Rebecca Schramm: Hello. We’re going to get started today and welcome. My name is Rebecca Schramm. I’m here today with my colleague Emily Seamone. And we’re happy to have you here for get career fair ready.
Just a little bit about our office to get started. As we let more people in, we serve all students and alumni from CUNY Graduate Center. We offer 1 to 1 career advising. We have, career events featuring alumni and other employers. We have a robust website with blogs, resources, and podcasts, and we host, many workshops and recorded webinars just like this one.
Finally we have Handshake. It’s a platform listing internships and jobs, also where you can schedule appointments and register for upcoming events like the Career fair, which we’ll talk a little bit about today. So we are recording today’s presentation. It’s going to be available on our website, along with 45 plus other recorded webinars from our office. And we’ll be sharing all of the material today with you by email within within one week of the program.
And it will also be posted right on our website so you can access it, anytime I’m gonna share just a few resources that might be helpful to you that we wanted to highlight today. One is the Career Planning Guide. And this provides guidance and samples on resumes, cover letters, other application materials, as well as tips on interviewing, networking, career exploration, and grant writing.
And I will go ahead, and drop that in the chat for you. There are many samples of documents that might be useful, for you to review, as a follow up to our session today. And we also have our Alumni Aloud podcast that features over 100 GC alumni and a wide variety of, pathways that they’ve entered post-graduation.
Sharing a little bit about their professional lives and advice for you. So I’m going to jump into our agenda for today. We’re going to start with some basics of resumes. We’ll touch on both the structure, the content, and then we’ll move into some tips. For those of you planning to come to the career fair on March 6th.
We’re going to be talking about some high level recommendations on your resumé today. And career fair tips if you want anything more in depth. We do have a number of other recorded resumes and workshops you can listen to. I’ll go ahead and drop those in the chat, and you can always make an appointment with us if you are a GC student or alum.
And if you’re joining us from another institution today, we encourage you to contact your career center, for follow up. All right. So we’re just going to do a very quick poll with you. For those of you who were here with us today, do you already have a resume? You can just go ahead and answer in the chat.
Yes. No, maybe you don’t know. I see some thumbs up, which are really helpful. Okay, great. Yes, yes. Wonderful. So, I’m going to assume you’re here today to learn about ways to improve your resume and make it stronger. So let’s jump right into resume basics and, preparation. Okay. So what is a resume? It’s a marketing tool.
It focuses on skills, on accomplishments gained from your professional experiences. That can include jobs, internships, volunteering, academics, classes, personal projects, course projects. It’s a document also very tailored to a specific audience. So you really want to think about the reader on the other end of your job application or that career fair table. Right. Who are they?
What do they care about? What are they looking for in a job candidate? And finally, a resume is a tool that helps you land an interview so an employer can learn more about you. So it’s just, an introduction of your highest, level skills, accomplishments and, and talents. Okay. So you might be more accustomed to creating a CV rather than a resume if you are joining us today.
But in the US, those are really different documents. So, this slide goes over a little bit of, the basics of what is the CV and what is the difference between a CV and a resume. So a CV is something that is written for academic scholarly audience. It can be as long as necessary in order to present your complete academic history and the positions you might submit a CV for would be faculty roles, research roles, teaching positions at universities, colleges, or maybe an entity tied to a university or college.
A resume is very different. It’s a document that’s written for an employer in a nonacademic audience. And the emphasis is on professional skills, experiences, and most importantly, your key accomplishments or your impact. There’s more description regarding the results and tasks involved in a particular role. And it would typically be 1 to 2 pages max. So you want to think about who’s reading your your resume or your document.
Right, your CV. So for academic jobs you use a CV So people in your field are going to really appreciate, the specifics of your research and the accomplishments in that realm. If you’re applying to a nonacademic job where people doing the hiring maybe have a background similar to your own, like maybe a research institute, a research position in industry, then your CV is probably fine to use.
But if you’re applying for a position where a PhD isn’t required, or if you can’t count on your readers familiarity with your research or your academic experience, you likely want to use a resume. So when you’re applying for internships and jobs in the US, the posting will typically specify which document you want to submit. If it’s a CV or a resume, you get to choose the most, likely for the employers coming to our career fair, you’re going to use, a resume.
But if you have any questions about that or aren’t quite sure, come and speak to an advisor either here or at your, school’s career center.

Student: I’m sorry, I have a question.

Emily Seamone: Oh, yeah. Go ahead.

Student: Well, so with in terms of with the resume and the organizations that will be at the job fair, should I like be looking at the organizations like on the website that will be attending The Graduate and then like making each resume kind of like tailored to the, to that particular organization?

Rebecca: That’s a great question actually. We’re going to get to that in just a few minutes. So thank you for for raising that.

Student: And then also I just have one more question

Rebecca: Yes.

Student: So there are still going to be more organizations added on to the job fair?

Rebecca: So we are continuing to do outreach. And you know, the final list will be updated before the fair.
But right now, I believe we have 20 employers coming. So we’ll, we’ll chat a little bit about the career fair at the end of today’s session.

Student: Thank you.

Rebecca: Thank you for asking. Yep. So, we’re going to talk a little about the skills to highlight on a resume. So lots of times graduate students come to us and say, you know, all my skills are in writing and research and teaching.
Those are core skills of graduate training. But what often gets overlooked is how many additional skills are maybe embedded within those experiences. So graduate education is one of the most skilled and, you know, professional experiences you can have. But sometimes those skills are a little bit invisible because they’re developed in academic contexts. So part of our work is helping you name translate and articulate those skills on your document.
So for example, teaching, you know, teaching, you’re presenting to groups your facilitating discussions or explaining complex topics, in really accessible ways. Maybe you’re assessing learning outcomes. So within there you’ve got communication skills, leadership skills, program design skills coaching skills evaluation skills. You know same is true for research and writing. Research involves project management data analysis, synthesis, critical thinking, problem solving.
Writing involves audience awareness. You’ve got persuasion, editing, and translating complex ideas really clearly. So on this slide are just some of the most common transferable skills that we recognize graduate students developing across their masters and PhD programs. And these are all really valuable on a resume, depending on what you’re targeting. So we wanted to move into a little bit about tailoring your resume.
But before we get into that, just keep in mind that graduate training really prepares you for a wide range of careers. Beyond, you know, including and beyond academia and naming some of those transferable skills. And what you want to highlight is really the first step in, building a very strong resume. And I’ll turn it over to Emily.

