Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Resume-related questions
My boss told me yesterday that he nominated me for a detail to another agency. I am not sure if anything will come of it, but I need to go ahead and update my resume just in case. I have a couple of random questions:
1) For your education, do you still include your year of graduation and GPA? I've had these on my resume since college, but is that something you're only supposed to include right out of school? I finished undergrad 10 years ago and grad school five years ago, if that makes a difference. My GPAs were very good, so I have no problem including them, but I wasn't sure if people stopped doing that once they reached a certain level (I have 10 years of professional experience).
2) I've now been at four different jobs in two different (federal) agencies over the course of my career, so my resume is starting to get a little long. In my current and immediately previous job, my position is pretty standard - there are hundreds of people in my agency who do similar work, so the general duties are well known (although each would have slight nuances based on the specific area to which you are assigned). My previous boss had suggested that my resume summarize my major accomplishments in each job rather than my duties. He also recommended using paragraphs instead of bullet points. Does is advice make sense? My previous boss is a little whacky, so I don't want to just take his word for it. FWIW, the person I would potentially be working for in this other agency is there on detail herself, so she has a good idea of what I do.
3) Would you ever include references in your resume, or only if asked?
Sorry if these seem like basic questions; I've gotten used to just doing the USAJobs resumes, so I am a little rusty on what a normal, professional resume should look like. TIA!
Baby248 - ETA 1/10/13
Re: Resume-related questions
1. i'm not sure i ever included my GPA on my resume and if i did, it was when i was fresh out of college.
2. i've only done bullets on my resume but i haven't worked for the government . . . i am sure some of the other nesties will have better advice on this.
3. i always put references available upon request. i would not give out contact info for my former colleagues until i was further along in the process.
good luck!
I see a lot of resumes for potential detailees...
1 - I'd leave your GPA off, unless they specifically ask for it. Leave year of graduation on.
2 - I think the answer to this depends on where you're going on detail. If it's a different agency, I wouldn't necessarily assume the people reviewing your resume know what you do. I do think you should highlight your accomplishments, but making it totally accomplishment based (especially if the person seeing the resume *might not* know what you do) might be a little strange.
3 - If you have good references, I don't think it hurts.
ETA - this might be a personal preference type of thing, but I like bullet-point resumes better than the paragraph kind.
I do recruiting and HR for some parts of the government and read resume's all day;
1. Still list your education with the beginning and end year and that you did graduate but don't list your GPA. Honestly at this point in your career it's not relevant (I tell people to take this off after they've been "established" in their career for longer than 2 years).
2. Summaries make sense and they are nice however don't make it read in first person or in 3rd person. For this reason I like bullets - they are also often easier to follow. I wouldn't worry about how long your resume is. I see resumes as short as 3 pages and as long as 30 pages although anywhere from 3 to 5 is most common. (the 30 page resume was horrible and it took me several hours to edit it and format it since my client wouldn't bother to read something that long).
3. Don't list your references on the resume. When you turn your resume in you can have a seperate page with references on them or on the bottom of your resume just put references provided on request.
One thing I'd consider when thinking about whether to include references....
Do you think the person picking the detail might know (or may have worked closely with) your references? If they've worked together in the past, the person reviewing the resume might say "Oh, this is one of so-and-so's people! So-and-so is great to work with... so, I'll bet Jen248 is great to work with, too!" Or, "Oh, I know so-and-so... I"m going to give them an informal call to get the downlow on Jen248!" It could work to your advantage.
1) I would include your year of graduation, but not GPA, like PPs said. At this point I don't think you even need to include your undergrad major on your resume, just whether it was a BA or BS or whatever.
2) You could do a combination resume, where you put your skills/accomplishments right at the top and then have your work history underneath with agencies, job titles and dates only. I wouldn't use paragraphs. I think most hiring managers prefer bullet points.
3) It's standard to not include them in your resume. You don't even have to say "references available upon request" since most people will assume that. I would just have them on a separate sheet so they'll be ready when you're asked for them.
Baby248 - ETA 1/10/13