Advanced Resume How-To Guide

Targeting Your Resume 

To ‘target’ your resume means customizing your document to match specific criteria you notice in an internship or job description and to align with what you’ve learned about an employer or industry by doing research. While you must always be honest in your application materials, you want to highlight different aspects of your qualifications based on the skills or experiences desired by the employer or industry.

Five Tips for Targeting Your Resume

  1. Include relevant coursework: If you have completed courses that are relevant to your opportunity, include the names of classes in your education section
  2. Create a Relevant Experience section: This section should fall right under your Education section and contain any experience that is relevant to the position. You can also create sections that reflect relevant competencies, such as Communications Experience, Teaching Experience, Research Experience, etc
  3. Determining if an experience is “relevant” (in order of importance):
    • It was in the industry of the position you’re applying for
    • You learned content/knowledge that relates to the work you would be doing
    • You developed skills in another industry that are “transferrable,” in other words, you could apply those skills in the position you’re applying for
    • It demonstrates hard work and dedication
  4. Prioritize your bullets: To capture the employer’s attention, your most important and relevant contributions and responsibilities should be listed first under each experience
  5. Use aligned language: Integrate the key words of a job description or industry into your descriptions and skills areas to show your alignment with the desired qualifications. This means you may describe your experiences differently from one resume to the next. Some employers even use keyword scanner software for the initial round of application reviews so integrating appropriate keywords is critical to moving on to the next phase.

Best Practices for Using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to Build a Resume

AI tools can best be used to suggest how to craft or edit parts of your resume (i.e. descriptive statements) to highlight your skills and accomplishments better, brainstorm ideas for targeting your resume, or aid you with identifying relevant keywords within an internship or job description.  This last capability is very important, as employers use their own AI technology, Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS), to sort through submitted applications for candidates whose resumes include qualifications that match those described in job/internship descriptions.   

However, these AI suggestions are just a starting point and a supplement, not a replacement, for writing your resume.  You should always closely review any response or draft generated by AI to ensure all information included about yourself, the position, and the employer included is accurate.  Edit any AI-generated suggestions for your resume to reflect your personal voice and tone.  Employers can often detect a resume crafted solely by AI, and this detection could result in you being rejected for a position.

Be cautious about what information you share with an AI product, as the information you provide may become public.  Always read the privacy and data policies before using any AI tool.  Should you decide to upload or paste any part of your resume, edit out any personal or confidential information, such as your name or contact information.

TRY THESE GENERATIVE AI  PROMPTS:

  • What are the top skills and qualifications in this job description: [PASTE THE JOB DESCRIPTION OR PROVIDE A LINK]?
  • How can I edit my resume to reflect the top skills and qualifications for the position described here: [Paste the job description or provide a link]? Here is my resume: [paste a copy of your resume].
  • Your task is to describe my tasks and accomplishments during a previous summer internship at [COMPANY NAME] in 2-4 bullet points that I can include in my resume. The bullet point should be written using this format: Action Verb + Description of Task + Result.  Here’s a description of my tasks and responsibilities: [WRITE DESCRIPTION HERE]
  • What advice would you give for editing a resume that will make me help me get an internship [FIELD/INDUSTRY OF INTEREST]? 

Tips & Resources