Emily: Okay, great. So we want to talk more about tailoring. And, Christine, that was a great question about tailoring your resume and particularly using it at the career fair. So first let’s just talk about what we mean about tailoring. And I’m sure all of you have heard that it is advantageous to tailor your job search documents to each opportunity that you’re applying to.
And but then oftentimes people wonder what that really means. So there are few steps in this process. At first you want to identify what the employer is looking for. So reading the job posting or internship posting carefully both. Description of the job as well as the requirements section. Notice what they’re emphasizing. You might highlight any key skills characteristic characteristics, and experiences that jump out at you.
You might also review the organization’s website and consider your knowledge of the larger industry that that position sits in. And then, as a bonus, reflect on any informational interviews or people you’ve talked to, at the company. That they may have given you some insider information, or maybe you’ve joined panels or events where somebody from that organization, is from then you might identify what you offer.
So consider your skills, characteristics, and educational and professional experiences that you have. And then finally identify the match between what the employer wants, what and what you offer them. Make a list of those you want to use their language where possible. So notice in the job posting if they use certain terms are described skills in a certain way.
For example, they might use the term research or investigative skills instead of analytical skills and then consider other sections for your resume. The sections on your resumé may be determined by the job posting and what you want to highlight, and we’re going to discuss all that more in a bit. But some of those sections could include a summary relevant coursework, relevant project experience, or technical skills.
Now, when it comes to the career fair you may be visiting, you may decide as you look over the list of employers and we’ll show you where to find that. If you’re not aware yet. So you may decide. I’m going to visit a few different employers. They have a few different job postings. How am I going to handle that at the career fair, with your resume?
So if you find that you are planning to talk with only 1 or 2 employers, you could create separate resumes that are tailored for both opportunities. However, if they are somewhat similar roles, one résumé might that your tailoring might be, applied to both and you can use this chart. Shown on this slide. And we’ll be sending all of that.
As we mentioned, along with the recording and slides and everything else, within a week or hopefully less. It sometimes takes a little bit of time to process, but we’ll try to speed that up. Given that the career fair is around the corner. So with this chart, you and the in the first column, you list each job or employer what they’re looking for.
And then in the second column you’re going to list what you offer. What do you have that they’re looking for. And the third column is what you want to emphasize on your resume. So you don’t need to highlight things you don’t have, but you especially want to highlight what you do have. Remember, you don’t have to have everything in order to apply for a role.
In fact, if you meet at least 50% of what they’re looking for, that’s great to to go for it. That’s usually an employers wish list that they’ve listed. They know they’re not going to get somebody who has done everything, because if they do, that person most likely is going to be bored in that role, that there’s no where there’s nothing for them to grow into.
The trick is we don’t always know what exactly the organization is willing to, train people on. So you especially want to make sure you have at least maybe those that what seems like the most important skills, and traits and and experiences perhaps, maybe the first couple things they list, in their list of qualifications. So you if you are going to visit several employers at the career fair, you might end up, you know, fill this out and see how they overlap.
They overlap a lot. You may only need one résumé if they if there’s some differences, maybe you have a few different resumes. And later in the presentation, we’re going to be talking about that summary statement on a resume, which is an optional section. And we’ll explain when it can be helpful. But this is a great place to tailor, for each opportunity.
So it may be that you have separate resumes for each employer. You talk to. And while the body of the resume pretty much stays the same because there’s a lot of overlap in, skills, the summary may be a little bit more specific. But again, that part might overlap a lot too. If the roles are very similar. Okay, so let’s now shift to talking about the most important components of a resume.
And there are not a lot of hard and fast rules for resumes. In fact, you will hear different opinions from different people. Maybe you already have. And there have been various trends during different time periods in the past, such as. At one point, it was common to include an objective statement at the top of the resume, which is different than a summary statement.
The objective statement was just saying something like, my goal is to get a an internship at your company, and then a keyword section at the bottom used to be common, or writing reference to references available upon request used to be common. None of those are done anymore. So given that there are differing opinions, it is helpful to think about your overall strategy, what puts you in the best light, and then choose what makes more sense to you.
Also, you can investigate what people in your field tend to do or are doing, or ask someone in your field. But again, even people at the same organization can often have differing opinions. Visual appeal is important to a resume, and you can accomplish this by keeping your resume to 1 to 2 pages max. It’s not as important these days to have just one page, but if a recruiter, or somebody in the organization tells you it must be one page, then go with that for that opportunity.
Your section headings should be bold to stand out, to help make the resume easier for the eye to digest. And then bullet points also make it easier for a reader to quickly scan your resume rather than having it in paragraph form. Emphasis tools like the bolding, italics, underlining, help make the resume more readable.
But you also want to be careful not to overuse them Use a typical font style, make sure it is readable size such as 10 to 12 point and pay attention to the especially to the top and left sides of your résumé. AI scanning research has shown that people tend to spend the most amount of time, but only still a few seconds on the top of your résumé, as well as on the left hand side.
And then once in a while, they’ll scan over to the right. So you especially want to think about how what you’re putting up the top, which is often your, maybe a summary statement, your education and what’s falling on the left side, or basically how you start your, descriptions of your experiences. So the, the action verbs and, and then of course, you’re going to make sure everything sounds great, but, especially think about those.
And then let’s talk for a minute about sections and headers on your resume. There are many potential sections that you can include. And it’s mostly based again on your overall marketing strategy. What you decide makes most sense for you makes it easier for the employer to understand who you are in your story, and what presents your skills and experiences in the best way.
Most standard sections on a resumé, are listed here in this section, and those include your name and contact information. You don’t necessarily need your address these days, but you might want a general location, your education, and this might be at the top of your resume or toward the bottom of the rest of the resume, depending on your strategy.
And also you may want to include relevant coursework, but that is more optional. You’ll want to include some type of professional experience sections. These days, you do not need to separate paid versus unpaid volunteer versus, work. And we’ll talk more about what these sections might be in a second and a skill section. I personally like to call it additional skills since you are listing skills within your experience section.
But you may notice some people just say skills and in this section usually is included. Any language, technical lab or computer skills. The other sections optional sections you’ll see over here. And this depends on your strategy. And you may decide you want to include these or not. And we’ll talk more about the career profile summary in a bit, but this section, the summary section could be impactful.
It gives you the chance to help the employer understand your transferable skills and what you offer right at the top of your resume, where readers tend to spend more time, as we just heard. But others are, within your education section, relevant coursework especially if you want to highlight that you’ve taken certain courses, because it communicates certain skills, perhaps like a data type of or analysis course.
You’re just listing the titles. Different experience sections will get to what you could call those, but, it might be research, teaching, internship, fellowships. Projects are a big one, service experience, especially if you have some kind of academic service, which a lot of you do or service in other capacities, leadership and other activities, other training, professional development certifications, licenses, honors and awards, publications and presentations, professional affiliations.
Now, you’re not going to be able to include all and keep it to two pages. So that’s a little bit of the trick. Deciding what is most important for the employers and organizations and roles. You’re targeting. So publication presentations may not be that important enough to include. And you’ll probably need to say selected. But if you don’t, if the job doesn’t have a major writing component or kind of public speaking component, it may not make sense or it may not be a priority.
For your resume. And here’s, some sample tailored experience category headers. And this is one strategy, where you categorize your experience into 1 to 3 sections and label each so that the sections immediately communicate a specific skill set. And it’s usually tying, of course, to the type of role you’re applying to. So here’s some examples. GC students often use academic project experience, so you could get some of that class work class projects on your resume.
Research experience, teaching experience, communication experience, higher education and teaching experience. Notice that, things are just labeled a little differently. If you’re trying to broaden your teacher experience to something like in higher education administration, maybe you want to label this a little differently because it has involved some administrative type. Task writing and editing experience might be good, except instead of, publications.
Student engagement experience, event planning and service experience, somebody who’s had a lot of service experience at, say, their university, but they want to kind of, transition into maybe event planning can, call this an event planning and service experience to kind of really highlight that event planning part curriculum design experience. There’s a lot of different things, that you can, call it again based on your strategy and what you’re highlight
Want to highlight. And then you want to select a resume format that emphasizes your most relevant experiences, and tells your story. So here’s an example of sections. On one student’s resume and shows the order she put them in. So she has, a summary her education since she was just graduating. And then the first experience section, she labeled research and project management experience because she was applying to research jobs that were also emphasizing project management as a skill set.
And of course, research is involves project management. It’s just not always called that, that she has a health and education consulting and evaluation experience. It’s a it’s a long title. It doesn’t have to be that way. And this was, a, this was it because she was trying to emphasize her health, expertise and then teaching academic experience was a smaller section, and she wanted to emphasize her presentation skills, just why she has that.
And she decided to have a selected writing and presentations section, where she did put some publications and presentations. But note that she changed instead of saying publications. She said, writing to make it a little bit broader and more applicable to that role, and she chose these two experience sections and name them to fit with her target of roles which were research, health and education work.
And then, depending on the particular role, she might switch the order up those two. So within those sections, her experiences were reverse chronological order. And they, were only in one section or the other, even though there might be a little overlap. So how you divide up your experiences and what names you give to your categories will depend on your target roles and strategies.
And it may be that you end up with a few different resumes. As we mentioned, if you’re talking more than one role or field, and this is part of the student’s resume with different sections, education was removed for this screenshot. But education did follow her profile. And we can see how the section names quickly communicate to the employer her major skills and experiences that she offers, how it fits with their needs, and then helps them to immediately understand how to interpret her experience on this.
resume. Notice that she has the profile or summary at the top, and this summarizes her key qualifications, particularly the ones that fit the jobs she’s applying to. And then we’ll talk more about those summary statements in a bit. And we can also see under her Health and Education Consulting and Evaluation section, she has grouped together several project experiences which helps, save space and get those projects in there.
So given the types of jobs you may apply for, just type in what categories you’re thinking you could use to cluster your experience. Or maybe you are already doing this. And while you’re doing that, I see somebody whose hand is raised. So go ahead and, ask your question.

