During today’s class, you will get into teams of approximately 4 people.

Exchange copies of your resume with one another.

When you read other people’s resumes, makes notes on their resume about how YOU would make it better. Are there typos? How would you organize the information better? Are all of the verbs in the same tense? Are there more action verbs than descriptive adjectives and adverbs? Are there specifics that would make their experiences more interesting, engaging, and useful?

After you complete reviewing all resumes as a team, take turns asking for oral feedback from your teammates that you will take notes on. From reading one another’s resumes and talking about what recommendations you make, you should take this as an opportunity to learn from one another’s resumes, too.

Before our next class, write a comment on this blog post in memo format (address it to me and your teammates–using full names) that summarizes the feedback that you received (giving credit to your teammates who made the suggestions) and describes what changes you will make to your resume draft for the final draft. You do not have to do everything that your team has recommended, but you should make reasoned choices based on their feedback and your own ideas as you improve this resume draft.

Also, before our next class, create a skills-based resume and bring three copies to Monday’s class. There will be a lot of overlap between the two resumes, but as you will see, the way information is presented will be different. This raises issues of usability and audience needs. It also is a useful tool for thinking through your abilities and how to communicate those abilities to a potential employer. I would not be surprised if by making a skills-based resume that you get ideas about how to improve your experience-based resume.