Resumes and Cover Letters – Page 3

2015 Carpe Careers highlights

Dr. Joseph Barber

Over the past 12 months, members of the Graduate Career Consortium (GCC) from a wide range of academic institutions have been writing posts for the Carpe Careers blog on Inside Higher Ed. The GCC is the professional network of staff members and administrators who provide professional and career development for Ph.D. students and postdoctoral scholars at their colleges and universities. Members of the GCC spend their time helping graduate students and postdocs to achieve their diverse and ever-evolving career goals — whether those goals are focused on faculty positions or on the many other career fields that value advanced degree knowledge, experience, and skills.

The “Carpe Careers” blog is an opportunity for GCC members to share some of their personal advice beyond the walls of their institutions. If you haven’t been keeping up on some of this year’s posts, here are some of the highlights, broken down by topic.

Seeking Advice

Every career path has to start somewhere, and at the beginning of the journey, one of the best places to look is internally. A bit of self-reflection can be helpful to understand your own goals and values, as well as the distinct skills and perspectives that you can draw upon throughout your professional life.

In “Attitude Adjustment,” James Van Wyck thinks about time traveling, offering advice that he would give to his former self at the beginning of his graduate program. He suggests that networking is something you can do close to home at any time in a graduate program, and that students should connect with their peers, faculty members and department administrators to learn from their experiences and about their career goals and journeys. Those students graduating ahead of you will probably be some of the best sources of information you will have to discover your own paths. He advises students to think of themselves more as professionals than students.

Professionals need to develop over time, which is why Tom Magaldi writes about the need to develop skills in “Professional Development on a Ph.D.’s Schedule.” From listening to podcasts and enrolling in MOOCs to gaining hands-on experience by volunteering for academic service, you will have continuing opportunities to learn new skills and apply them — something that will always look good on your application materials. After all, there is no better way to help you figure out which career path is right for you than finding occasions to get a taste for the work that you might be doing in the future.

And in “Developing Your Story,” Stephanie Eberle encourages students to develop a version of an Individual Development Plan to help coordinate skill-building and career-exploration activities over the course of a graduate school program or postdoc appointment. Getting advisers or mentors involved can be helpful, but not essential, to begin to approach professional and career development in a structured and strategic way.

Here are some other posts on the general topic of seeking advice:

Facing Career Doubts

Get Over the Guilt

When Good Advice Is Relative

Don’t Follow Your Passion

Vulnerability: The Most Precious Career Choice

Networking

If you think about networking as a goal-driven effort to obtain helpful information from people who are usually willing to provide it, and as a way for you to help your peers achieve their career goals, then you might find more energy to focus on it. It’s a far better approach than just meeting people randomly and without purpose, which usually results in a general feeling of uneasiness or terror.

Christine Kelly gives the advice to “Always Talk to Strangers” and describes how a chance meeting on a bus helped her be more effective in her work with graduate students. Chance meetings are great, but they are not going to happen as often as meetings that you have actively arranged with your network of faculty members, advisers, alumni, family and friends.

And if you are looking for ways to break the ice when reaching out to contacts, Paula Wishart provides a great summary of “Writing an Introductory Email” to get your networking started. Giving a little careful thought to the greeting, the context, the ask you are making and the subject line can help you maximize the number of people who respond to you.

For more on networking you can also read:

Use Your Words

Networking Gone Bad

Sounding Smarter = Being Smarter

Exploring Career Options

Networking can help you to explore careers. Exploring doesn’t mean you have to decide that academe and a faculty role is not for you. In fact, it could strengthen your desire to be a faculty member at a certain type of institution. Indeed, meeting with faculty members at colleges and universities other than your own is a great idea. Networking will expose you to other career opportunities and might well open a door to a new career path that you had not previously considered or even known about.

In the list below, several writers for the “Carpe Careers” blog have talked about specific nonfaculty career options or the process you can use to explore diverse career fields. And Melanie Sinche talks about plans that are being developed to track career outcomes for Ph.D. students more effectively and consistently in “Tracking Ph.D. Career Paths.”

How to Land a Nonprofessor Position After Grad School

Job Search Advice

The advice that people give students or postdocs applying for faculty positions can, on the surface, seem very different than the advice that they might give them when seeking a variety of nonfaculty positions. However, aside from some industry-specific differences, the main goals are the same. The reader of your application materials and any interviewers must be able to see your potential to add value to their institution or organization. They have to be confident that you know what skills, knowledge or experiences are valued, and they need be confident that you will be a good fit.