Student: Hi, my name is Shilpa.

Emily: Hi.

Student: Nice to talk to
You. So, basically, and in the previous slide, as you mentioned, that it would be better if you just show. Yeah. Here if you showcase your experience according to the requirement. Right. So if you have research and project management, then you are putting, a headline research and project management and then you are elaborating in a, well, compact way right underneath that heading headline.
So yeah in this situation, if I have like kind of five years of experience with different organizations and, I work in different domain, then do you think I should order that way, like, highlighting the main work? Or I can put like the company name and then what I did, then company name, then what I did like that way.
Which way? It would be more impactful for the reviewer.

Emily: I you could do a hybrid where you are listing each company name and then what you did for each one. But if there is a common thread among those, even though they might be different employers and different kind of domains, if there’s a common skill set that you might pull out, like project management or research, then you could still give that section, that label, do you, do you feel like there’s a common thread or theme among those experiences?

Student: Okay. Yeah, I got it. Yes. I have like I have mostly, project coordination and I do project management.

Emily: Okay.

Student: Yeah. most of the experiences are kind of similar.

Emily: Oh, okay.

Student: […] Much. Yeah. Differences between both of the roles. So. Yeah.

Emily: Perfect. Okay. Yeah. And then as long as that is something that those, employers are looking for, which most will be thrilled with coordination and project management experience.
Then you could, label that and, and by the way, if you just have one section, experience section, that’s fine. You can still label it with that. You know, kind of categorization or specifics. You could still just call it professional experience, which is kind of the general term a lot of people use, if they don’t want to make it more detailed, and that’s fine to the advantage of labeling it a little bit more specific with the, you know, a skill or skill set.
Is that it immediately tells the employer what kind of skill set you have without them even needing to read, further. I mean, hopefully they will read further, and most likely they will, but it helps them say, oh, okay, these are the experiences that are going to be listed here. This is the major skill that this person has been working on and has gained.
And, can then also apply to.

