are seeking. Also, consider including in your objective how you will benefit the employer—not what you are seeking from the employer. An alternative to an objective is a summary of qualifications. The summary of qualifications
simply includes skills/traits that you can bring to an employer.

Educational Background
List names and locations of educational institutions attended, degree(s) awarded with completion dates, majors and minors, and anticipated or actual dates of graduation.

Employment History
List employment experience in reverse chronological order, including any summer/part-time jobs and internships. Use action words to describe your duties and achieve- ments, and be sure to indicate when and how increases of responsibility occurred.

Action Words
The following list of words is useful when describing your job duties. These words represent skill areas that you may have that would be beneficial to a prospective employer.

References
You can list references as the final major category of the resume or as an attachment page. Check with your career services office for their recommendations.

Optional Items
If any of these items are related to your objective and can help sell you as a job candidate, you may want to consider including them:

• G.P.A. (if 3.0 or above) or major G.P.A.
• Academic awards, honors, or scholarships
• Special projects/research
• Personal skills/computer skills
• Extracurricular activities/community activities
• Leadership

Length
Ideally, your resume should be one page. You should make certain all pertinent information is included, but strive to be concise. If your resume does run to a second page, label the second page with your name and the page number.

Appearance
Font size should be 11 to 12 point for the body of the resume. Use common, non-decorative fonts such as Arial, Helvetica, or Times New Roman. The overall layout should be neatly and adequately spaced. With good use of “white space” for optimum readability. Print your resume on quality 8½” X 11” paper in white or conservative colors.

Accuracy
Proofread carefully for spelling and grammar and ask someone else to proofread your resume. Accuracy is essential; nothing stands out like spelling or grammatical errors!

Electronic Resumes
• Use a common word processing program such as Microsoft Word
• Pay attention to the format the employer requests. For example, some employers prefer a PDF file, others prefer a plain text file
• E-mail the resume to yourself as a test before sending it to employers
• Forward a hard copy of your resume and cover letter as a follow-up

Scannable resumes
• Print on one side of the paper only
• Use non-decorative fonts such as Helvetica, Arial, and Times New Roman
• Avoid graphics, shading italics, underlining, and boldface text
• Avoid using horizontal and vertical lines
• To emphasize words, use all upper-case letters
• Include a “Key Word” section and list words that the scanning program may be seeking (e.g., web development, administration, negotiation, html, etc.)
• Use plain white paper