42 THE QUEENS COURIER • KIDS & EDUCATION • AUGUST 28, 2014 FOR BREAKING NEWS VISIT www.queenscourier.com s kids & education Your fi rst resume - dos and don’ts If you’re heading out into the workforce Advance In Your Career Today! The Borough of Manhattan Community College Center for Continuing Education has the right course for you. Are you considering career advancement or personal development? For the past two decades, the Center for Continuing Education at BMCC, has been offering an extraordinary array of courses and programs that will support either goal. Technology Want to become more computer savvy? Take our Cisco CCNA, CCNP or CompTIA courses. Interested in programming? We can teach you C++, Java or learn to query, analyze or visualize data with Sequel Query Language and Tableau Software. Are you more creative? Explore our Media Arts courses, including Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, In Design, and Final Cut Pro. Personal Development Ready to learn something new? BMCC offers Beginner or Intermediate Spanish, Wedding & Event Planning, Digital Photography, Creative Writing, Book Binding and Anti-inflammatory Nutritional Guidance to name but a few. Allied Health Are you seeking a career in the Allied Health sector? Have you thought about working in a doctor’s office, or providing assistance to children, adults or seniors with special needs? We will teach you how to perform the necessary duties of a Medical Assistant, Direct Care Counselor, EMT, Medical Billing & Coding or Electronic Health Records specialist. Want to effectively communicate with your peers and community? Learn the fundamentals in our Spanish for Health Care Workers program. Professional Development Educational Looking for additional educational assistance programs? Our quality ESL and GED classes are offered during the days, evenings and weekends. Check our web site for courses and assessment opportunities, as well as for CLEP and CUNY Assessment testing options if you have already applied to a CUNY college. On-Line Courses Want to take an on-line class? We offer a wide range of courses in collaboration with two leading adult instructional providers; Ed-2-Go and Gatlin Educational Services. Workshops & Open Houses Take the opportunity to visit our facility and meet our talented faculty at a BMCC Open House. Hear about our courses in depth and let us help you explore, dream and discover! Upgrade your skills and become proficient in Microsoft Office Technology, Excel or QuickBooks. Feel empowered by developing strong business writing, presentation or project management skills. Maybe an office job doesn’t suit you, but becoming a NASM Certified Personal Trainer is your idea of a winning concept! We have what it takes to help navigate your professional development! BMCC - We're About Fulfilling Careers, Not Just Good Jobs www.bmcc.cuny.edu/ce | 212-346-8410 for the fi rst time, there’s plenty of prep work to do. An employer’s fi rst impression of you could very well be your resume. Christine Pacheco, director of career services at The Art Institute of Colorado, and Kristin Frank, director of career services at The Art Institute of Phoenix, share the top dos you should include to get noticed and get your foot in the door - and the don’ts that could get your resume tossed in the trash. First, the dos: • Do look at the job description and then tailor your resume to the specifi c needs of the job, advises Frank. Your skills need to match what the employer is looking for. Pacheco stresses the importance of key words that should be included in your resume. “Your resume could be scanned electronically and if key industry words and words from the job description are not in it, it will get tossed before it ever gets to a human being,” she says. That means you should be tweaking your resume for each job. • Do ensure you’ve completed at least one internship to include on your resume, even if your program of study did not require it. Explain how you contributed to the organization and how you made yourself stand out. Make sure to stress the professional skills you honed during that time. If you’ve done freelance and contract work in your fi eld, create a “freelance/contract work” section and list all your clients. • Do list your membership and participation in professional organizations, and if you haven’t joined a professional organization for your fi eld, do so immediately. “It’s important to show a genuine interest in your industry,” explains Frank. Make sure to also list any professional certifi cations you’ve earned while still in school. • Do utilize your college’s career services department. Advisors can assist you in formatting and tailoring your resume and may be able to provide you with job leads. They can also help you prepare for the actual interview. • Do list your work-related and nonwork related accomplishments. Make sure the non-work accomplishments still showcase your benefi t to a potential employer. Which brings us to the don’ts: • Don’t embellish. Because you will be asked about your marathon or how you increased your company’s ROI during your three-month internship, make sure everything you put on paper is true. If not, it could come back to bite you. • Don’t send before you proofread. “We still see typos and missing names, email addresses or phone numbers,” says Pacheco. Few things annoy hiring managers more than that kind of easily avoided carelessness. It tells an employer that you do not have attention to detail and that you complete sloppy work. In an era with spell-check, most of this can be easily avoided. • Don’t use that “cute” email address you created in college. A hiring manager will be hard-pressed to take “partygirl@ email.com” or “lovetheladies@ email.com” seriously, warns Frank. • Don’t include irrelevant info on your resume. A philanthropic event you organized for your fraternity is a plus, the spring break trip you spearheaded may not impress, nor will your award for most parties attended in a semester. Make sure the information you include showcases your responsible side. Your future employer does not want to imagine you calling in sick because you stayed out too late the night before. • Don’t go on and on. “I’ve seen executive-level resumes that stuck to a page or two,” says Pacheco. Make sure your resume is clear and to the point. Courtesy BPT
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