Student: Yeah I mean I never tried this trick, but I, I found it very, you know, compact way to make up my resume, because right now it is kind of two pages, but that way I can make it in one page because as my experiences are kind of similar, like I did, on project management for five years.
So I just can put that headline, in terms of highlighting, and then I can jot down my main, story line

Emily: Aha

Student: under that.
Right. Yeah.

Emily: Yes. Good

Student: Ok thank you so much

Emily: And we would.

Student: Yeah.

Emily: Yeah. You’re welcome. And we recommend that everybody if, if you have a chance to make an appointment with your career center, before the career fair and then you could run these things by that person, showing them, you know, all your experience and they could make recommendations as well.

Student: Okay. Thank you so much.

Emily: You’re welcome. Rebecca, do you have anything you want to add on that note?

Rebecca: No, that that sounded really good. I guess another, option that we didn’t have on that slide. Was having, like, a related experience, an additional experience section. That’s kind of a nice way to break things up.

Emily: Yes.

Rebecca: without […] a pure, really defined section header, and bringing your more relevant experience, higher up.
So that’s another option.

Emily: Yes. Excellent. Thank you.

Student: Thank you.

Emily: Okay, great. So let’s talk briefly about the summary statement. And go ahead and drop in the chat if you already have one on your current resume. And we did mention the summary statement is one of the potential sections you might want to include on your resume. And we recommend including a summary statement for the following situations.
When you are making a change from what you have been doing and you want to make sure employers focus more on your transferable skills and experiences. If you have an eclectic background and you are concerned, employers won’t understand how it all comes together or if you have a lot of experience then the summary, just helps employers focus on what is most important and relevant for, their job.
So a summary essentially summarizes your professional role as well as the transferable and marketable skills. Knowledge and experience you possess that qualify you for the role. It helps you guide the employer to interpret your resume in the way you want them to, rather than, leaving it up to them and, hoping that they interpret it the right way.
And it can also act like a mini cover letter by highlighting the match between what you offer and what the employer wants. So a summary can be really helpful in that way at a career fair, because you are not handing them a cover letter. If you are sharing your resume. So we have a brief document on how to put, one of these summary statements together.
And that will also include in the follow up email. But you can see here it can be called different things. It’s usually only 3 to 5 sentences you long. You do not resume sentences not not I statement sentences. And you do not want it to be too long. Employers don’t like that. You can put it in paragraph or bullet points.
And, and then we talked about the whole purpose of it. Okay. And I’m going to hand it back over to Rebecca.

Rebecca: Hello. I was just responding to a few questions. Great questions in the chat. Thank you. Keep them keep them coming. Really appreciate the, the engagement okay. So we’re going to talk just a little bit about writing bullet points.
For your experiences on your resume. This is very important. This is actually how you demonstrate and showcase the skills that you have and how you applied them. So your bullet points are ideally accomplishment statements rather than a list of tasks. And responsibilities. We don’t want it to read like the requirements or the tasks at a job description.
We want to see how you actually did this work. So this is how we show the impact your work has had on organizations. You’ve worked for, your initiative, your ability to deliver concrete results. Right? Which is why we’re all often, in our work spaces for for outcomes and results improvements, making things better. It’s also this is one of the things that really distinguishes a resume from a CV, which can often look more like a list of experiences and opportunities, but you only have so much space, so you really want to focus on the most relevant experiences within each particular role.
Usually you might have anywhere from 3 to 7 bullet points, depending on how relevant the experience is. And then you actually want to list those bullet points in terms of relevance, not chronology, or even how much time you spent on one particular activity. Because if you have, let’s say, five bullet points, someone might only read the first three.
So we want to make sure those are, the most impactful, the most relevant to what you’re looking to do next. So you’re going to really tell your story through your bullet points. You’ll start each bullet point with a strong action verb. I’ll chat a little bit more about that in a moment, and you’re going to share through that bullet what you did, how you did that work, what tools, strategies, techniques you used, and then the results or impact of that work.
You also want to use numbers where possible to quantify your statement or quantify results. But if you can’t, you can focus on anecdotal results. For instance, maybe a general increase or decrease or an impact that the work had. And to help generate examples, it’s actually good to kind of step away from your resume and just do some reflection.
On your experiences, where did you have the most impact and where did you improve a system or process? When were you most proud? What were you recognized for? What did you get positive feedback on? Sort of. What did you bring uniquely to the experience that might be different from how somebody else might have done that job?
I want to just circle back to action. Verbs are really the foundation of every every strong, resume bullet point. We want to know what you do that’s really answers the question. What was the primary skill that is relevant to the next roles you’re applying to that we want to to showcase and highlight and job descriptions can can of course give us some really helpful clues on what to focus on.
So one of the things we want to avoid is starting bullet points with phrases like helped responsible for, assisted with. Those are pretty vague. They don’t tell us what you actually contributed, right? So instead, just push for some specificity. Ask yourself, how did you help? What were you responsible for doing? In what ways did you assist? So instead of saying something like help with event planning, you might say coordinated logistics for a 200 person conference developed marketing materials to promote a multi session workshop series.
So, that’s just a little bit about crafting bullet points. They usually take multiple revisions. But again, start by asking yourself, you know, what did you do with a strong action verb. How what systems processes tools techniques. And then what was the result and outcome. And you’ll see when we look at a couple of examples of bullet points, you’ll also notice that, it’s, it’s good to list the outcome first.
So even though we’re crafting a bullet point in this way, having bullets that start with, you know, improved, enhanced, secured, the outcome of that work is also very effective. And you don’t need to have results oriented bullets for every single bullet point. You know, even if you’re able to do that with maybe two bullet points or three bullet points, that’s really, really positive.
Okay. If you, would like a structure for building your bullet points, you can follow, there’s lots of different, different models you can follow. The one we’re highlighting today is the PARS approach. So basically it’s looking at, within your work or within a project. What was the problem. You were looking to solve or the opportunity or the actions that you took?
What were the, you know, what was the nature of your your personal intervention? What action verbs. Right. And then what happened? What was the measurable outcome, the result that maybe benefited the organization. And then what skills did you use to make that thing happen? Right. And the bullet point here at the bottom of this slide is just a draft.
It’s also pretty hefty. Like we usually recommend one bullet point, one idea, right. This might end up being broken down into 2 or 3 bullet points on an actual resume. And here we have the amount of money that was secured. But if you didn’t have that, you could just say you secured funding. That would be, you know, more of an anecdotal result and it’s perfectly fine.
Sometimes we don’t we don’t know the numbers behind everything in our work. Okay. So, these are a couple of accomplishment based bullet point examples I’ll give you. I’ll just pause for a moment and give you, a little bit of time to read them.
Okay. We can keep going with that. But something that’s important for graduate students to think about is whether you want to include what we call like a graduate school entry on your resume. This is a good example of that. Many students don’t include much or any of their graduate experience as, as, as experience or even, you know, professional experience on your, on your resume.
But when you leave it off, you miss this opportunity to highlight, maybe the depth of skills you develop, the knowledge and expertise. And the reality. The reality is most employers outside of academia might not actually know what goes into a thesis or a dissertation or a major academic project, especially if they haven’t, pursued an advance degree themselves.
So it’s important that you make your work really visible and legible to a broader audience. And there’s lots of ways to do that. This is just one you can create, almost like like a graduate student entry, in your experience section listing your institution, almost like an employer. We want to make it clear it’s it’s, you know, if it’s not a job, that it’s not a job, but we might, put it under a section called experience, maybe instead of professional experience.
And then under that you can include your thesis, your dissertation or any major research projects as experience entries. And then just like any job on your document, you’re going to create bullet points. They start with an action verb, highlighting key skills, what you did, and any positive outcomes or impacts from that work. So the example here on screen is a humanities and social science graduate student.
It doesn’t just include research. It also includes teaching, presenting and service work. So we just wanted to share this as an option. For you, again, if it’s something that’s going to, benefit you and be able to show the employer, related skills and experience they might be seeking.
Okay. Before we move into a discussion about career fair, maybe we’ll pause and take any questions that you have on resumes. And I see you’ve been answering some in the chat. Emily. Anything else anyone wants to either put in the chat or, raise their hand and ask a question about when it comes to their resumes

