Skip to Content

Cooperative Education

Search UTC.edu:

Campus & People

Resources:

banner

The Resume

Resume as a marketing/sales tool

Your resume is an important marketing/sales tool that outlines your skills, qualifications, relevant work experience, and activities. In most cases, the purpose of your resume is to obtain an interview with a potential co-op or intern employer. The effective resume gives an employer, at a 15-30 second glance, an overview of what you have to contribute. It is, in short order, your key to open an employer's door, and you should try very hard to sell yourself quickly, concisely, and thoroughly.

[Back to top]

Need for a highly readable resume

Your resume should be highly readable. It is after all, the first impression that an employer has of you. But your resume is more than just a roadmap of your education, your work experience, your achievements, and your activities. It also reveals your writing skills, organizational skills, your thoroughness, yes, even your neatness. Your resume should even be aesthetically pleasing to a reader.

[Back to top]

Need for multiple resumes

Sometimes, even as a co-op student, you may need more than one resume. You may need one that offers general information about who your are and what your qualifications are, and another one, reconstructed after you have read the employer's job description that addresses the employer's stated requirements for the position. The more you know about what a specific employer needs and the better you organize your resume around those needs--the more effective your resume is, and the better your "sell" to that employer.

[Back to top]

What is the best resume format?

There are several different types of resume formats: the chronological, reverse chronological, the functional, and what some might label a "blend" of the first two.

Chronological Resume

Lists your work experience from your first job to your last. Many times, however, this is not always the best way to list your jobs.

The Reverse Chronological Resume

A variation of the chronological resume. This type of resume lists your last job first and, therefore, will reflect your growth in a position and more readily reflect your pertinent and related work experience.

The Functional Resume

Outlines your relevant skills and experience without listing the jobs chronologically. An employer may like this approach since it is easy to see if your experience matches the employer's needs. What employers don't get in this example is a history of your work experience, and many want to know where you have been, how long you have been there, and what level of responsibility you have attained.

The Blend Resume

Emphasizes both skills and employment experience equally.

UTC Office of Cooperative Education Resume Requirements

We in the Co-op Office will ask you to begin with a generic Reverse Chronological Resume. See our sample resumes for more detailed information.

[Back to top]

What is needed in my resume?

Unless you have a long history of related work experience, your resume should be only one page. (If you do have a large amount of work experience and choose to have a multi-page resume, weigh all of your experience carefully and be sure to completely fill each page. Avoid last pages that only extend 1/4 to 1/2 of the page. If your resume is longer, you may be tempted to pad it, and employers are trained to look for padding and toss those.)

You should include:

[Back to top]

Your name

You need to decide what you wish to be called—your given name or your nickname. What you put on your resume is what the employer is going to call you—D. Robert or Bubba!

[Back to Resume Checklist]

Your correct, current address

Please list your current college address.

[Back to Resume Checklist]

Your permanent, home address (if different)

College students often move from semester to semester, year to year, and their addresses may change. Make sure your resume reflects those changes or you may lose the chance at your dream job. Your permanent address is also important, especially since many employer calls come between semesters or during university breaks. Employers need to know where they can get in touch with you during those times. Having your home address and phone number gives them more information and better access to you.

[Back to Resume Checklist]

Your correct phone number

Phone numbers also change.

[Back to Resume Checklist]

Your correct e-mail address

More and more employers are using this tool rather than a phone to contact potential co-op students. You need to check your e-mail regularly if you plan to include an e-mail address on your resume.

[Back to Resume Checklist]

A job objective, career objective, or general objective:

Writing the "objective" can be difficult. Because of this and the numerous positions that you might be applying for, you need to pay particular attention to the employers' position announcements or job descriptions and pattern your "objective" accordingly. This statement should be as concise and specific as possible. Avoid cliches such as "obtaining a challenging position with upward mobility" or "to be a productive team member," or "to contribute to the profitability of…." Be creative, but make sure that you have included "key words" that link what you want with the employers' needs.

[Back to Resume Checklist]

Your education:

Include all of your college/university education. Yes, even the one course that you had at "X" College. Again, UTC's Co-op Office thinks that a reverse chronological organization is the best. It sells you as a UTC student—not a high school or community college student. (Remember—the easier it is for an employer to identify a potential employee, the better).

You should include:

  • The name of the university: University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
  • Your Degree: Major Be specific—BSE: Chemical Engineering; Business Management: Accounting; Criminal Justice: Law and the Courts, etc.
  • Your GPA: (Especially, if it is a good selling point) If it is less than 3.0/4.0, you may opt not to include it. It will, of course, show up on the transcript that your co-op coordinator sends your potential employer. In that case, you may have to answer an interview question about why you excluded it. If your GPA in your major is much better than your overall GPA, stress that to your employer on your resume and have a good explanation for the interview.
  • Your planned date of graduation: (May 2001)
  • Academic Honor and Awards may be listed in one of two ways:
    1. You may set up a separate category for this topic, or
    2. You may list them under "Education." List scholarships, honors, awards directly related to your college career. If you are a sophomore, you may list academic awards from high school. You may want to list only the ones that are national awards and those directly related to the major or position for which you are applying. Remember your resume is a sales piece, and employers are looking for the "best and brightest." Honors like Deans List (with dates), Alpha Lamba Delta, Phi Eta Sigma, Mortar Board, Golden Key, and the honorary of your specific major (Beta Alpha Psi [Accounting] Tau Beta Pi [Engineering] or Beta Beta Beta [Biology]) are good "sells." Include descriptions for organizations that would not be readily recognizable by someone outside UTC.
  • There is always a question about listing the high school. The answer to this dilemma is space. Do I have enough room on this one page to get my major selling points across and include my high school?
[Back to Resume Checklist]

