Resume Help from the Pros

Throughout my college career, I’ve struggled with the idea of going to the school career services office to find internships and ask for resume advice.

I had one bad experience sophomore year. To be fair, it wasn’t a bad experience exactly, but I was certainly underwhelmed. I made an appointment to go sit down with career services for resume advice, and ended up sitting with a work study student who told me my resume was in great shape and sent me away with some samples of how I might want to adjust the format. Great!

Needless to say, I have not used career services since. They have a great website that lists all sorts of internships and jobs, which works for some people. I’ve always been one to seek out my own opportunities. For that reason, as I look for a job, I decided it would be better to ask hiring managers for some tips instead of a work study student with comparatively less experience than I have had.

Here is what I learned from the pros:

1. It’s okay to ask someone to review your resume without asking them for a job. Many communications professionals are happy to help, and they know what skills employers are looking for because they hire communications people ALL THE TIME.
2. Use specific headings. Instead of Internship experience, use the header “PR and Marketing Experience”.
3. Don’t sell yourself short. Many sure the biggest names on your resume stand out at the top of the page.
4. DON’T USE ONE BLANKET RESUME- Just because you spent the time making your resume “just right” doesn’t mean that it is just right for the job you are applying for. Do your homework and make sure you use words from the job description in the body of your resume to show that your experience is relatable. If your page is too crammed, it’s even okay to swap out various jobs and activities as necessary.
5.  For an interview, make sure you can come up with at least one takeaway or story that you had with each past experience, from dealing with a difficult customer to seeing a huge project from start to finish. It is certainly impressive to be able to relate a tangible benefit from each of your experiences.

It sounds fool proof to me… fingers crossed!

And the world grows smaller...

The more I work, intern and network, the smaller I realize the world is. One of my coworkers (my original hiring manager) at Dunkin', who is coincidentally a BU College of Communication alum was recently interviewed by marketing expert Brian Solis, who my New Media and PR professor can't say enough great things about. Here's the video:

SUCCESS!

After an eternity of staring at my LinkedIn "profile completeness" percentage and feeling disappointed, I've finally done it. Although I had convinced myself that this was just some ploy to keep people coming back to the website, and that it wasn't actually possible to achieve 100% completeness, I have finally done it. Forget about all my internships, my resume and my business cards... This is the biggest achievement I've made in my professional development in recent history. Time to celebrate!

You're in the business of what, exactly?

On more than one occasion my friends have made fun of me because I never leave the house without my business cards. It's something I have done since my sophomore year of college.

At first, the business cards were simple. I was a peer adviser to incoming freshmen, so the college gave me business cards with my name, major, and class year... From there, things got more serious.

In the middle of my sophomore year, a friend introduced me to Vistaprint.  I ordered my very first custom order business cards... It cost $3.50 for 250 cards. I kept reformatting them for hours, and was unhappy with them from the moment they arrived at my door.

What on earth was I thinking? As soon as I opened the box I realized I had used my university email address... and the title of student didn't make me sound hardworking enough.... but I kept them, and passed them out for a year or so... I even gave them out at the bar on my 21st birthday.


Maybe I was too early for my time. To be fair, I probably should have ignored my friend as a sophomore. He is the same friend who later convinced me that it was fun and easy to become an ordained minister online, so I did. It is still on my to do list to order business cards reflecting my full name: Reverend Erin E. Caron. But in all honesty, having those business cards as a sophomore really impressed people when I went for interviews.




After coming back from London though, it was time for a change. I was going to be a senior in college... definitely time for a new look, and certainly no longer too premature to be a professional... And so I ordered these:

I am still made fun of relentlessly for having business cards. One of the other interns in my office this summer was so amused by them that he ordered his own with the job title "professional lady lover" and assorted pick up lines. But some people are finally getting it and ordering legit business cards. In all seriousness, you never know when you might randomly meet somebody that could become a valuable part of your network. Although, I don't recommend handing out business cards at a bar on your birthday... I've now made that mistake 2 years running.