Emily: and let us know if we missed any in the chat, because I noticed it’s it’s not always highlighting the latest.
It’ll say, yes, there’s something in the chat and then it’s it could get buried. So let us know if we missed it.

Rebecca: Okay. So I think we can move into, career fair tips. So if you’re at CUNY GC student again, we’re happy to meet with you. One on one. To give you feedback on your resume, you can see our website for making appointments on handshake. Students from other schools can definitely reach out to their school’s career offices for support.
Both with general resumes and preparing for the fair. So we’re going to shift to talking about preparing for the upcoming career fair. It’s on Friday, March 6th, and I’ll go ahead and put, just a link, from our website for anyone who is not registered yet, that will take you into handshake if you’re joining us from a different school, I think today you’ll, you know, register through your school’s handshake system.
It should be in there as well. Okay. So on Friday, March 6th, we’re hosting our spring career fair. It’s a great chance to connect directly with employers. We’ll have representatives from about 20 organizations. They’re continuing to do outreach. And these include businesses, government agencies and nonprofit organizations. And they’ll be recruiting for a range of opportunities.
Some may have opportunities kind of come up coming up in the future that they’re going to talk about now. Others might be recruiting for full time roles, intern roles. So hopefully there’s something for you at the fair. And it’s okay if you’re coming to talk to 1 or 2 employers. It can be really a really valuable use of your time to, okay, I’ll turn it over to Emily to talk a little bit about career fair prep.
And, I’ll be paying attention to the chat for any questions that come in.

Emily: Did somebody have their hand raised? If you if you do, go ahead and unmute yourself.

Student: Hi. Once again. Ah so, yeah, it could be kind of out of, the main conversation we are having right now, specifically on resumé. But I have a question. As an international student, when we meet with different employers and we ask for do you think that we should directly ask for whether they are going to sponsor for H-1b or, any other, visa requirement or we just, try to hop into the conversation first and go through the resumé.
And if they are interested in my resume, then I can put that question.

Emily: Very good question. First, you may be able to find that information in their their employer information and job posting. But if it’s not there, I would recommend we’ll have Rebecca respond too. I would recommend just jumping in and not asking. Just start to get to know the employer, make that connection, share your resume.
They may ask you, especially if they don’t sponsor, but if they don’t ask you, you might want to go on and, and then submit your résumé. And again, double check that nothing is listed in that job posting. Rebecca, would you like to add anything?

Rebecca: No, I think that’s a really, that’s a great strategy.
It’s what I would recommend as well and we have some resources. I’m so sorry.

Emily: No, go ahead

Rebecca: and, the position description in handshake or the employer notes. I would probably go to their careers section, see if you can get any clues from other roles they have posting or other, other information. There are some tools to, just looking for it on our website.
I’m gonna drop it in the chat. Some tools we recommend for looking at, whether employers have sponsored in the past, which can sometimes give you, some clues about things moving forward. But I, I think it’s valuable to have that conversation no matter what. And I’d probably just like, Emily said, wouldn’t would it start with it.
Great. Yeah. It gives you a chance to, to start to make a connection with that employer before talking about, whether they sponsor or not. And of course, we know you don’t want to. It may feel like you’re wasting your time. But, it’s it’s like with anything you you want to start to get to know the employer, make some of those, basically network, make some of those new connections, and then you can discuss whatever you need to discuss later on.

Emily: And like Rebecca mentioned, the the resources we have on our website also be helpful in thinking about, okay, when do you ask or when do you reveal that information?

Student: Okay. Thank you so much.

Rebecca: Of course. Thank you for your question. Okay

Emily: You’re welcome. Okay So, a quick poll. If anybody has been to a career fair in the past do please, share that with us in the chat.
If you have anything, any advice you would like to share about your experiences? That’s that’s great too. We love to hear about those.
Okay. We have a few people that have. Great. Okay. So then as we talk and and share some of these tips, please feel free to chime in.

Student: Hi I have my raise my hand I’m sorry I don’t think the.

Emily: Yeah go ahead.

