What Goes On a Student’s Resume

This week, Jeff and I are diving into the student resume. It is incredibly common to feel like you have nothing to offer an employer when your work history is thin, but we are here to tell you that you have way more to brag about than you realize! Whether you’re a student, a recent graduate, or a parent trying to help your kid get a head start, we’re going to show you how to turn everyday campus life into a high-impact resume.

We’re talking about:

• The "Experience" vs. "Professional Experience" distinction
• Why unpaid volunteer work can be more valuable than a summer job
• How to add bullet points to your Education section
• Extracting "downstream impact" from simple campus roles
• The secret to getting recruited for on-campus jobs
• Why you should never hide a good GPA
• Reframing class projects as practical work experience
• Prioritizing student involvement over entry-level service roles

Listen in to help us, help you give yourself the best chance of landing your Next Job… NOW :)

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the podcast. I'm Greg Langstaff. I'm a certified resume strategist. I've written over 2,000 resumes, and I love helping people get new jobs.

SPEAKER_01 0:10

And I'm Jeff, and I have a lot of questions about job searching. Together, we're going to talk about everything you need to know about landing your next role. In this episode, we're going to talk about student resumes. What makes a student resume different, what counts as experience, and the mistakes you should avoid. Welcome to Next Job Now, the podcast where we help you get your next job right now. Greg. Jeff. How is a student resume different than a professional resume?

SPEAKER_00 0:54

Well, a student resume is different in a lot of ways because we don't have nearly as much experience to pull from. So we are looking to things like volunteer work, involvement in student organizations, community groups, or even looking at pulling some stuff from our actual like academic career and using those experiences to showcase that we have developed some skills that employers could use.

SPEAKER_01 1:20

So talk to me about what that looks like when using volunteer work or extracurricular work. And even like you said, academic work. How is that going to appear on our resume?

SPEAKER_00 1:31

Well, in a like in a professional adult resume, when you're like deeper in your career, you're going to have obviously a professional experience section. In a student resume, we just call that section experience, not designating that we were professionally employed for that time.

SPEAKER_01 1:50

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:51

So in in there, when we list things like, let's say we were the treasurer of the yearbook committee, or we were like a you know, like a membership organization volunteer on the chess club or like the Relay for Life Committee or some some sort of like recurring unpaid experience.

SPEAKER_02 2:13

Right.

SPEAKER_00 2:14

And then we we treat those exactly like a job. We list them in the experience section in like reverse chronological order. We give them each bullet points describing like the impact we had with those organizations, the work we did, and then on like in the education section, this is something like for students and new grads, whether you're high school, college, whatever it is, that you can add bullet points to the education section. Like people people don't think you can do that, but you could totally add uh experience or like bullet points to your education. Things like like your GPA if it's good. You don't have to add your GPA if it's not good. What's good? Oh man, everyone asks me this. Then they want to know. Perfect GPA is good, like near perfect. I don't know. If it's on a four-point scale, like I wouldn't put anything below 3.7.

SPEAKER_01 3:06

Right.

SPEAKER_00 3:07

Yeah. GPA, that's not an amazing example. I think like things like relevant courses. So let's say you're going into like marketing, and you haven't done a ton of marketing, but in your while you were taking like a degree at school, you completed like a marketing analytics course, uh an email and social media marketing course, like a marketing technology course, emerging trend, like emerging trends in marketing, you would list all those things in like a relevant coursework bullet point.

SPEAKER_02 3:37

Right.

SPEAKER_00 3:38

And then like you can also under education list like major projects. If you did a capstone or even like just a big project you did in one of your classes, like give it a whole bullet point just like you would in a job. I've seen a ton of people get their first job by listing projects they did in school as bullet points under their education, and that has converted employers to like knowing that this person could do the job because they practically did it.

SPEAKER_01 4:04

I think I've taken a look at a lot of student resumes. I worked in post-secondary, I helped students get their kind of first jobs, right? Like they've never had a job before. This is the first experience, whether that's paid experience, professional experience going on the resume. I've seen a lot of student resumes, and I find that the biggest challenge is understanding one, the impact that they actually make in their roles, yeah, and two, what counts, what gets to go on their resume to be like, well, I I just took a class on marketing. I couldn't possibly put a bullet point about that, or like this capstone project that we did. They don't realize that the this is your experience.

SPEAKER_00 4:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:47

You do have marketing experience.

