Before you do this exercise, complete Exercise in the previous section, Reflecting on Your Communication and Character Development. After you’re satisfied with your review, ask two friends, family members, or classmates to search for you online. Ask them to spend at least 15 minutes to do a thorough review. Do they find anything additional that you would like to change?

Previous exercise

Use the questions in Figure 24 to provide feedback to each other.

Discuss your feedback in trios. When you do, explain choices you made on your resume and be open to hearing other students’ choices. You don’t have to accept all the feedback you receive. Like your classmates’ feedback, employers’ decisions based on resumes are subjective. What will cause one employer to eliminate a candidate may be a selling point for another. You might have good reasons (e.g., your identity or integrity) for including some information—and that is your choice.

Figure 24

QUESTIONS Is the education section, including coursework, appropriate for the position? How is the work experience section tailored to the position? Compare the generic and custom resume. Does the revised resume emphasize what is most relevant to the job and valuable to the employer? How are keywords incorporated into the resume? Are they used in context and throughout the resume and not overused? Are other activities relevant to the job? What, if anything, from the generic version was changed in the later sections? Are these changes appropriate for the position? Is this version of the resume 100% accurate? NOTES