Student: So, I just have a quick question when it comes to put the resume, you know, how like the alignment.
Is it okay to go, like, a little bit over the alignment, like to make it like a little bit more expanded on to the paper? Or is it better just to stick to the like, like standard alignment?

Rebecca: Do you mean in terms of, like your margins?

Student: Yes.

Rebecca: Yeah. 0.5in is is absolutely fine. A lot to give you a lot of space to work with.
on the top, bottom and side.

Student: So going any more further than that, we shouldn’t do that.

Rebecca: It probably won’t print. And well, you’d have to see how it comes out on paper. Yeah. But that, you know, that’s, that’s probably as far as you want to go, typically, and, you know, you can reduce your font size to ten if you need, I wouldn’t go lower than that.
And also even the white space between listings and sections. I would include some whitespace, but let’s say you, you know, your font is 11. Like the spacing can maybe go down to five point or something like that to to squeeze a little bit more.

Student: Yes.

Rebecca: And again, depending on the years of experience, if you have ten plus years of work experience, a, you know, a two page resume is typically okay.
So at that point you may need to go into a second page. Yeah. Great question.

Student: Okay. Thank you.

Rebecca: Sure.

Emily: We love all your questions.

Rebecca: Yeah.

Emily: Okay. So, since some of you have been to career fairs. You may be well aware of the purpose of career fairs, but just, to remind ourselves, they’re helpful because you, can gather information, learn more about employers and jobs.
So this really is an opportunity to to network, to build new contacts, with recruiters and hiring managers. Also, just to get to know them, you know, more about their organization, which they may give you some, clues or some insider information. Meaning nothing that’s too secretive, but just, you know, a little bit more about what they’re looking for beyond what was in their job posting.
And you can also you may learn, about new jobs and opportunities as you talk with them that weren’t even listed. And it’s also a great chance to practice communicating with employers in general. But, specifically also about your strengths and skills. And remember that your main goal for a job fair is to talk with people, make connections.
So try not to go in telling yourself that you need to come out with a job interview lined up. So even if you speak at length with a recruiter about a position, you’ll almost certainly need to go through the process of of still applying online. But the connection you make with the recruiter at the fair gives your application a better shot at making it to the top of the pile.
And again, they may give you some, information that you think, oh, I should definitely include that in my application. You could even reach out to the person afterwards to, which we recommend anyway to thank them for talking with you. And then also to say I went ahead and submitted my application so they know to watch out for you and the reasons employers attend.
You can see here there are many reasons, but generally speaking, they come to a career fair because they have multiple positions they would like to fill, or they have an opening, that they hire for regularly on a rolling basis, and they attend because it’s a good use of their time to meet many potential job candidates in one place and build a pipeline of applicants.
They may specifically also like CUNY students. Of course they do. These fairs often feature employers who are large enough to be hiring regularly, and, but they may also feature some smaller organizations that are looking to build name recognition. So even if you’ve already scanned the list, employers coming to the job fair and you’ve not found what you’re looking for, we would still encourage you to attend.
And most organizations send HR professionals who help manage hiring across a range of roles. And the job fair is, again, your opportunity to have a conversation with the recruiting team. And perhaps you’ll be able to learn something about the structure of the organization, the various positions it has and the hiring process, so it’s always worth your time to connect with the
employer in person and you never know in the future, when something might be come up or, they’re looking for somebody, they may reach out to you directly. You want to do some preparation prior to the career fair. First plan to research the organizations and employers. We mentioned this before. Some of you mentioned that, and we’ll show you where to find them on handshake on the next slide.
And then just make notes on each employer. Visit their website to get a sense of their mission. Check out if they have any internship or job openings at this time that you want to ask about, and then create a personalized strategy. Who do you want to target? Is there one employer you want to talk to first more as a practice round?
How will you record notes after each meeting? Maybe you’re going to go off to the side and jot them down, or type them into your phone. Next, prepare and practice your introductions and answering some general interview questions. So we’ll talk more about this in the next slides. But basically you’ll want to devise an introduction for when you first meet each employer.
When you go up to their their table and then practice answering some general interview questions, which the employer might ask you. And these often are somewhat similar to a job interview type questions, but it is not a formal job. Interview them. Prepare questions you might ask the employers, and they’ll be more about this on another slide as well.
Just keep in mind that you’ll want to prepare a few, and then be sure to update your resume while keeping each employer in mind. Just as we talked about earlier. Also plan to update your LinkedIn profile and professional website if you have them. You can basically think about as you are updating your resume. Are there any skill sets I’m finding that these employers really want and I haven’t highlighted those, LinkedIn or my website, of course, those two platforms you’re not really targeting towards one specific person because everybody that visits it is it.
They are all going to see the same, profile or website, but you want to kind of include those general skill sets across all the employers and roles you’re targeting. You might think about getting some business cards printed, especially if you’ll also be attending conferences or other, types of events, such as networking events where they might be useful.
And as we mentioned earlier, you may want to make an appointment with someone at your career center, swap materials with a fellow graduate student for proofreading and feedback. Finally, pick out and prepare your outfit. Which should be business casual or basically what you would wear to, a conference talk. And if it’s I know some of you have, attended career fairs before, so type in the chat if there’s anything that you think was helpful, in your preparation that you did before.
And while you’re thinking about that, here’s an example of business casual attire. If you’re not familiar with that term, it’s basically like a nice top, nice pants, nice shoes. But it doesn’t need to be a suit, doesn’t need to be formal business wear. If that makes sense.
Okay. If you’re still thinking about what has been helpful to you in the past, you could still type that in otherwise. I’ll move on to show you where to find the career fairs, when we log onto handshake. You can visit the career fair by first clicking on the events tab in this left hand menu. Left hand side menu.
Then choose the, Career Fair CUNY Spring Graduate Career Fair 2026. And then once on the Career Fair landing page, you can choose, details employers tab is where you’ll find all the employers, jobs, as we mentioned earlier, it’s helpful to take some time before the fair to review all these employers, take notes, check out the jobs and internships they’re offering.
Make a plan. Who do you want to talk to? Jot down any thoughts, questions? Do some more research. As also, as mentioned earlier, it’s helpful to prepare a general introduction or elevator pitch for when you meet each employer. So when you get up to the table, this might be a little different for each employer, but probably won’t be vastly different.
And this you can think of, this is just a general introduction to your background and career interests and goals. It doesn’t need to be super fancy. Here’s a brief example. My name is Carolyn. Candidate. I’ll be graduating from the CUNY Graduate Center in December 2027. with a Ph.D. in psychology. I’ve experience in research, policy, and evaluation in the areas of health communication, health, communications, and education.
Most recently, I served as a director of a Ford Foundation grant funded project for the CUNY School of Public Health. I have been following the work that your organization Robert Wood Foundation has been involved in. I’m very interested in your research analyst role. Can you tell me more about it? So you could come up with something and practice that and then plan to bring a few items to the fair including copies of your resume.
Have the electronic copy ready. Some kind of writing utensil paper for notes, small bag for giveaways or anything else that you, don’t. Your hands may be full. So you don’t want to. It’s nice to have something to to put things. And then in addition to your introduction, we mentioned you want to prepare some questions to ask each employer.
And this may depend on the specific job or internship they have posted, although some questions you’ll notice are more general. So prepare a few for each employer. And then here are some examples. But keep in mind this is not a formal job interview, and the recruiter is going to have a lot of people most likely to chat with, so it’s important to keep your questions brief.
You’ll probably only get to ask a few questions if you end up applying for a job and then get an interview. Of course, you can ask more detailed questions, but it could be as simple as I read about this project on your website, can you tell me more about it? Or what types of projects does someone in this position work on?
Can you share more about the recruitment interview timeline? Something about the challenges they’re expecting. Or could even be reworded over what goals are you expecting to tackle? What would your what would you like your candidates, to know or understand about your organization? What have you enjoyed yourself about working in this organization? So those are just a few good general ones.
You could absolutely ask more specifics about the role. Just make sure it’s not already covered in the job posting. And then finally, you’ll want to practice answering some general interview questions, which as we mentioned, the employer may ask you at the career fair. But again, keep in mind that, there are often lines of students waiting for their turn to talk, so your conversation probably will not be long and you will not be asked a ton of questions.
But you could prepare things like tell me about yourself, which you’ll want to zone in on more so you know what you’re studying. A little bit about your skill set. Kind of a brief overview. You might visit the summary statement if you include one on your resume. Tell me, more about your specialties research and your studies.
What interests you in our, in our company or organization? Walk me through your resume experiences. What types of opportunities are you looking for? To name a few. Now I’m going to hand it back over to Rebecca.

