By Kylah Roach | Staff Reporter

This fall semester, Career Development has been hosting a workshop series on resumes and cover letters for each college at A&M-Commerce to aid in students landing their desired jobs after graduation.

“Rather than giving my typical ‘how to write a resume’ class, I really wanted to focus on the things that would help students become exceptional in their resumes,” host of the ‘Six Second Resume’ workshop and Career Coach Brad Chilcote said.

During the workshops, Career Development presented interactive activities to help students learn firsthand how to create resumes and cover letters that are memorable enough to earn interviews for themselves.  

“During the [College of Agriculture and Natural Resource Resume and Cover Letter] workshop, I had students write a portion of a cover letter based on a sample job description so they could become more comfortable with addressing how their skills and experience would meet the needs of the employer,” Career Coach Shanna Florence said. “It’s really important that students build the skills necessary to create a great resume, so once they need to do it on their own they can create high quality materials.”

Career Development is educating students not only about the value of knowing how to do their own resumes but also the most important aspects of resumes that will help them be hired.

“It needs to be easy to read,” Chilcote said. “It’s pointless to go beyond one page because managers and recruiters only scan the front page. You don’t want to have something important on the bottom of the second page that gets missed. Also, it needs to be align to the position and to the company that you’re applying to.”

Career Development has been sharing some quite useful tips on cover letters during the workshops also.

“A cover letter gives you the opportunity to sell yourself, to show your enthusiasm about the position and company, and to bring your resume to life,” Florence said. “If you’d like your application to stand out, a well-composed cover letter might make that difference for you, as long as they don’t stipulate that you should not submit a cover letter.”

To contact Brad Chicotle, Shanna Florence or learn more about the other workshops that will be available this fall or spring 2019, go to the Career Development office in the One Stop Shop.