SIAT CO-OP RESUME GALLERY AND TIPS

The samples in the resume gallery and tips below are contributed and/or created by SFU Co-operative Education staff and students.

CONSIDER DESIGN, FORMAT, AND CONTENT 

Design (Visual) Requirements

1. Use InDesign or Illustrator to showcase your design software knowledge.
2. Be creative: Feel free to use colour, shading, or a personal logo.
3. Use layout skills (think IAT 102) typeface, use of whitespace, creative text blocks.
4. Infographics can be used if they provide quality information in an easy to understand manner.
5. Pay attention to detail: as a designer this is vital, spelling/line spacing/symmetry.
6. Design is a conscious choice. There must be a strategic reason for where you place your text, the fonts you choose, words you bold. You are responsible for guiding the reader’s eye to the most important parts of the page.

Format (Structure) Requirements

1. Develop a “profile” or ‘highlights’ section that sums up what you have to offer and what you want to contribute.
2. List your technical skills, design skills, process skills, and communication skills. Your technical and creative skills are why employers should hire you.
3. Your most relevant and recent work should be listed first. Design experience can include school work.
4. For page two, list other experience, campus work, voluntary roles, paid customer experience. Employers like seeing what students are doing outside of the classroom.  Employers don’t need to see more than three school projects.  

Content Requirements

Attempt to demonstrate areas where you:

a.  Work well individually and in teams
b.  Are creative and passionate
c.  Demonstrate good communication skills
d.  Are an excellent team player 

Content questions to ask yourself:

. Background: What was the project for? Example: Worked in a team of four to conduct user tests for a marketing company’s website.
. Role and tasks: What role did you play and outline your responsibilities. Be clear on what you did within a team project, not just explaining what the team did: tell the reader what specific tasks and skills you succeeded at.
. Learning statement: You can talk about how your project benefited someone else or what you learned from that experience. Results can be describe in the following ways:

.  How your contribution benefited someone else. Example: The website I redesigned tripled the number of unique visitors from the year before.

.  What you learned or gained from the experience: Example: I learned how to take the lead on finding out what my clients’ design requirements are and keeping the design project on track to meet the deadlines.

For all of your projects, be clear on which experiences are school, work or volunteer so employers know what you did.

Good luck and remember to attend the SIAT All in One you must bring your Resume!