Often the first contact an employer has with new recruits is through a resume or CV and a cover letter. To make these materials work for you, focus on the tips below:
Highlight technical skills
Employers want the complete package in an employee, from strong communication skills, to bold leadership instincts, but your best chance at standing out in a crowd is to woo them with your impressive technical skills.
- Maintain a skills section on your resume/CV and make sure it includes categories and specific skills that are in demand in your industry, whether that be programming languages, wet lab skills, machine learning techniques, etc.
- Make sure to prominently include any skills specifically listed in the job description by listing these skills first.
Translate your resume and cover letter from academia to industry
As an international, you’ve learned how to adapt to a new context, language, and work culture. You’ll need to harness that adaptability as you communicate about your academic achievements in a way that industry professionals will understand. Your resume/CV and cover letter should use language and terms that is appropriate to the industry you are targeting.
- Learn more with this resource: How to Transition from Academia to Industry.
Provide evidence for how you help your teams
This tip refers to the importance of showing a potential employer that you not only do a job well, but that you go above and beyond to improve on existing processes, save companies time and money, and are an indispensable team member. When you are writing your resume, ask yourself these questions: How did I improve or optimize this process? What did my colleagues recognize me for? Where did I have lasting impact?
- Action verbs such as ‘optimized,’ ‘accelerated,’ ‘improved,’ ‘boosted,’ ‘streamlined,’ etc., will be key in articulating, in detail, how you are a huge help to your colleagues and organizations you work with.
- To show evidence of how others perceive your work, use words like: ‘recognized for,’ awarded,’ ‘granted,’ etc.
- Start each bullet point explaining your work with an action verb to show impact.
- To seal the deal, draw a clear connection between your skills & how they would benefit the company based on what you are reading in the job listing.
- By all means, avoid passive verbs or weak language, except when you’re talking about recognition by other people (ex: “was awarded”).
