Resume Writing Process

Note: This is a resume process guide not a resume writing guide

A year ago I kept asking MBA2 for a list of things that I can and should do before the academic year starts? Should I go over statistics material? Should I work on my English writing skills (As you will see in this document the level is not as high as it should be ;-))? Or maybe I should just focus on finding the nearest IKEA store.
I got different answers from different people, but if there is one thing that everybody kept mentioning (Beside IKEA) it was: “start thinking about your resume”. Why thinking and not writing you may ask, well for some international students the resume writing style in the business school is far different than the one we use in our home country. That said it doesn’t mean you can’t start.

When school begins you will have so many things to do, learn and explore that resume writing will sometime get a second priority. But, the way I see it my resume got me most of my interviews, and helped me be where I am today, starting my second year with a full time offer in hand.

So what should you do? (And this is only my perspective)

1. Collect information – Collect information you would like to have on your resume. It sounds simple, since you already gathered the information for your B-School application. But there are minor tweaks that would make a huge difference:
   
   - One page resume – maybe not the most important difference but definitely the most annoying one. The B-School resume is only one page long, therefore screening the most important things out of your rich background is crucial.
   
   - CAR (Context Action Result) – or any other abbreviation to describe the writing style. What I found out when start writing my resume is that in most cases my gathered data did not had the result part!!! This is crucial and takes time to collect. The companies don’t want to hear about something that happened in the past, they want to know what you did and what was the impact on your company/school/community etc…
   
   
2. Advanced Search on My Impact – Start reading MBA2 resumes on impact. To me that helped a lot, I was looking for students who worked in my industry or have been entrepreneurs and “copied” the way they presented their background (Don’t look on mine, you can find better :-)).
   
   
3. OCD – the OCD offer one-on-one sessions with an MBA2 to go over your resume use those sessions and use them wisely.
   
   - Before going into an OCD resume review create your resume in MyImpact and print two copies.
   
   - When creating your resume online try to work with the Resume Guideline provided by school, getting into a session with an MBA2 with basic stuff that needed to be fixed that are in the guide are not the best thing to do. Some of those MBA2 worked in the company you aim for in the summer and you want to leave a good impression on them as well :-)
   
   - Don’t seat down with one guy from Brazil just because you are Brazilians. Try to meet with different students since each will have a different perspective. (That said don’t meet with more than 3 to 4 different students on your resume).
   
   - Make sure at least one of them is American so he can check your grammar and/or spelling.
   
   - Make sure that most of them worked in the summer in the same industry you are aiming for. Sometime the writing style should varied by industry.
   
   - If there are no meetings available, try offline (via emails), it is also a great way.
   
   
4. Write first draft (Don’t worry about it too much, by the time you’ll finish your resume you will have at least 7-9 versions).
   
   
5. When you are done with your default resume, think about a second resume for other industries (maybe your backup plan). Don’t use the same resume which is target to consulting in your High-Tech interview.
   

I think those are the main things that I did. The most important thing is finish your resume before recruiting season starts, and don’t stress about it you will have a great one I guarantee you.