University job applicants usually pay more attention to their transcripts and personal statements, but bear in mind a professional resume helps you stand from the crowd and gives you the opportunity to highlight your academic qualifications and experience in a structured and organised manner.
Without further ado, let's take a look at the key components and essential steps to keep in mind while drafting your professional academic resume.
Follow a Traditional Resume Format
When you start creating your professional resume, ensure that it maintains a clean and consistent format.
Use standard fonts like Arial, Times New Roman or Helvetica and keep the font size and style uniform throughout your resume.
Divide your resume into clear sections and give each section a standard heading like professional summary, work experience, education, skills.
Add in Your Contact Information
At the topmost part of your resume , include your name, phone number, email address and a LinkedIn profile.
Ensure to double check that the information provided by you is correct and professional.
Write an Objective or Summary
Consider writing an extremely brief objective or summary statement that can adequately highlight your goals and the value that you bring to the university.
Your objective statement should not be more than 2-4 sentences long. It should highlight your experience with the number of years of experience you have and your skills and qualifications. It should clarify the reason you are seeking the position that are applying to. But ensure that it isn't too long and it stays to the point.
Highlight your Education Section
This is the most important section for an academic job resume and a hiring manager will be on the lookout for candidates with good academic credentials. List your educational background in a reverse chronological order.
Mention the name of the institution, the degree earned and the graduation date. If your GPA is more than 3.8, you can mention that as well. You can also mention details on the relevant coursework you had, if you think it is related to the position that you are applying.
Mention Relevant Work Experience
Include relevant professional experience and that can include part time jobs, internship or even volunteer work.
It is advisable to list your work experience in a reverse chronological order where you start with the most recent job that you have had.
Use strong bullet points and start each point with a powerful action verb to emphasize your roles and responsibilities in each job.
Showcase Your Skills
Highlight your hard and soft skills on your resume. Hard skills can include your proficiency in a language, software or any other technical ability. Soft skills include leadership experience, teamwork, communication etc.
List your skills in bullet points to offer easy readability to recruiters and hiring managers. Try adding the same keywords from the job listing in your resume wherever applicable.
Mention Your Academic Accomplishments
If you have received awards and honors that are recognised by the academic community then it is a must to mention these achievements on your resume.
Sample Resumes
The best way to understand the process of making a professional resume is by seeing other resumes, examples and templates for reference. Let's take a look at a resume template detailing the important sections that should be present in a resume for academic positions.
If you would like to get a detailed idea of how a resume for students, academic jobs should look then you can check out our vast collection of sample resumes and examples and use our resources to get a clear understanding of resume writing. Here's a list of sample resumes you can check out from our collection.
Beat the Applicant Tracking Systems
Applicant tracking system is a tool used by most hiring companies and institutions during the recruitment process. The automation of the hiring process requires candidates to design the resume keeping the criteria for ATS softwares in mind. As this is the first round of the hiring process and if you want your resume to reach an actual human, you need to impress the ATS software before.
To effectively beat the applicant tracking systems (ATS) you need to meticulously read the job description and make a note of the keywords used so that you can incorporate the same keywords into your resume. Use ATS friendly fonts like Arial, Calibri and avoid the use of fancy and decorative fonts.
Keep the resume design minimalistic and avoid excessive formatting like adding tables, columns and graphs. ATS softwares will have trouble reading an overly formatted resume. Ensure to tailor your resume before every job application. You can even use online ATS optimized resume templates to make sure your resume is ATS-friendly.
Proofread your resume before you submit it to ensure it is error-free. A resume with grammatical errors and typos will surely get filtered out by an ATS software.