A Case Study in Customer Service

I celebrated my second annual 21st Birthday last night at Wonder Bar. I won't get into the details here, because I am trying to get a job, but I do need to share that the customer service they provided was incredible.

The cost to me to host a party with 50-80 friends was... wait for it... $0. 

I called the venue and asked to have my party there. They blocked off the entire downstairs lounge, gave all of my friends line privileges and free cover and even gave me a complementary bottle of champagne.

Every single employee at Wonder Bar went out of their way to come over to me at some point in the evening to say Happy Birthday and make sure everything was going well. They didn't just take care of me, but of all of my guests as well.

One of my friends ended up getting sick. Instead of kicking him out on the street as they probably should have, the managers took care of him and even made sure that he got home okay. They were kind, caring and understanding. They took care of him simply because he was there for my party, and they were committed to making sure I had a great birthday.

The next day I wrote a review on Yelp... As did another one of my friends. I received a text message from a person at Wonder Bar thanking me for my review and saying they hoped I enjoyed my birthday. How great is that?!

Not only did every person who came to my party have an amazing evening, they all plan to go back. I must admit that when I first started telling people my party would be at Wonder Bar, they weren't super excited. From that one night of great service, they have all been converted to fans. Thank you, Wonder Bar, for providing great customer service and for helping me have a tremendous "Second Annual 21st Birthday" party.

Internal or External?

I went home for dinner last weekend. After a few glasses of wine, I ended up having a very intellectual conversation with my father about the necessity of internal communication and culture building vs. external communications.

He is a business operations guy and oversees a 6 store retail business. We discussed the problem of communication in his circumstance versus my internship experiences at large corporations.

It seems that every business owner wants to be on Yelp, Facebook and Twitter. It’s easy for someone within an organization to point to these platforms and ask why they aren’t there. It’s also easy to blame any short fallings on a failure to adequately utilize these online resources. It’s easy, but it’s ignorant.

As we discussed, we both agreed that all of those great forms of online media will do NOTHING for your business long term if similar efforts are not invested internally. In a retail environment, you can tweet and facebook until your fingers fall off, but at the end of the day, a positive in-store experience is what is going to drive repeat business. Therefore, it is important to value, appreciate and communicate with your employees before you can expect success with external communications. If your employees are brand ambassadors, they will be passionate about their work and their satisfaction will lead to more satisfied customers. Satisfied customers tell their friends. External communications are sexy, but internal communications are sustainable.

Just a few days after I had this conversation with my father, the Founder and CEO of a social media strategy company ended up visiting my New Media and PR class. As he spoke about all the cool things he is able to do externally, I couldn’t help but ponder the fundamental issue of internal. Naturally, I just had to ask him a question along the lines of : All of this external stuff about creating brand ambassadors is great, but do you really think a company /brand can be successful if they don’t also focus energy on ensuring employees are brand ambassadors?

As soon as I said it, I realized that it sounded like I was questioning the validity of his entire business model. I don't mean to question social media, and I am SURE I will have to be extremely talented in it in order to be successful in my career. I get that it is important, I just question how much it can do without a strong foundation of internal brand ambassadors. Fortunately, he didn't  take it as an insult, and he actually answered it very well. Because to be fair, if you aren’t online in this day in age, you are WAY behind. The internet is still necessary for driving people to your business in the first place. And in fact, the internet can be much more beneficial to driving short term sales. However, he did agree that for long term success, it is essential that you can transform employees into brand ambassadors.

Long story short, we’ve just got to be good at it all… great!

Here it is... The Moment of Truth

Yesterday I took the big step I have been putting off since May… I applied to graduate. This weekend I will register for my final 3 classes as a student of Boston University. Is the Fall semester really wrapping up already?!


It seems like the year has only just begun, and yet there are classes in which my only remaining assignments begin with the word “Final”… Final Exam… Final Paper… Final Presentation… Is it really November? Are all of these things actually due before I go home for Thanksgiving break in less than 3 weeks? It’s daunting and scary and yet semi-exciting. I’m ready to have a real job, but at the same time I could definitely stay in college forever. What’s the harm in being a life long learner? #SecretelyHopingMyApplicationIsDenied.