SPEAKER_00 4:49

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 4:50

Now, in terms of you mentioned before there's experience and professional experience, and we can like title it differently. What counts as professional experience? Like, if I'm a student working in an office, is that professional experience?

SPEAKER_00 5:05

Well, of course it is, yeah. I mean, like where I draw the line of what counts as professional experience is were you paid. Right. But like, as I'm really trying to hammer home here, you don't need to be paid to do something to put it on your resume. And when you're earlier in your career, that you're gonna have your best experience from usually unpaid things. Like we both did student counsel.

SPEAKER_01 5:33

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 5:33

And sure, like some of those positions were paid, equivalent of $2 an hour, probably.

SPEAKER_01 5:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:39

But uh, like in those roles, we were doing stuff no one in an actual job would ever, ever do. Like we were managing six-figure budgets, we had teams of like 10 to 20 people, we were coordinating like dozens of large-scale events, we were negotiating like deals with the university for for space, like all these things that we're doing were so much more professional than like what I don't know, my job was lifeguarding. Right. And yeah, it's like this barely paid, we'll call it unpaid, student council experience was like was like a full-time like running a business.

SPEAKER_01 6:23

Yeah, I think that the experience, and this is a really good message to students who are, well, what do I put on my resume? Get involved.

SPEAKER_00 6:32

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:33

Right? Because that's gonna give you something to fill out your resume. My position on campus was orientation chair. So that means I got to plan, I think it was 37 events that happened in one week. I had a $60,000 budget. We were working with internal spacing, you're working with external vendors, you're looking at contracts, security, risk, and liability. Like that is what got me my next and first professional professional job.

SPEAKER_00 7:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:03

Right? That experience is all I talked about in my interview. I did not talk about sitting at the information booth at university to tell people where the washroom was.

SPEAKER_00 7:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:14

Or where Starbucks is.

SPEAKER_00 7:16

Yes, exactly. Because we probably, like, in those jobs, or like me lifeguarding, lifeguarding, I made like 20 times, a hundred times what I got paid for student counsel. But like those experiences are so much more valuable.

SPEAKER_01 7:31

Now, I don't want to diminish the information booth situation where you're sitting at a kiosk, for example. So let's talk about that of like there's actually impact in every role that you have as a student. Great call. And you just need to understand how to convert that. So that information booth role is a great example of you're actually retention. You are the face of the of the university or your high school or whatever that is.

SPEAKER_03 7:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:00

You're if you're giving tours on campus, you're important to enrollment and the overall success of your institution. So tell me a little bit more about that impact that we need to be able to extract from our experience.

SPEAKER_00 8:14

Well, I think I think you did a great job explaining it right there, Jeff. Because there that is that is the essence of writing a resume, is like looking at the downstream impact of everything we did. So, great example. If you're a tour guide for potential new students, well, every new student that comes in might be worth $25,000 a year to your university, I'd say $100,000 over the four years. If you convert 10 students to come to the school in a day because you gave great tours, you're making the university a million dollars a day as a tour guide. Like that, yeah, that is like that is the mental path you need to take for resume writing. How did this work help? And like, as you said, at the kiosk, if we're just telling people where they can go to get a sandwich or where they can, you know, how to find their classroom, that kind of work is so important to people like feeling like they can do this. You know, I can survive this school, I know where things are. That person was really helpful, I know where to go for help. And that's like you're retaining those students because if they have a bad experience, they're gonna leave. And you were put there to make sure they're having a good experience.

SPEAKER_01 9:38

So, like, yeah, you're connecting them to resources, you're answering questions. It is a service, and the the school pro needs you, yeah, right? Like every job needs you, otherwise, you wouldn't have that job. Yes, and I think that students can forget that to be like, oh, I just do this. So let's do a reframing activity. Oh I'm gonna give you four examples, and I would love for you to turn them into bullet points on the spot. Okay. Greg's greatest skill. Ready? Yeah. You organize the time to meet and work on a group project.

SPEAKER_00 10:17

Project managed team of six students to align on large-scale project objectives and delegate workflow to facilitate on-time project completion. You went and bought supplies for a club event. Identified material requirements and spearheaded supply chain procurement to secure necessary materials for on-time and high-quality completion of said project.

SPEAKER_01 10:48

I love that you put in spearheaded. The best word.

