Resume 101 - Brainstorming

What do I put on my resume? What kinds of things have I done? What skills do I posses? Which of these should I put on a resume?

These questions are very common when anyone is creating, or even revising, their resume. Many people quickly become frustrated at being faced with summing themselves up in a single page that has to be perfect. It is normal to be overwhelmed; however there are some things that you can do to make brainstorming easier.

First, do not worry about limiting yourself to one or even two pages while you are brainstorming. Building a large resume now and trimming it down later is much easier than building a perfect sized resume. If you can list pages of material about you, it will come in handy later when you are writing and focusing content, organizing your resume as a whole, or revising your resume for other positions.

Related to the first point, list anything and everything you have ever done even if you do not think initially that it is important. At this point, it also does not matter how specific or well defined something is. The point of brainstorming is to just come up with ideas and write them down, expand them, and if possible, develop them. At this point, aim for a large amount of varied ideas over a few specific and refined ideas.

Finally, wording, at this point, is unimportant. If you are trying to break things down into many skills and you get stuck, then it is fine to use a general sentence. While brainstorming, it is okay not to have a clear idea of what your resume will look like. It is okay not to know how things will fit together. Brainstorming is just the creation of ideas. The later steps of resume creation exist to help you put these ideas together.

When you have all of your ideas together, and you think you have a complete picture, then you can move onto the next step of building your resume.

And remember, you can always contact the UIS Career Development Center by phone, 206-6508, by email, careerservices@uis.edu, or in person, SAB 50, with your questions about anything regarding resumes.