Hi, I Tried Career Center Peer Advising

And my resume improved!

I have had the same resume since my junior year of high school, faithfully tacking on any new experience as time passed. I never thought it was horrible, though I never really thought it was particularly good either. However, when a big internship opportunity came up, I decided that it was probably a good time to connect with the Career Center and get help revamping my five-year-old resume.

How to start

Peer adviser appointments are usually all drop-in, so all I had needed to do was show up, check in, and wait for a peer adviser to call me over. While drop-in peer adviser sessions have been suspended for the semester, peer advisers can still be booked to present career-related workshops for student groups and organizations. If you’re looking for more of a one-on-one experience, it’s also super easy to book a remote appointment with a Career Center counselor on Handshake.

I stopped by to talk to one of the peer advisers, who are great for initial resume critiques and other quick questions about cover letters, interviews, and Career Center services. My drop-in appointment was around fifteen minutes long, which was just enough time to go through my resume together. I was able to get a straightforward evaluation of my resume without having to dig through vague online advice about what makes a good resume.

Good advice

The adviser I spoke to helped me figure out what worked about my resume and what could be improved, and also pointed out things to look out for when it came to formatting. I was given advice on which parts to shave off; namely, which information might be outdated or irrelevant to this particular endeavor. I was also given tips on how to structure the resume: which information to put front and center in order to ensure it wouldn’t be missed. Instead of having to start over from scratch, I now had the basic skeleton of a resume to work with.

Getting such specific advice about how to improve my resume, as well as more general knowledge about what my resume should intend to do, was so much more helpful than trying to figure things out on my own. The Career Center can help you figure out your resume, but also your job search: check out these resources for job hunting!

Nancy Duong is a Vietnamese-American first-generation transfer student majoring in English.