I attended GRF Seema’s Resume Writing Workshop and it was very helpful. I was reminded of how critical a resume is for job and internship applications, and eventually medical school or graduate school applications. The resume is one of the first impressions on the employer or admissions officer, and is extremely important. A surprising fact to me was that sometimes a resume is only looked at for about 10 seconds before a decision is made to continue or reject the applicant.

GRF Seema first discussed the differences between a CV and a resume, which has some important distinctions in the content of each document. She also provided many tips and advice about formatting, such as where to place relevant information and the commonly accepted ways to structure the document. One difficulty about resume writing that I quickly realized is how to make a resume look unique and stand out, without appearing too unorthodox and unprofessional. One important takeaway I had from this event was the idea of a resume as a “living document,” that is always being edited, updated, and improved on. This is applicable to other areas of academics, not only resume writing, which I think is important to keep in mind.