In his “Tournament of Bad Job Searching,” Jake Livengood lists some of the approaches that you can take that won’t help your cause when it comes to your nonfaculty-job hunting. And yes, many of those are applicable to the academic job market, too. But don’t get caught up focusing too much on the approaches that you’ve taken that haven’t helped, says Sue Levine in “Self-Talk and Job Hunting,” because you want your inner voice to be supporting your job hunting, not hindering it. A little bit of mindfulness can good, as all job searches can be frustrating at some point.

Here are some of the other posts on the general job search process:

Grad Student: You Are Your Own Spokesperson

Interviewing

Your application materials don’t get you the job; they get you the interview for the job. And, in that interview, you still have a lot of work to do to share your story, your skills, your passion and your fit with the organization where you are interviewing. No two interviews are identical, and the type of question and style of the interview will differ depending on the nature of the position and the type of organization.

Graduate students and postdocs can be fairly sure that someone at some point in an interview will ask them about their research. Long, in-depth discussions might be much more appropriate during campus visits for faculty positions, but that doesn’t mean you won’t still need to describe your research in ways that nonspecialists can understand, too. You may not have the benefit of talking about chickens in your answers to questions about your research like I do, but that doesn’t mean you can’t find your own captivating narratives that will help people connect with you and your skills. This is a topic I cover in “Do You Have Mysterious Dragons in Your Research?”

While some interviews are positive experiences, others can turn a little awkward — especially if people ask inappropriate questions. Read my piece “Searching While Pregnant” and Natalie Lundsteen’s “They Aren’t Supposed to Ask That” to learn how to handle some of these questions in an interview.

And not all interviews are super-formal occasions that require weeks of preparation. Stephanie Eberle provides great advice on how to deal with more conversational interviews in “Acing Informal Interviews,” including suggestions on answering “Why do you want this job?” and “Why are you a good fit?” questions.

One way to handle different types of interviews is to feel comfortable with adapting your message to the situation. Jake Livengood talks about how taking an improvisation class can actually help you to “prepare for the unexpected, build confidence, develop self-awareness and add details to questions” that you might face in interviews. I have met with a couple of Ph.D. students at the University of Pennsylvania who have also reported that they found an improvisation class useful. It may be a little outside of your comfort zone, but so is an interview in most cases! Read about “Learning From Improv” to see if this approach might help you, too. And don’t forget to take a look at these other posts on interviewing too:

Interview Like Rembrandt, Not Picasso

Job Applicant Pitfalls

Cultivating References

Tiffany Franklin, Associate Director

When it comes to the job search, references are an often overlooked or last minute aspect, although they play a key role in the background check employers conduct. You’ll notice that applications ask you to list references when you first apply and then as you move through interview rounds, your prospective employer will ask for them prior to extending an offer.

They ask for these to verify that what you say is accurate in your application materials and during your interviews. If employers are choosing between top candidates, the strength of a reference can make all the difference.

So, how do you select the people to ask and what are the etiquette rules around asking for references?

Make a list of supervisors you’ve had in your past internships, professional jobs, research positions, summer jobs, volunteer work, and your professors/academic advisors. Select the ones that can speak to your work ethic, problem solving, communication skills, leadership ability, specific technical skills, and/or teamwork.
Contact your references, let them know about your job search, and ask if they would be available as a reference and if they could give you a good recommendation.
Compile contact information for these confirmed references including current job title, company name, address, email, and phone number. Add a line about the context in which they supervised you or if you took their class and the dates. Have a sheet of references that accompanies your resume, but is a separate document. There is no need to write “References available upon request” on your resume since it’s a given.
Provide your references updates about your search, including info about the kinds of organizations you are targeting, when they might be hearing from the employer and/or when the written letters of reference are due for your application. Respect their time and be sure to give plenty of notice for written letters.
Keep your references posted regarding your progress in your job search. Be sure to thank them for their help with a formal written thank you note or card.

Keep in mind that it’s much easier to ask for references when you take the time to keep in touch with former supervisors and colleagues every few months. Demonstrate genuine interest in maintaining contact with them and not just when you need something. Get to know you professors by attending office hours and contributing in class. This will help your reference learn more about you and have more insights to provide your prospective employer.

