Thanks to the active participation of many of our members, our chapter held a student resume review during the month of March. Our reviewers were insightful, detail-oriented, and thoughtful, and generated a lot of good advice for individuals hoping to get jobs in libraries. The primary piece of advice that came out of their review was that students should include a variety of information and not overlook the specifics of their identity, opportunities, and activities, as all of these may set them apart from other candidates.
Resume Tips
Our reviewers recommended including an Objective or Qualifications Statement at the beginning of a resume. An Objective Statement ties career goals to qualifications and prior experience while a Qualifications Statement allows job seekers to feature soft skills and discuss passion and philosophy. In addition to including your passions or philosophies on service or teaching, include language that directly relates to the job description.
Resumes are often bulleted statements that outline activities. However, it’s alright to elaborate on portions of your experience that correlate with the position for which you are applying. Our reviewers frequently wanted more information about the candidate. Cover letters give you a one-page opportunity, but your resume can continue emphasizing the statements of your cover letter. One reviewer suggested, “If you’re applying to a business librarian position, pull apart what ‘business information literacy’ means in practice. If you’re applying to an instruction-heavy position, emphasize the teaching and learning activities you’ve been a part of — for example, what kinds of instructional sessions have you led?” Your resume is your first opportunity to share your skills and inspire your future team!
One other common suggestion was to include experiences that may seem non-traditional, not passing over descriptions of service, communication strengths, academic studies, and professional development activities. One reviewer stated, “Academic librarianship has become so multifaceted…;” you can take advantage of the variety in library work. Including even brief work in scholarly communication, data analysis and management, faculty-oriented programming, instructional technology, active learning, software development, etc. might set you apart and demonstrates your awareness of the field into which you hope to enter.
Our Continued Support
Thank you to each individual who participated in the March resume review! We think that resume review is such a useful service to our community that we would like to extend it to librarians who would like peer review and responses. So feel free to email your resume to dvcmentoring@gmail.com, it will be distributed to two librarians and returned to you in a timely manner. Together we can support each other’s career progress and be a professional organization that challenges, encourages, and emboldens one another to be unique and passionate librarians.