When I was a sophomore in college, I would apply to internships and jobs and be constantly amazed and confused.
“Wait a second... you want a full, one-page resume?”, I thought to myself. At about 20 years old, I had worked a grand total of two paying jobs: stocking shelves at a local grocery store in NJ ($6.35/hour) and assisting my grade-school football coach with minor construction and landscaping ($Lunch/daily). I’d also volunteered a few times, and I was playing college football – that was my resume material.
So, I did what all kids do. I used the best publicity/spin skills I knew how, and made bullets like this:
- Allocated inventory across 12,000 sqft. grocery/retail organization
- Dedicated 40+ hours a week to allocating, planning, and executing inventory fills
- Showcased customer service skills by directing customers
That’s about as strategic as I could make it. But, the reality was, I stocked shelves for minimum wage. I worked for four months, and made enough money to enjoy my summer.
Another friend of mine, let’s call him Doug, had very savvy parents. They wanted Doug to build resume experience, but they also wanted him to enjoy his summers. Imagine that? A twenty-year old enjoying their summer. So, Doug’s parents reached out to their network, and asked some contacts if Doug could shadow them for a week during the summer.
The value proposition is clear: Doug works for free, but gets what he needs: valuable experience and understanding, and three bullets on his resume. It’s a week in the summer – what’s the harm?
The summer before senior year came along – this was a biggie. Everyone wanted an internship. Doug and I applied to a lot of the same jobs. I received 2 interviews. Doug? 12.
Why do you think that was? To be honest, it could be a few reasons. His GPA was .2 higher than mine, he spoke Spanish conversationally, and was proficient in Microsoft Office. However, my theory is that having shadowing experiences at a marketing agency and a financial services firm trumped my “strategic shelf stocking” skills.
This is a long-winded prelude to sharing my over-simplified and rough equation for building a resume while in college:
Experience Usefulness = [(Company / Organization) + (Skills Developed) + (.1 * Salary/Stipend)] / Time
There are some clear issues with the equation, but let’s just look at each element:
- Experience Usefulness: This is a tough thing to define. I think of it this way: as a college student, you probably have long-term aspirations for a rewarding career. Experience Usefulness is a metric that attempts to represent a resume experience’s usefulness to getting you a job that will set you up for a long-term, rewarding career. Example: if you want to work in marketing after you graduate, a shadowing experience at a marketing firm is more useful than a four-month stint as a grocery store shelf stocker
- Company / Organization: Duh.
- Skills Developed: Duh, and very variable based on the job and career you want
- .1 * Salary: In the short-term you need to survive, but I think your experience salary isn’t very important in the long run. Take me and Doug for example. He made zero dollars that summer. I made about $4000.
- Divided by Time: Again, what will the three bullets on your resume cost you? I got three crappy bullets in four months of work. Doug got six fantastic bullets in two weeks.
Is this equation revolutionary? Probably not. But, I want to coach students to at least understand this stuff conceptually as they make choices that will ultimately decide which path they take after they graduate.