Resume Writing Workshop

At a Glance

Lesson Plan Notes Resume Writing Workshop

No one really loves creating a resume. Often, we (adults) start working on a resume when the pressure is on to find a job! This resume writing workshop takes the pressure off by breaking the task into 4 lessons, each emphasizing different parts of the creative process– and yes, resume writing is a creative task. Students don’t love writing a resume, but when it becomes a creative process and a way to tell part of their life story, it can actually be more interesting.

Since resume writing is an essential part of the job search, we don’t want to undermine the level of introspection and reflection that goes into. This four-part series of lessons breaks down the process. It can be used in high school classes, particularly Career Technical Education (CTE) courses. This is how the series is broken down.

Part 1: Finding your words

This is where students create a brain dump of all their experiences. Many will be limited to household activities, sports, and academic experiences because they don’t yet have traditional work experience. At this stage in school, students tend to be focused on writing in complete sentences and paragraphs. Learning to write in bullet points that begin with an action word (a verb) is new to many students and requires careful attention. This is completed after students write their brain dump in their own words as a guided rewrite.

Through this exercise, I identify the athletes in the room, the academics, and those who are somewhere in between and could be more involved in extracurricular activities. In my school, I also had several students who worked with their families in family stores, house cleaning, or construction. I help them draw on their roles and responsibilities and write solid bullet points.

Part 2: Know your Goal

The next activity encourages students to tailor their resumes to a job they’d like to do. By this point, students have learned about the roles on a software team and may have taken an online personality or strengths quiz to gauge their interests and skill sets. They can use this to look for jobs, internships, apprenticeships, or entrepreneurial opportunities they can start now. When I’ve done this, I’ve seen many students go for fast-food options like Chick-fil-A or retail options like Walmart. In that case, they will find real job descriptions online and target their resumes accordingly. If students prefer an entrepreneurial option, that’s OK too. They will need to research what it takes to make money in that venture, too. Other student prefer to think about their future career and seek out internships or summer programs in their field of choice.

Either way, by the end of this part, students will write a tailored objective statement for whatever field or job opportunity they choose. By the end of the exercise, they will reflect honestly as to whether they are still interested in this field or want to pivot to something else. The main idea is that they can’t target a particular role for their resume until they understand it first.

Part 3: Review like a Hiring Manager

This part of the process is one of my favorites in the series. It forces students to use higher-level thinking by becoming a hiring manager or boss. They begin to connect the dots that a resume isn’t really for them. The hiring manager uses the resume to inform their decision-making, and the process often moves quickly. Help students understand that reviewing a resume often comes before an interview and that a useful resume can make or break an opportunity. Half of the resumes are well written, and half are poorly written. They should be able to uncover best practices in the well-written ones and problems in the poorly-written ones. By the end of the exercise, students will also notice patterns in resumes that make them easy to review at a glance, including clear sections, experience listed in reverse chronological order (most recent first), and lots of bullet points with descriptive verbs. Students will take notes similar to the Cornell note-taking style, with commentary in the margins.

Part 4: Drafting your Resume

Finally, once students have all the context they need, they are ready to write their resume. They should have all the content for their resume from previous activities in the series, and they are finally ready to design the design that best complements it. I am pretty big on a content-first approach to software development, and this way of thinking aligns with that ideal.

Where this goes next

As I teach in this series, I often use bullet points from students’ resumes to connect with them initially and throughout the school year. I prompt them to go deeper or rephrase in bullet points while also taking in the information to form meaningful relationships throughout the year. Students will continue using their resumes in mock interviews and should understand that it’s a working document that will continue to be updated throughout the year.