For more questions concerning references, you can make an appointment with a career advisor by calling 215-898-7531 or you can come by during regular walk-in hours.

Be Cautious of Resume Templates

by Alyssa Perkins-Chatterton, Administrative Assistant

Your resume can have as few as 5-10 seconds to impress a recruiter before they decide to move on. That means you have a short window of opportunity to really wow the recruiter and make them want to interview you. The best way to do this is to showcase a clean, readable document that highlights all of your great experiences.

Most templates you come across are poor quality and you run the risk of choosing one with a terrible layout and bad readability. Many times templates miss out on the details. They utilize bad spacing, inconsistent fonts and have an overall messy look to them. The templates to stay away from are your everyday Microsoft Word (or any other program), “click and enter information” templates. Those templates are impossible to edit and the formatting is always different. Associate Director, Anne Marie Gercke tells students their “resumes should be a fluid document that you change often and tailor for specific jobs.” Working within a template is difficult because it makes changing anything in the document next to impossible. Our office provides a resume tip packet with examples of resumes with great formatting and layout. You can use this guide to find a style that you like and make it your own. You want your experience to be presented in a neat and clean way, this will ultimately show the recruiter who you are and that you are professional.

Just one more reason to avoid templates is the fact that they give the notion that you aren’t spending too much time on the presentation of your skills. You want recruiters to look at your resume and be impressed not only by your experiences but also by your presentation. Don’t sell yourself short by presenting your amazing experiences in a lack-luster template resume. Showcase all the great things that you have done in a way that is yours and will hold the attention of a recruiter.

To sum it all up, be cautious of how you are presenting your skills. Think of your resume as an always evolving document of your professional experiences. You want that document to be the best portrayal of why you are the right fit for a certain job. Most templates are not designed by experts. Don’t put your professional future in the hands of an unknown template designer. Utilize Career Services and all of our resources to ensure that you are sending out your best resume possible.

Helpful Resources:

Resume/Cover Letter Critique Services– Career Services offers resume and cover letter critique services. Visit our website to see how to submit a document for review based on what school you are in.

Online Resume Workshop– Our office hosts multiple resume workshops each semester but if you are unable to physically attend one of those events you can utilize this online workshop.

Career Services Website: Resume Section– This page of our website has resources such as guides, tips and even resume samples for Undergraduate students as well as resources specific to different populations such as Graduate students, Design students, School of Engineering- Master’s students, School of Nursing students, GSE students, and Social Policy & Practice students.

Your Lego resume

Dr. Joseph Barber

I find Lego to be completely addictive. It doesn’t matter what I end up building so long as the process involves converting a pile of loose bricks into some sort of sprawling structure (that generally has a trapdoor – you always need a trapdoor). Sure, I tell my daughters that I am helping them build a house for their pipe-cleaner cats, but really I would be happy just building something even if they were off tormenting each other in the other room. My Lego addiction may be blog-worthy in a career advice sort of way for a couple of reasons. First off, it says something about my own personality type, and it helps me to understand what I might look for in any work environment. I enjoy working with my hands. I am always on the look-out for opportunities to cut, tie, or tape things. This isn’t actually that helpful in my day-to-day work life since I don’t work in a preschool (which might be fun were it not for all the snotty children), although my colleagues at Career Services have been on the receiving end of several items that have resulted from extensive cutting, tying, and taping of things together. However, hands-on doesn’t just mean actually using my hands to build things, it is also a way of approaching more intangible concepts. I enjoy developing new workshops, online materials, program series, and resources. In this respect, being hands-on is part of my creativity…, or the other way around…, it doesn’t really matter. What is common about building a Lego house for a pipe-cleaner cat and developing a new workshop is that both approaches require having an ultimate goal in mind, something that you are aiming to achieve, but in both cases there is a need to be flexible and adaptable to integrate new ideas and approaches to be successful along the way. I know what I want the Lego house to have (doors, windows, and a trapdoor, of course), and what it should generally look like, but I have to adapt to the bricks that I actually have and the changing demands of my “clients” (“no…, catty needs a bed that turns into a car with wings”). So, think about what you enjoy doing the most at work or home, and then think about why. After this, you can think about where you might find other types of work environments, positions, or organizations that will give you the opportunity to contribute to their goals by using your preferred skills. If you need help with figuring out who you are, and what it is you do well, and don’t have ready access to 1600+ Lego blocks, then consider taking some of the self-assessments you can find on the Career Services website here: www.vpul.upenn.edu/careerservices/selfassessment.php. These are a great way to start off any career exploration or job search process.