Rebecca: Sure, I also just want to note, I mean, you might have 1 to 1 conversations, but, you might be involved in group conversations as well.
And that’s a really nice way to show your interpersonal skills, especially if there’s, a large group, Christine, I see you have a question.

Student: Yes, I do. So my question is that, at the job fair, will we like, when we speak to, say like, a recruiter or like someone that’s representing the organization. Will, we receive, like, a contact from them?, like specifically, because, I mean, I went to a job fair.
I like the school job fairs better than, like, I went to, like, a job fair that they had. It was like a hiring hall Like, I’ve seen it online and they said that.

Rebecca: Aha

Student: And then everybody at the table, like every, like one at the table. They were like representing their organizations. It would just be like a lot of them, like especially like the, I guess, like the city jobs or like they would be like, oh, you scan a barcode and apply online.

Rebecca: Yeah. It, you know, it really depends on the, it depends on the organization.

Student: Ok

Rebecca: Some people come with business cards and are sort of really giving out their contact information.

Student: Okay.

Rebecca: Some are there just to, you know, promote their opportunities, answer questions about the opportunities they will still need you to, to, apply online. So it depends. It’s always good to ask.
It’s great to ask. It’s good practice. Sometimes people have name tags and even if they don’t give you their contact information, you could jot down their name and find them on LinkedIn later. Right. And that’s okay as well.

Student: Because there is one organization that I, I don’t mean to Sorry.

Rebecca: No, go ahead.

Student: There was one organization that I am interested, like, really interested in that’s going to be at the job fair.
It’s the mayor’s office for environmental. I’m a public health

Rebecca: Aha

Student: I’m from the CUNY School of Public Health. My major is health policy and management.

Emily: Hmm

Student: And, I’m really, like, interested. That’s like one of the ones that I’m really interested in is to work at the mayor’s office, like, with, like, the environmental. So I was looking online to see, the, the, the job, the, the career, like, that are open, like the positions

Rebecca: Aha

Student: and there’s nothing, there’s nothing on the website.

Rebecca: Yeah. So then it’s okay to say, you know, I was looking I did I would convey that enthusiasm, and that you already took some steps, you know, to look for opportunities on their careers and didn’t notice anything. You would love to hear what they’re there for today if they’re recruiting for specific roles so I’d just tie in that that research, that knowledge, that passion.

Student: Yeah.

Rebecca: to the conversation

Student: I was because I was going to apply like I was going to apply to a position before I go to the job fair. Like that’s what my and then like let them know that I applied to the, to a specific position. But being that there’s no position listed, that’s why

Rebecca: right. And sometimes it’s better to, you know, especially if the fair is coming up.

Student: Aha

Rebecca: It’s good to, wait to apply until after because you might actually get some, information that
you can include.

Student: Ok

Rebecca: You may have a really good conversation. And let’s say you have to have you’re including a cover letter with your application. You can mention you met with, you know, the employer at the career fair, and you’re excited to learn XYZ.
And something like that could actually help your application stand out a bit.

Student: Thank you. And I’m sorry. Like I wasn’t trying to.

Rebecca: No that’s okay.

Student: interrupt when you were speaking.

Rebecca: they helped to I’m sure some other people have very similar questions.

Student: thank you so much for answering my question.

