Before printing or uploading your resume, use this checklist from ODU's Career Development Services to review it.
Overall
- Is your full name at the top of your resume in a larger and bolder font than the rest of the text?
- Is your address, phone number, and e‐mail address current and correct?
- Is your e‐mail address professional and is it one you check frequently?
- Is your resume well laid out (i.e. not too many while spaces, but not too crowded either) with at ¾” margins on all four sides?
- Have you used a consistent and conservative font throughout your resume?
Education
- Have you placed your Education at the top of your resume under the Objective if you are a recent graduate?
- Did you include your degree including major, your college or university, the city and state of the university or college, and the month/year of your degree completion?
- Have you listed your GPA if 3.0 or above?
- Have you listed academic honors‐Dean’s List, Scholarships, etc.?
- Have you listed relevant/related classes and/or computer skills?
- Have you included work on class projects, study abroad, etc.?
Work Experience/Employment History:
- Have you considered a Related Experience section for positions applicable to the one you are applying for?
- Have you listed job positions in order of relevance to the employer?
- Did you list your position title, employer, city and state, dates of employment?
- Did you use bullets to make important points and did you begin each phrase with a powerful action verb describing your accomplishments?
- Have your included only skills important or relevant to the type of position you seek?
- Could an employer quickly scan your resume and find a number of key words and action verbs to easily grasp a picture of you as a worthy employee?
Skills
- Have you considered including computer or language skill section if applicable to the position?
- Have you included any certificated that are applicable to the position?
Honors/Awards/Activities/Volunteerism:
- Have you included those that demonstrate important abilities or characteristics in the workforce?
- Did you remember to prioritize (by dates or by relevance)?
- Have you included leadership positions?
- Have your included work on club projects and expressed your participation as you would a job?
Is your resume?
- Free of typos, spelling, and grammatical errors?
- Organized and prioritized to demonstrate the skills employers need?
- Full of appropriate action verbs and work specific nouns?
- Easy for an employer to visually and electronically scan (no major underlining, no odd symbols)?
Does your resume?
- Match the specific qualifications stated by the employers in the job description?
- Focus on achievements, particularly on these directly related to job specific skills and qualifications?
- Emphasize your education, internships, relevant work experience, course projects, community service, leaderships activities, professional affiliations, and/or technical skills?
- Use bold and all capital letters appropriately to emphasize your name, headings, job titles, and contact information?
- Have personal pronouns or “I” statements? (i.e. “I assisted…”, “I developed”) If so, remove them.
- Make you proud to show your resume to everyone?
Next Steps
- Have CDS staff review your resume.
- Print clean/clear copy on Professional resume paper.
- Include references on a separate piece of paper, using the same heading found on your resume.
- Upload your resume to Careers4Monarchs.