NEUMONT RÉSUMÉ GUIDELINES
The Neumont résumé guidelines and templates have been created to reflect industry best practices for technical/computer science résumés. Neumont engaged an advisory board that included our industry partners, instructors, and industry recruiters to advise us as we developed these guidelines. While there are varying opinions about what is the “perfect résumé“, we believe these templates and guidelines will ensure your résumé stands out, and easily and effectively displays your technical and professional experience and expertise. Please speak with Career Services if you have any questions about our templates and these guidelines.
TEMPLATES
Utilize one of the provided Neumont templates or seek approval for alternative layout. We welcome innovation and creativity, but want to be sure it follows industry best practices. These templates offer clean, concise layouts, fonts, colors, etc., and the industry-recommended methods and formatting for sharing your technical and professional expertise and experience. These templates also provide the correct verbiage for detailing your Enterprise Projects and student projects. While your name, contact information, technical skills, industry experience, and education should be on every student’s résumé, additional sections, e.g. awards, will be added according to each student’s circumstances.
FORMATTING
résumé fonts & sizes:
The most common font to use is Times New Roman, black, size 12. Other serif fonts (with tails) to consider that are easy to read include: Georgia, Bell MT, Goudy Old Style, and Garamond. Popular sans serif (no tails) fonts include: Arial, Tahoma, Century Gothic, and Lucida Sans.
Margins:
The standard rule of thumb is to set your margins at one inch on all sides, slightly manipulating only the top or bottom if extra space is needed. However, ResumeGenius recommends precise .63” margins for top, bottom, left, and right. We recommend margins falling within these ranges.
Color:
Traditionally résumés are written in black, but can make use of subtle additions of color to help them stand out. It is recommended to use a primary and more muted color (no bright neon). Dark charcoal grays are also an effective text color.
KEY PARTS OF A résumé
Name and Contact Information:
Ensure your name and contact information are clear. You do not need to provide your exact address, but you should include city and state, phone (make sure your voicemail is set up), email address (that is appropriate), an edited LinkedIn Profile link, and any other additional links to your portfolio.
Technical Skills:
Provide an overview of your technical skills at the top, left or right side of your résumé, titled “Technical Skills” or “Skills” AND reinforce these technical skills throughout your résumé in your work experience and education sections. The more you list technical skills and keywords throughout your résumé, the more application tracking systems and recruiters see your skills being reinforced. List technical skills alphabetically or by category (front-end/back-end/server, languages, databases, etc. based on program).
List technical skills alphabetically or by category (front end/back end/server, languages, databases, etc.) based on program
Refine your list of technical skills to the job description; no need to list every technical skill you know.
You can also label your technical skills by proficiency level, e.g., proficient, some proficiency, etc.
Summary/Objective:
We recommend you do not include a summary or objective. This comes at the advice of several industry partners.
Industry Experience:
Using the title “Industry Experience”, you should include Enterprise Projects, school projects, and any other experience if it is technology-relevant.
Role/Title: Your role or title should be the industry standard or role indicated by your Enterprise Project Sponsor, e.g.. developer, quality analyst, business analyst, dev-ops coordinator, systems administrator.
Each Enterprise Project should have the phrase “Neumont Collaborative Project” within the title.
School projects should be the name of the project, and if it is your Capstone Project, you can write “Neumont Capstone Project” next to the title of the project.
Bold your title and the name of the company, as these are the key areas you want the recruiter to focus on.
Developer, 1-800 Contacts, Salt Lake City, UT, Aug 2016 – Nov 2016
Developer, World of Warcraft, Neumont Capstone Project, Aug 2016 – Oct 2016
Per industry recommendations, if you are looking for a technology position, do not include past work experience that is not tied to technology, i.e. fast food, swim instructor. If you want to discuss how your past work experience may be applicable, please contact Career Services.
EDUCATION:
Education should be at the bottom of your résumé and you should not include high school.
Only include your GPA if you have a 3.0 or higher.
Awards can be under education or in a separate section.
awards, accomplishments, certifications:
Detail these as applicable.
accomplishment driven résumés
In your descriptions under your Enterprise Project and Student Projects section, make sure that you are using action words, provide a description, the P.A.R. (Problem, Action, Result), and quantify your accomplishments.
Here’s a link to a helpful article about highlighting accomplishments.
Examples
Capstone: Single-handedly designed and implemented a full-scale project in 10 weeks that included a final presentation to faculty and students.
Enterprise Project: Developed an IPS/IDS solution in the virtual environment to monitor network traffic, providing an increase of 40% intercepted suspicious activity.
common dos and don’ts
Ensure NO spelling or grammatical errors.
Ensure you are using past tense for any experience that is not currently happening, and current tense for anything you are currently engaged in.
Ensure there is not inconsistent punctuation, font, font size, capitalized/not capitalized words or spacing.
Ensure your resume is honest and accurate and does not include anything that would be misleading or deceptive or is an overstatement of your actual accomplishments or experience.
Don’t put references on your résumé. Recruiters will ask for these if needed, so have them ready.
Use bullet points, not paragraphs.
Avoid “I” and “me” statements.
Don’t worry about the one-page rule, but don’t go beyond two pages.
Review each bullet and ask yourself:
Does this statement help or harm me?
Would someone understand what this means without any additional explanation?
Is this statement valuable enough or written well enough to take up room on my résumé?
Does this statement clearly exhibit why I am capable of performing the job(s) I’m applying for and why this company should hire me?