SPEAKER_00 10:52

I've been saying spearheaded since the day I was born, I think.

SPEAKER_01 10:57

You volunteered at a university's open house. Oh, that one's so easy.

SPEAKER_00 11:02

Supported the acquisition of hundreds of incoming students valued at millions of dollars in future revenue through one-on-one connection building and facilitating a sense of connection and possibility with the institution.

SPEAKER_01 11:19

Oh my goodness. Okay. Convinced friends to join our intramural team.

SPEAKER_00 11:25

Well, firstly, I remember when you convinced me to join an intramural team.

SPEAKER_01 11:28

I'm a highly effective sales.

SPEAKER_00 11:29

We had oh, do you want to try this? No, no, I do not want to try. Okay, elevated the on-campus culture and established a sense of community among peers through uh integration and recruitment into high-value student engagement activities. Round of applause for Greg.

SPEAKER_01 11:49

That was incredible. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 11:51

How do you write 2,000 resumes?

SPEAKER_01 11:54

Well Yeah, honestly. So, what advice do you have for students who feel like they're not making an impact? So, how should they approach their work so that they can develop a bullet point like that?

SPEAKER_00 12:06

I'm gonna give two answers to that question because I think people are at different phases in this journey. One is like if you're not doing something where you feel like you can be impactful, like you don't have to look that hard. Like if you're at if you're in like college, university, the student engagement opportunities are pretty aggressively recruiting. Like clubs always want more people. And like we worked in in higher education long enough to know that like if you want a job on campus, if everyone's like, well, I can't join a club, I need money, I need to get paid. I want a job. The people we hire are the people who were doing the clubs. Like, because that's then like when we're working in the university, supporting the student government, supporting the clubs, that's who we know. That's who like the the university officials who are hiring, that's who the students that they are familiar with. So, like, you're gonna trust that person can do the job. So you're gonna approach them and say, Hey, I'm hiring, come apply to this job. So, like, that's where it starts.

SPEAKER_01 13:12

The encouragement, the amount of students I've gone up to and said, I would like you to apply to this job. Yeah, I'm hiring. Can you please send me a resume? From like I remember the best student I ever hired. No shade to the rest. One of the best students I ever hired. One of. One of, one of the best students I ever hired was a volunteer at orientation, and they were crushing it. Yeah. And I went to them, I said, please apply. I have a vacant position in my office. They applied, they were with us for years, and they were so highly effective. Such a great person to work with. And it was just because she volunteered for a day. Do I know this person? No, this was uh not at our co-institution. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 13:51

Um completely agree. Excellent advice. Thanks. I kind of jumped in. Well, you said there's a two-part answer to that. Oh, yeah, sorry. In your current experiences. So that advice was how to like add experience or go join something where you can have an impact. If you're looking at the stuff you're currently doing, just note, like, especially when we're young, especially when we're in like these moldable situations that maybe are unpaid, like there is always opportunity to improve. And like, you don't have to be wait, uh you don't have to wait to be asked to make an improvement. You don't have to wait to be told what to do, especially in a volunteer setting. Just like look around at your maybe your group or the people that you're serving or the community you're connecting with and think like, what do they need? How could I, how could I, what problems are we having? How could I solve these problems? And like, just by asking yourself those kinds of questions and then taking action, you're gonna have substantial impact. And that's a great skill to build for your entire career as well.

SPEAKER_01 14:56

What are some common mistakes you see when you do look at student resumes?

SPEAKER_00 15:00

Oh, I would say like number one is prioritizing paid experience over unpaid. So don't get me wrong, like a nice paid summer internship, paid co-op, whatever, great, awesome. But like what I'm seeing is we've got like our education, which is just like the you know, the school, the degree, no bullet points, and then we have a professional experience section that is like Burger King, maybe lifeguarding. That's it. And then like this tiny little section at the bottom that's like student involvement, and it's just this little list of like these clubs, organizations, whatever, like that student involvement section should be the huge part of the resume. That should take up most of it, and we should have bullet points describing all the work we've done there. Like that's the biggest mistake I I see.

SPEAKER_01 15:55

Yeah, like if you are on your hockey team and then you, as a hockey team, do like a relay for life and you become the organizer and you chair those meetings, that's more impressive than sandwich artists at your local cafe.

SPEAKER_00 16:10

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 16:10

Right? Yes. So I like that reprioritizing. What does a student resume look like at the top? You said education is being bumped to the top. Do they have professional summaries?