Rebecca: All questions are good. And there’s such a great comment in the chat, which is, the mayor’s office, you know, they just started they maybe, the term just started, so they might still be figuring out what their needs are, but they want to, sort of get in front of, of good candidates.
Such a great, a great piece of advice. Yeah. So, you come to the fair, right? You’re going to hopefully follow your personal strategy and, but also network widely. So if you’re there to talk to two employers, but you have a little more time walk around, you never know what other sort of great conversations will emerge or what else you’ll discover.
You know, while you’re there are a lot of this is connecting with people. It’s also a great practice, in networking and talking about yourself, which we don’t always have those kinds of opportunities until we get to the interview stage, or we go to a networking event. So, you can locate the organizations you want to target first, but if it’s your first fair or you get a little bit, a little bit nervous, you know, one, you could always come and talk to us, but starting with maybe an organization you’re less interested in.
It’s a nice way to just warm up your skills. In the room, you’re gonna introduce yourself, make strong eye contact. Offer a firm handshake. Employers may or may not do handshakes. That’s okay. But definitely have an enthusiasm that, you know, you mentioned come through, and, if your resume is asked for, you can you can offer it.
Lots of employers now are having candidates, submit resumes online. So it’s also good if you have, if you have a digital copy with you, it might make certain communications just easier. Or, you know, you can go home and do all the follow up that they, recommend which would be much easier. And we’ll talk a little bit about that in a moment.
So you’re going to go up to the table, you’ll ask a few questions, maybe based on the research you’ve done to the organization. And you want to just be aware of, you know, other people around you if there’s no line, you know, keep going. If things are going well, but, you know, also just be conscious of other people, who may be waiting to speak with the employer and also be ready to have some group conversations if it’s quite busy.
To end the conversation, you’re going to thank them. You can ask if they’re giving out contact information today that you’d love, you know, to follow up. But if they have a name tag on just even jotting down their first and last name as you step away from the table will be helpful for outreach later. Also, just jot down a few notes about your conversations, especially if you’re talking to, you know, 5 or 6 employers.
It’s a little hard to keep it all straight. So when you leave the table, take some notes about your interaction, who you spoke with and what your next steps are, and then you’ll move on to your next employer. We always recommend taking some breaks, in between the career fair goes on for a while, depending on your timing.
You can certainly come and go. You can just take take some breaks, take some notes and get ready to approach the next table. And then after the fair. So, a couple of recommendations depending on your interaction. Send, you know, if you can send emails to all the employers that you talk to, with a thank you.
And that could be via email. That could be if you’re able to connect with them, on LinkedIn and then send a thank you from from there. There’s also lots of ways of figuring out email addresses and tools like mailscoop, or even just a quick Google search like email format for X organization. Lots will come up if you if you are able to capture the person’s name.
And thank you. It doesn’t need to be long. Thank them for their time. Mention where you met them. Anything that references your actual conversation, or your discussion, that may jog their memory and the follow up steps you’re going to take, as I mentioned, you can also connect with the employer on LinkedIn and you can personalize a message, in your connection request that you get met them at the fair, a little bit of what you took away, and you hope you can stay connected or that you’re submitting an application for, you know, x, y, z role.
That’s really helpful. And then hopefully you’re, you know, connected longer term with that recruiter that individual working at the organization and then take action. So you might apply for a role, or do whatever you, you know, discuss with the employer. If you are applying sort of directly after there’s an opening that they’re accepting materials for and a deadline is coming up soon, you know, trying to take those action steps within 48 hours of the fair.
It’s great. Even that thank you or follow up. That’s a good time frame as well, before employers sort of forget and move on to their next fair. Right. So you can mention the person you met at the fair. I was excited to speak with name of recruiter at name of org. You know name a fair about the position.
You can be specific about that at organization name which will just help the employer or recruiter if they are, communicating with a lot of people at one. Maybe you had a really good conversation with the organization, but they’re not actually recruiting right now. It’s okay. You can still send a note if possible. Mention that you want to.
You’re looking forward to staying connected to the organization, and you hope they’ll keep you in mind for future opportunities. And of course, if you promise to send anything along to them, just make sure you you do that and follow up, promptly. Okay. So just some suggested next steps as we move forward that summarize everything we talked about today.
Right. So updating your resume, keep your career goals in mind. Get a second set of eyes on those documents if you’ll find it helpful. Go through the list of employers in handshake. Keep your eye on that list. You know, even the day before the event, in case there’s any updates, and conduct research on them, create your list of questions that you’d like to ask each of those employers.
You can bring those with you. Just practice your pitch in your introduction, even to yourself in front of a mirror. It’s really helpful. And if you want to jot down some notes for common questions that you might encounter, that can help you feel more comfortable in the moment and then just come to the fair prepared with your lists, your research, your questions, your enthusiasm, your energy, your talents, your skills.
And we’ll be there. So, we’re excited to meet all of you. Any questions as we wrap up today, we have about, you know, five minutes. So there’s anything you can just, raise your hand or drop anything you have questions about into the chat
Thank you for being here. And being such an engaging group.

Emily: Yes. Thank you for all the great questions and comments. If there’s anything else you’d recommend, again, from attending other career fairs, you could share that too.

Rebecca: We will have a student coat check I know we often get questions about that. Just wanted to mention that as well.

Emily: Great. Well, we wish you all the best of luck. And again, if you any questions come up, please. You could reach out to or that somebody at your career center have them help with your resume or preparation, whatever it might be. And, we’re really excited to to see you there.
Standard questions to ask potential employers. They are we listed some of those, but that that could be something specific about the role. It could be just, what are our what kind of goals does this, department or group have or for this particular position, what kind of challenges do you expect? What is the application interview process?
Let’s see if there’s anything else. What can I expect to work on in this role? That’s great. And but again, check the job posting or internship posting just to see, what is listed. And then that may generate some questions. You want to be careful, of course, not to ask questions that may be answered by reading that, because that may seem to them like, oh, you didn’t do your homework.
But, but it’s also a good way to come up with questions too.
And let’s see, we have a slide that was. Here prepare questions to ask. Could I ask about projects?

Rebecca: Aha
And you could also use current events. I mean that’s that’s great. I read about project […] I just saw a new partnership was announced. […] you don’t want to ask about salary or benefits.

Emily: Right. Yeah.

Rebecca: And, you and you want to keep things positive, you know, in this particular interaction.

Emily: Well, good. Thank you everyone for joining us today. And again, we wish you the best of luck. And, and, we look forward to seeing you.

Rebecca: Well take care everybody. Good luck see you at the fair.