Resume Additional Sections

Create Additional Sections Based on Your Unique Circumstances

Make your case! Professional experience in your field is a great thing to have, but it isn’t all that employers and graduate programs want to see. Did you develop strong public speaking skills by serving in a leadership position for a campus club or organization? Did you organize and manage projects during a volunteer experience? Your resume should present all your skills and experience. Some other sections to consider might be: Research, Related Projects, Skills (or Technical Skills, or Lab Skills), Activities, Varsity Athletics, Volunteer Experience, Professional Associations, Publications, Leadership, etc.

This might also be a good way to highlight professionally relevant class PROJECTS that have relevance to your goal using a section called “Related Projects”. Employers love to see experience in your field in both academic and professional settings whenever possible. Other potential opportunities to highlight information in this way might be Internship Experience, Clinical Experience, Research Experience, etc.)

Many CAS students will engage in RESEARCH with faculty, or independently. If you have research experience to highlight, the format below will allow you to best express the information in a way that is universally accessible to both employers and academics while conveying the most relevant information:

“Title of Research Project”, Quinnipiac University, Fall 2019

  • Description of research question; what was the goal
  • Description of what YOU did (or assisted with) including any techniques used or skills developed (e.g., did you analyze primary documents? Use specific lab techniques? Statistical techniques? Other research methodologies and/or tools?)
  • What was the result? If the research reached a result, describe it briefly. If the project is not yet complete, briefly describe where it stood when you left

If you had the opportunity to present your findings at a public conference or session, you can change the first line to reflect the presentation of the results rather than simply the project (e.g., “Title of Research Presentation”, Meeting/Conference name, Location, Date). If the presentation was part of a course or event here on campus, simply add that as an additional bullet using the format above and be sure to quantify the number of people you to whom you were presenting.

SEE ADDITIONAL EXAMPLES OF HOW TO DESCRIBE AND FORMAT YOUR RESEARCH EXPERIENCES

If you have PUBLICATIONS to list, you will typically follow MLA or APA format for the type of publication in question. Here’s an example based on publishing an article in a journal:

Format:

Lead Author (Last name, First Name Initial), Additional Authors, (Publication Year, Month). Title of article, title of publication, volume (issue number), page numbers

For example:

Doe, J., Jones, A., & Smith, B. (2018, June). The best article ever written: How to write like a boss, Journal of Amazing Writers, 12 (5), 175-185

If you have engaged in a lot of PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT (attended conferences, professional memberships in industry organizations) you might add a special section for this as well.

Anything that is professionally relevant can add value to your resume. A special section for “Interests” should usually be avoided since this is typically personal information which is not relevant to your professional presentation of yourself. The exception, of course, is where your personal life and professional life happen to overlap. If you have an interest in music and have attended more than 200 live performances that is of no professional interest to a recruiter or hiring manager if you want to be a teacher. However, if you want to work in marketing for the concert promoter Live Nation, this could be something that differentiates you from other candidates.

The risk in presenting an interests section when it isn’t professionally relevant is that there is a chance the reader will have negative preconceived notions about one of your interests which might influence their decision to move you forward as a candidate. Even if there is only a small chance of this, there is no need to take that risk without a clear corresponding benefit. The most commonly cited reason to include this section is that you might list a topic of interest to your interviewer and have a friendly starting point for your conversation. The chance for that doesn’t typically outweigh the potential negatives.

If you’ve been heavily engaged in an interest for a number of year, the other way to use it to potentially add value is to elevate from a simple listed “interest” and include it in an “Activities” section, complete with bullet points describing what you’ve done. This allows you to demonstrate the value of having pursued the interest (skills developed, accomplishments, etc.) in a professionally relevant way even if the activity is not directly related to your target industry.