SPEAKER_00 16:20

Sure, yeah, if you if you have space. This like we are in a place where a student resume typically is still one page, although, like, there are no rules. So the only objective is to be as impressive as possible. Should education come first? If that's your most relevant thing, absolutely. But if you've had more relevant experience, like say a mature student coming back, well, they're probably gonna put their education towards the bottom. But yeah, like we can go on to a second page if we need that second page to impress people. Professional summary, if you have a story to tell that needs some explaining, or you want to be very clear about your objectives, or you have some stuff you want to brag about twice on your resume, which is like a move I use all the time, I'd say probably all 2,000 times. I've like highlighted our best accomplishment a couple times. Using like a professional summary or something as well as putting it in bullet points. Then sure, absolutely. Like there's there aren't really rules. You were just thinking like a person is reading this, and based on what they read, they have to decide if they think I could probably do this job well.

SPEAKER_01 17:26

That's it. So the key takeaway from this whole episode is no cap, you got experience. I don't know what that means. I don't know if I used it correctly.

SPEAKER_00 17:36

Yeah, no, that is that's correct, because no cap means not a lie. But we I don't think I think we missed that one. I think that was like five to six years ago.

SPEAKER_01 17:46

Right. I don't know the new stuff. But just send this to uh send this episode to anyone who is a student because uh this is helpful. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:57

This has been and let's be real, parents parents who are watching this so that you can uh help and advise your student. Um Thanks for watching.

SPEAKER_01 18:08

Yeah, thank you.

SPEAKER_00 18:09

Because it's I I I would guess that's at least half to three quarters of the listeners slash viewers like this.

SPEAKER_01 18:17

Definitely. Well now it's time for unusual interview. The segment where we ask each other questions that we hope you don't get asked in an interview. What do you miss most about being a student?

SPEAKER_00 18:27

Oh, that's so easy. Constant access to friends. Yes. Like like it and to not you don't have to make plans, right? Like, oh, class is over at 11. I don't know who's gonna be in the Stone College student lounge, but I'm walking over there, and I'm going to go down in that basement, and without any like any planning at all, I know at least six to twelve of my friends are gonna be sitting in that room. Yeah. There's gonna be someone who's gonna want to play foosball against me, there's gonna be like uh video games on the TV that that I can play, or there's just gonna be like someone I can just chit-chat with. And if no one's there, I'll take a nap on the couch.

SPEAKER_01 19:12

Yeah. Just sitting around the table all kind of co-studying, co-working. Being a student is like being in a third space kind of all the time.

SPEAKER_00 19:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:22

And you're gonna run into someone to chat with. So highly social.

SPEAKER_00 19:26

I actually want to know from my question, just your answer to that same question, if it's different.

SPEAKER_01 19:32

Or your second most thing you miss. Yeah, I would say the second thing is the ability to just not go to class. And be like, you know what? I'm just gonna not go to that lecture.

SPEAKER_00 19:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:48

And there's like not repercussions. Like, I can't just like not work. But like that's bad.

SPEAKER_00 19:54

Yeah, that's true.

SPEAKER_01 19:55

Right? The amount of the freedom of just like one of the key things that I think I remember doing in university was like there was a lecture that everyone was in. And I every time I went, I would fall asleep. So it was not beneficial to be there. So instead, I knew that the art studio would be available because everyone's in the lecture. Yeah. So I had the whole studio to myself every week.

SPEAKER_00 20:20

Amazing.

SPEAKER_01 20:20

8 30 in the morning on a Thursday. It was great. And I was still I found ways to use my time effectively. But go to class. This is not I'm not advocating to not go to class.

SPEAKER_00 20:31

You don't want to be like Jeff.

SPEAKER_01 20:32

I think it was the flexibility of like you have class, and then you can go to sports, and then you have that like driving factor. Anyway. Oh man. It was the the really just sitting in the pub and then or coffee shop and every all your friends are just coming in.

SPEAKER_00 20:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:50

Like a rotating door.

SPEAKER_00 20:52

Not having to coordinate with friends because they're always there. Yeah. Best feeling.

SPEAKER_01 20:56

Best feeling.

SPEAKER_00 20:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:57

Alright. Well, thank you so much for listening to this episode. Please remember to like and subscribe and tune in next time where we talk about toxic workplaces. Ooh. See you there.