The institution is expanding its scale and demands more employees. Naturally, the priority for the moment is to review received resumes and select eligible candidates. During the process, I’ve found some common problems in resume design and content organization. Here are some shared features that I deem worth noting:

1.       The key is not the length, but the content. So try to avoid irrelevant verbosity, garish cover or blatantly over-photoshopped picture, but to display your solid background and competent abilities rather than the superficial, shallow stuff. Since the reviewing process is time-consuming, interviewers usually do not fancy redundant descriptions or long-winded details. In my opinion, one page is perfect, two pages is the upper limit and no more extra ones. It is actually a crucial reflection as to whether you are equipped with clear logics and powerful thinking to abridge your gains and squeeze your experiences into such narrow space and word limit. Otherwise, it’ll be a massive ordeal for employers' patience and endurance. That is to say, it needs to be straight-forward, highly-structured and coherently integrated.

      As for published papers and awarded prizes, you could bring along these supplementary materials for face-to-face interview instead of piling up all the supporting files in one single resume. As a result, the resume would probably look like a thick book and believe me, no one would like to touch it, not one bit. We should make clear that the ultimate objective of submitting resume is to obtain interview opportunity, which should serve as the threshold leading you to intended workplace. Only then could you demonstrate your capacity at a further, deeper level in the following rounds of interviews or other forms of interaction.

2.       Do the proofreading and refine your resume repeatedly before spreading it around. Resume is also an initial glimpse into your language proficiency. Make sure your every word is precise, accurate and cutting to the chase, without no-brainer mistakes in particular. Or else, imagine what kind of first impression your resume would project. No matter how outstanding your expertise or how excellent your language command is, these silly errors will backlash to an unbelievable extent.

3.       The core of your resume, just like the main course of any menu, should be highlighted properly. Resume is to introduce and promote you yourself. But some people take up large sections to boast the quality of their graduated universities or the reputation of their research supervisors, which is exactly an act of putting the cart before the horse. The truth is, however renowned your college and professors are, it cannot speak for your own academic performance or practical skills. The over-simplified logic of “like father like son” or “like teacher like student” just doesn’t follow. On the contrary, it only reveals your lack of confidence and experience.

4.       In the long run, inadequate capability or insufficient experience could be compensated since there is enough time for elevation and plenty of room for improvement. But the most fundamental is to maintain integrity all the time, proving that you are indeed reliable, trustworthy instead of muddling through or bluffing around. So bear in mind that your resume should be factual, not fabricated. Or it will not only jeopardize your valuable opportunity, but also blemish your morality as a person. For instance, in one of the resumes, the applicant’s published papers intermingled with unfinished ones. Thus no one would know for sure whether they are academically acknowledged manuscripts, or preliminary research work in the making, or even just some arbitrary, unpolished ideas.

5.       Narrow down your work orientation but never overdo it. Otherwise, precious job opportunities in related fields might slip through your fingers. Most of us could be tamed and trained into a jade of all trades, which is exactly what contemporary society requires. We should seize every possible chance to cultivate a multi-perspective mind, foster various vocational skills, externalize our unrecognized potential and unleash our raw talent. Besides, at this primary stage of our life to establish a career and blend into society, we have no children to rear, no families to support, no strings attached and absolutely nothing to lose. We possess nothing but youth. We believe nothing but change. We have every right and obligation to stretch our wings and carry things out, totally needless to fear for failure or frustrate for falling, because we could always stand up and strike back.

6.       The plain fact of the matter is that a brilliant, balanced resume is not created overnight but rather a long-term endeavor and vindicating embodiment of how you have spent the past years patching this resume piece by piece like mosaic. Some perhaps take advantage of spare time to complete internships and have a taste of real-world matters. In sharp contrast, some may toss and turn in bed daydreaming and play computer games everyday. Admittedly, sometimes classroom lectures and on-campus activities might not be quite beneficial. In those days, I often play truant, idle away time, surf on internet and addict to TV.

      However, the most incredible memories in college years that I treasure tremendously are concentrated in summer and winter holidays: teaching English voluntarily for the summer camp in rural school including movie appreciation, tongue twister contest, poetry lessons, drama performance; volunteering at Olympics & Paralympics and the awful cooking of the dining hall in Olympic Village still lingers on and haunts me as of today; assisting the training of middle school English teachers sponsored by foundations and organized by NGOs; doing internships at the National English Weekly Beijing Review affiliated to Foreign Studies Bureau; attending Spring Festival Drama Gala free of charge as a college student representative; working as a teaching assistant and classroom interpreter in Student Exchange Program for British and American students…

      Unfortunately, those months were plagued with H1N1 epidemic. So everyday I toiled back and forth among different infectious disease hospitals in Beijing to send over commodities, talked with infected British students segregated there, helped them cope with appalling circumstances and tackle their dreadful encounters on this exotic, oriental land. Right after that, the government officers who were in charge of these affairs resolved that I should also be transferred to the quarantine concentration camp since those British students carrying contagious virus and I had close, frequent contact over the past weeks due to my voluntary work for the program. One thing led to another, next thing I know, I was detained in a remote area for a whole week. The window of my tiny room was completely shut down using plank and nail, as if I would attempt to escape or something. I was also prohibited from leaving my room. The nurses sent 3 meals to the outside of my door everyday but I was forbidden to fetch it until they left 5 minutes later since they were ordered to keep a safe distance from me. For 7 days in a row, I didn’t exhibit any abnormal body temperature, which meant I had been healthy, uncontaminated and “safe” to others this whole time. 

      Anyway, all the stuff mentioned in this part is to illustrate the significance of making best use of summer and winter holidays to accumulate more real-world experience.  But above all, making everyday count is not merely for the pragmatic purpose of preparing for future career. The ultimate life pursuits should be based on your motivation to live the most out of this one and only lifetime as well as your aspiration to savor diverse flavors of the one-way journey. If so, you will find that making a good resume and seeking a decent job are just bi-products of your much more authentic lifegoals. Because when you stand higher above the whole job thing and aim more sublime about life instead of just striving for finding a job, getting well paid to make a living,  you could easily jump out of the box and visualize the bigger picture. One day, you will come to the realization that you have already surpassed and transcended those utilitarian destinations long time ago...