But what is a Lego resume? Well, the other reason that Lego provides a good talking point for the job seeker is that the process of writing a resume is actually quite similar to the process of building a Lego structure that doesn’t have any instructions for a client who knows what they want but doesn’t always describe it in a clear and logical fashion (in my case a 3 or 5 year old; in your cases, a somewhat generic job description). For my daughters, I know what they need, know what they have played with successfully in the past, and I know what type of structure will keep breaking apart in an irritating fashion causing unnecessary strife. I might use the same bricks each time, but the final structure is always a little different. When it comes to resumes, your different skills and experiences are Lego bricks. You have a giant box of them. Your goal is to create a narrative that ties your different experiences together in a way that results in a recognizable structure that make sense to the reader (who is an employer hoping to use your skills and knowledge in a way that benefits them and their organization). But you can’t just pour the bricks on the table and let other people try to piece you together. Who knows what they will create if left to their own devices. You want to control the messaging, and you want to make sure that the product they see is what they are hoping to see (so, the more research you do into your career field of choice, the easier it is know what they are looking for). If one of your bricks represents leadership, you have to connect it together with other bricks in a way that illustrates leadership in action resulting in an outcome. You can’t just say you are a good leader, you have to show it. A single brink won’t demonstrate leadership, but a collection of bricks put together in a thoughtful way with a clear focus on what the leadership skill helped you to achieve would be great. And don’t forget, you need a different version of your resume for every application you make. It doesn’t have to be completely different, though. You could attach the same bricks in a slightly different way and have a different type of resume – one tailored to the end user (the employer). You could swap out one brick with one of a different colour. It could be the same skill, but demonstrated in a different setting – one that is more applicable to certain types of employers. Small changes to your resume can make a big difference to the reader, because they want to know that your resume was written for them, and that you are aware of the skills, knowledge, and experiences that they value.

If you are looking for some inspiration when it comes to creating your Lego resume masterpiece, then set up an appointment to meet with a Career Services advisor. We are happy to help you identify which of your experiences makes the best type of impression for different employers when it comes to demonstrating your skills. Bring some actual Lego, and you might also walk away with a house fit for a pipe-cleaner king…, a king who likes trapdoors and beds that turn into cars with wings!

Verbal Origami

Dr. Joseph Barber

You can think of verbal origami as a the process of taking one of your skills-based experience bullet points from your resume and verbally folding and refolding it so that it can emphasize different skills for the different positions you might be applying to. Take this bullet as an example – you might have something like this in your resume:

Created new assessment tool as part of a team to determine success of new training methodology.

As written, the main emphasis of this bullet is on the creating skill; “created” is the action doing verb that will stand out to the reader as they are quickly scanning through a resume. Focusing on creating something would be ideal if the job description mentioned something about being creative, innovation, showing outside of the box thinking, and so on. Being creative is never a bad skill to have, but if you were applying for a position where other skills were more highly sought after, then it would be a good idea to think about how you might be able to emphasize those skills. You might pick a new experience to talk about, or you could use the same experience but put the emphasis on a different aspect – you could do some verbal folding. Here’s an example:

Collaborated with team of 2 MBA students and an engineer to develop an online assessment tool used to measure training outcomes.

This is the same experience, except for this time the emphasis is on team-work and collaboration. This bullet focuses in more detail on quantifiable elements that make the team feel like real people in a real-life contact, as it describes who was in the team and how many people were involved. Let’s fold some more:

Successfully used Qualtrics and SPSS to develop and analyze a 30-minute online assessment for training outcomes that is now used as a standard protocol and tool for evaluation in an office of 15 researchers.

Again, same experience but seen from a different perspective. In this case, the technical skills are emphasized. Compared to the last two examples, this bullet point also adds a new element – an outcome. Having outcomes is important, as the outcomes demonstrate how effective the skill is. The reader feels more confident that the technical skills are effective because the evidence points to the fact that others saw value in them (the 15 researchers in the office thought they were useful).

So, this is just a quick reminder that you always use multiple skills in whatever you do, but your job in a resume is to draw attention to the skills that are most relevant to the reader. To do that, you sometimes have to verbally fold and refold you experiences so that the right skills are emphasized in the right way.