Yes!
Well, many other students are in the same boat as yours.
How do you make yourself stand out from the rest?
The answer is a – Strong Resume!
Having an effective profile alone is not sufficient, portraying it at the right place in an effective manner is important. For any student aspiring to study at International Universities, resume drafting becomes an important step to bridge the gap between their dreams and reality. A world class study abroad resume becomes the go to document to showcase a student’s experience, expertise and skills to the admission officers at their dream university.
Although it looks like a difficult task, creating your study abroad resume is not that tedious a task.
Let's go into detail about this to understand what all is needed to make an effective study abroad resume.
What to Include?
While every student’s resume would be different, the common inclusions for an effective study abroad resume include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Personal Information including name, contact details, contact number, email ID, social accounts details (LinkedIn or any website created by you).
- Inter cultural experiences and what you learnt from them should be a major showcase area.
- Summary of your profile in maximum of two sentences that shows your skills and plans after your degree program is successfully completed.
- Authentic educational history including details of proficiency tests attempted for seeking admission in international countries.
- Work experience in terms of internships, social service activities or anything else that you have been a part of have to be mentioned with proper details of the employer.
- Extracurricular activities of all nature that you have been a part of.
- Your skills, language proficiency and certification programs should be mentioned clearly.
Important Pointers
There are a few things you should keep in mind before you start working on your resume to ensure it helps you make a place in the selection committee’s list.
- The resume should be tailor made to the program you are applying to.
- Be authentic. Activities and accomplishments added should be authentic and should have vouching evidences if asked for.
- Usage of action verbs like created, organized and led etc. is a must as it highlights your persona.
- The language and tone should be yours and yours alone. Avoid fancy words if you are not a fancy word person in real life.
Words of Caution
There are a few common mistakes that students fall trap to. With intent to make the resume stronger, these mistakes end up getting your profile rejected. Take proper note of these and avoid these mistakes while you create your study abroad resume.
- Do not fall trap to use of fancy language. The resume is supposed to highlight your strengths and skills, not your vocabulary.
- Lengthy resumes tend to get rejected. Your resume should be concise and to the point; no longer than a two pager document.
- The resume should not have any false information. Enter only those details for which you can provide evidences in the form of certificates or LORs.
- Avoid leaving a lot of empty spaces to make your resume look longer. Make efficient use of your blank spaces and keep your resume look neat and tidy.
To ensure your resume serves the purpose that it has been created for, devote proper time to creating one. To seek professional help in making your resume, get in touch with your very own Career Counselors at Career Prabhu. Seeking expert guidance never hurts!
