It is never too early to start gathering and collecting details in preparation for completing your resume during the career training in your bootcamp. Our career bootcamps are perfect for all varieties of career seekers, recognizing that each person’s unique journey comes with a different level of experience. Building your resume and talking about yourself can be a challenging process. We know that.  So, let’s use this time to get your process started.

Here are the top five priorities as you prepare to develop your resume.

Accurate details and information

Maintaining accurate date ranges of employment/education information is important to an honest resume. Your MAX Career Advisor will help guide you through the resume-building process, but it is critical to have your accurate employment/education history ready to go. You should collect the following information for your resume:

• Employment dates
  • Titles
  • Location
  • Projects or milestones
  • Promotions
  • Skills collected
• Education
  • Name of institution
  • Location
  • Dates
  • Major / Certificate / Area of study

Research

It is not a must, because we will get you ready to research the companies and roles you will be applying for, but you can begin to look at the job market. You can choose to look in any city, for a work-from-home, or a local favorite. Set up a job alert on LinkedIn, Indeed, OH Means Jobs, and peruse what is out there. 

• LinkedIn
• Indeed
• Ohio Means Jobs

It can also be helpful to look into the junior/associate level job postings in your focus area to begin to see what companies are asking for…but don’t limit your criteria to those roles, check out Software Developer, Software Engineer, Business Analyst, Data Analyst, Web Developer, for instance.  We know that the time you use your resume to actually apply for jobs you are going to be focused on knocking out your interview..

Here are some helpful tips for some strategic research and preparation on your job search:

• Where do you want to work?  Geography and business type. (corporate, IT centric, consulting/contract, start-up, small)
• What are the specific ‘target’ companies you would like to work for?
• What do the junior / associate level job postings look like?
• What companies are currently posting jobs?  These are the organizations that hire YOUR skill set!
• Start your collection of ‘keywords’ from job postings to use market your brand-new skill set (what words or phrases are you seeing over and over?)

References

Individuals that can speak earnestly and validate your work ethic are extremely valuable. You will need a diverse range of people that can attest to your work experience and character details. It can take time to reach out to references and to collect their first-hand response and contact specifics. It may require reconnecting with people that you haven’t directly contacted in a while. Creating some of those reconnections can happen as you approach the start or completion of your bootcamp. 

• References are typically comprised of two professional and one personal contact that have known you for at least one year and that would say GOOD things about you
• Contact details should include:  Name / organization name / street address / city, state, zip / phone number / email

Key responsibilities

No matter the position, no matter the company, there is a really good chance you have key responsibilities that made you a valuable member of a team. Look back at what you accomplished in your roles and understand the strengths of what you completed. There is value in any role. Many of our students come from roles that have no technical skills required. But there are valuable character strengths and leadership skills in what you have done.

Take some time to think about any of the following responsibilities or skills from your roles that could be relevant in your job search:

• Key responsibilities or accomplishment
• Management responsibilities
• Leadership responsibilities
• Business changing responsibilities
• Project specific responsibilities
• Growth or changes in responsibilities

Highlights/Achievements

You have accomplished important highlights and achievements in your career. No matter your employment history or background. During your career training in your bootcamp we will help you discover the powerful highlights and statements to use on your resume. Start thinking of some of the memories you have from your employers or projects.  Perhaps pull out your former performance reviews to reference.

You may have highlights from your education, you may have served in our military, accomplished a significant task, or led a team through a project. Jog your memory and start to think of the highlights and achievements that we can build into your resume writing.

Here are a few things that may be included in your resume:

• Goals met
• Changes made
• Awards or improvements
• Projects or outcomes
• Milestones

Marrying your previous work experience, skills, competencies, and strengths to your new career direction is one of the things that your MAX Career Advisor will assist you with to accomplish a marketable resume.  Your task…to collect and gather needed information in one place so that you have everything ready when needed.

We covered a wide spectrum of detail…. here’s the bottom line:

• Gather your details
• Do some market research

We can find gems and nuggets of useful information for a resume from any role that you have held. If you need some help finding them, we will do that in class.