Employment/ Experience/ Work Experience

This section is where your writing skills become very important. The way you present information here may determine if an employer starts, keeps reading or stops reading after just a few seconds. Before you actually put this section together, you may want to make a worksheet, listing all of the positions you have held, your responsibilities in those organizations, and details of your accomplishments in those positions.

Be specific in listing details of your accomplishments and emphasize them with action verbs (past tense for work that you are no longer doing). Examples: "managed five other students in major marketing effort," "designed three sections of X company's new Web site," or "worked with five other students to plan, supervise, and evaluate daily study and play activities for elementary and junior high school students in a YMCA after-school program."

You may want to check the following linked site for help:

Don't think that your summer jobs as a lawnmower, house painter, waitress or whatever is unimportant. You are not only selling your related experience; you are also selling your "Work Ethic." Check out this site for some pointers: [Back to Resume Checklist]

Activities/Organizations

Employers are looking for well-rounded employees. Adding a list that outlines your volunteer involvement on and off campus may also be a good "sell."

More importantly than your mere membership in these organizations is your leadership in those organizations.

You may want to organize these in order of importance—those directly related to your major or the most prestigious first to the least important.

[Back to Resume Checklist]

References

Many employers want you provide them with a reference list. The UTC Co-op Office does not recommend that you include them on your resume.

You may have a second page entitled "REFERENCES" that includes your name, address data that you included in the heading of your resume and then a list of three to five references. References that count: former or current work or volunteer work supervisors, and former or current professors who know your academic work. Personal references are usually not needed.

[Back to Resume Checklist]

[Back to top]

Resume Do's and Don'ts

DO:

  • Gather and check all necessary information.
  • Match your experience and skills with an employer's needs.
  • Highlight details that demonstrate your capabilities.
  • Organize the resume effectively.
  • Consider word choice carefully.
  • Ask other people (maybe even a friend or a family member who is a hiring manager) to comment on your resume.
  • Make the final product presentable.
  • Evaluate your resume.
  • Print it on quality paper.
  • Proofread it carefully.
  • Use white or off-white (light colored) paper.
  • Avoid italics, script, unnecessary bold type, "cuteness."
  • Put your name on every page—if longer than one page.
  • Proofread! Proofread! Proofread! And proofread one more time.

DON'T:

  • Misspell anything.
  • Include personal information (height, weight, sex, religion, etc.).
  • Forget to include your telephone number.
  • Type it on a typewriter.
  • Forget to highlight your best selling points.
  • Include personal references or hobbies.
  • Include your Social Security Number.
  • Exaggerate your experience. (In the case of a fast food worker, "served food and operated cash register" is a more accurate job description than "met the dietary needs of customers and supervised the restaurant's financial transactions." The latter is not only an overstatement but also just sounds silly. Such an exaggeration will not impress an employer.)
  • Include a picture of yourself.
  • Show salary or pay information.
  • Offer explanations for leaving prior employers.
  • Use abbreviations (except those that are acceptable in the engineering/technical fields, such as IBM, CAD, E/M, etc.).
[Back to top]

Selected resume resources on the Web

There are hundreds of resume advisers on the Web. Every search engine and company has its own. Have fun looking. It might be good to look at the company's site where you might be co-oping just to see if they have a suggested format. Here are a few that we have looked at that might help you in "building" the best resume:

General resume links:

[Back to top]

Electronic/Scannable resumes

A resume (chronological or functional) formatted to read well when scanned and to be searched by optical scanning systems.

Some large employers use electronic resume processing systems (or "automated applicant tracking systems") to handle large volumes of resumes. A smaller employer may subscribe to a scanning service that offers them a way to automate this function for their small (or non-existent) human resource department.

Samples

[Back to top]

A little resume/cover letter humor

From the True Careers Web site, resume and cover letter faux pas--typos and grammar slips--
  • "Proven ability to track down and correct erors."
  • "I am a rabid typist."
  • "Here are my qualifications for you to overlook."
  • "Work History: Performed brain wave tests, 1879-1981."
  • "Accounting cleric."
  • "As indicted, I have over five years of experience analyzing investments."
  • "Am a perfectionist and rarely if if ever forget details."
[Back to top]

UTC Co-op example resumes

The following linked documents are example resumes developed by the Co-op Office for your benefit. You may use them as examples, guidelines, or even as templates.

To view the .doc files, you must have Microsoft Word 97 (or higher).

Get Acrobat Reader The .pdf files require Adobe Acrobat Reader be installed on your machine. You can download this software for free from Adobe.

[Back to top]