A resume is an argument about your experiences and how these experiences qualify you for a position described in a job posting. We all have current expenses–tuition, rent, coffee–and we would like to begin saving for our future. Jobs can help meet these current obligations and future goals. Consequently, for many people a resume is one of the most important arguments they will make over the course of their life.

If you perform a Google search for “How to write a resume,” you will see how much importance people attach to creating a resume. There will be thousands of companies advertising resume-writing services. YouTube videos will appear promising to inform viewers how to write a winning resume in 2020. There will be PDFs and images of resumes for different professions going back several decades. In short, there is a massive abundance of information about “writing a resume” online. Navigating all that information is exhausting, so let me offer an approach that I recommend to others.

A good place to start the process of creating a resume is by generating information for an important category of experience included on a resume: Skills.

In the “Ten Steps toward Creating a Resume” presentation delivered on August 5, 2020, two general categories of skills called “Transferable Skills” and “Specific Skills” are introduced, and examples of more specific skills are provided. You can locate this information on Slides 13 – 15 of that presentation (which is available as an attachment to the video recording of the August 5 session). 

For this final discussion thread of the semester, I ask you to identify 5 skills that you believe are needed by professionals in a profession associated with your major. After naming each skill, offer a brief explanation for why that transferable or specific skill is needed by workers in that profession. Finally, briefly explain how you can prove that you already possess each skill OR consider what you will need to do to attain this skill.

Here is an example: Level 1 Proficiency in Japanese / When I began my career in education, I was also considering teaching English in Japan. Though fluency in Japanese is not a requirement for such a position, English language teachers in Japan are expected to read and speak at a 3rd grade level of proficiency so that they can communicate with faculty and students. So, I dedicated 6 months to achieving that level of proficiency.