What should I ask for when I want someone to review my resume?

Getting your student affairs resume reviewed can be tough. But this is often a task that thousands of student affairs professionals strive to do every year. There are many people out there who are qualified to review your resume; and just as many out there who are not.

Who should you ask to review your student affairs resume and what you should ask them?

This article will go into detail regarding who you should ask to review your student affairs resume. It includes a list of people you should not ask; those who you should; and some considerations to take into account before you begin. This article ends with some specific questions you should ask your resume reviewer as well as what kind of feedback you should get in response.

Who you SHOULD NOT ask

There are generally two categories of people who you should not ask to review your resume. Not because they could potentially provide you a bad review; but because their insights and information may not help you reach your target goals.

You shouldn’t ask your friends and family members (especially if they don’t work in higher education or student affairs). This is because their views of resumes, cover letters, and the general job search process may be biased by their work in their own respective fields. Leave the resume review work to the subject matter experts and out of friends and family members’ hands.

The second group who you should avoid a resume review are recruiters. Recruiters may be seasoned human resource professionals. But they often link open opportunities to the kinds of qualification they see on candidates’ resumes.

Recruiters won’t be a concern for most student affairs candidates. However, in the upper echelons of the field; especially when it comes to director; dean; and executive level positions; more recruiters, search firms, and job search consultants are likely to reach out to you.

It’s best to work with them if you’re interested in their portfolio of openings. But recruiters are not the best source for an biased resume review.

Who you SHOULD ask

Friends, family, and recruiters are populations you should avoid for an unbiased resume review. But, there are definitely people who you can and should ask to get the most out of your resume re-development.

Asking a human resources professional is one of your best bets. They often work for a company; organization; university; or institution and often reviews resumes on a regular basis. For the best experience ask human resources professionals who screens resumes for a higher education institution in student affairs. You can get the most pointed and incisive advice from these individuals if you can network and form a relationship with them.

Another group you should consider are lateral colleagues in your functional area. These are the other coordinators if you are a coordinator; the other assistant directors; and other directors. These are the individuals who have subject matter expertise in your functional area and at your career level. They can provide some really relevant advice on your materials.

If you have the opportunity; you should also ask executive leaders. These individuals are in hiring positions at different institutions. They often review resumes for open positions and make hiring decisions. They have the most functional area expertise of any student affairs professional and can really provide you some insightful advice no matter where you work.

Current and former managers can also make good resources for resume reviews. They have the most insightful knowledge of your current and past achievements. They can provide pointed advice in tailoring your resume’s content to opportunities in your functional area. However, you should be cautious about making this request with your current manager due to the challenges of job searching with a supervisor.

Lastly, one of the most invaluable people to ask are grammar whizzes. While they may not have the technical, functional, or subject matter expertise to review your student affairs resume; they can still provide some mechanical corrections to your materials. Knowing where your sentences run long; concepts are unclear; or misspelling are abundant is a great resource to have when finishing up your resume re-development.

What you should know beforehand

You should know some things before submitting your resume for review. First, there are going to be some differences between free versus fee-based critiques. Free critiques may be able to save you some money in the short term. But, when you ask someone to review something for free they may not provide as much insightful information as they can due to their time demands and responsibilities elsewhere.

Fee-based critiques on the other hand can often provide some more pointed information; even if you have to pay a significant sum. Fee-based critiques from someone in your functional area who may serve as your hiring manager one day could be an invaluable source of information. Also, fee based critiques can often accomplish in a single session what might take you several free critiques.

You should also provide some information to your reviewer in addition to your resume. That should include a job description of your targeted job. This helps the resume reviewer determine if your resume reflects good alignment between what you have to offer and what the institutions needs from a new hire.

Lastly, don’t forget to include some contextual information about your work history. This should include employment gaps; instances of job hopping; or other discrepancies on your resume. Alerting your reviewer to this ahead of time helps them mitigate some of the questions that may come from human resource professionals or hiring managers down the line.

Questions to ask

The quality of questions you ask your resume reviewer will make or break whether or not your student affairs resume will perform. So here are the most important questions you should have your resume reviewer answer after submitting your materials:

-What are your initial impression after a 10 second review of my resume?

-What on my resume impresses you the most?

-What could be better on my resume?

If you’ve gotten some good feedback from your resume reviewer so far; it’s time to dive a little bit deeper into your questions. That’s when you should ask the following:

-What kind of position does it look like I’m applying for?

-At what point did you start skimming my resume?

-What questions do you have after reading my resume?

Feedback to ask for

After you’re gotten some feedback from your student affairs resume reviewer; it’s time to get some well warranted feedback. Here are the top three areas that a reviewer can provide the best and most pointed feedback:

-Grammar and spell check review

-What to include on the resume and what to leave out

-What to emphasize on the resume to make it stand out to a hiring manager

Next steps & takeaways

One of the hardest parts of asking someone to review your resume is that you’ll get advice and feedback from one person and completely opposite advice and feedback from another person. This is not a failing on your part. If you ask 10 people to review your resume; you’re likely to get 10 completely different and opposite opinions.

The best advice to take away from this is that if a majority of people ask you to make a change on a resume then you should make that change. If there are only a few that request a change then you can choose to accept it or ignore it. The point is to use what strategies work for you and discard the rest.

This article reviewed who you should ask to review your student affairs resume and included a list of people who you should and should not ask. This article also covered some considerations to take into account before asking others to review your application materials. Lastly, the article covered some specific questions you should ask your resume reviewer as well as what kind of feedback to get in response.

If you found this helpful and need some additional tips on navigating the student affairs job search then check out the free eBook Getting Started in your Student Affairs Job Search available here.

Happy searching,

Dave Eng, EdD

Provost, The Job Hakr

@davengdesign

References

Eng, D. (2019, August 26). Job Search Consultants - Job Hakr: Student Affairs Job Search. Retrieved November 26, 2019, from https://www.jobhakr.com/blog-1/2019/8/26/job-search-consultants.

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Eng, D. (2019, June 3). Network like a Pro - Job Hakr: Student Affairs Job Search. Retrieved November 26, 2019, from https://www.jobhakr.com/blog-1/2019/6/3/network-like-a-student-affairs-pro.

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Cite this Article

Eng, D. (2019, December 02). What should I ask for when I want someone to review my resume?. Retrieved MONTH DATE, YEAR, from https://www.jobhakr.com/blog-1/2019/12/2/what-should-i-ask-for-when-i-want-someone-to-review-my-resume

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