<p>I'm curious about this re/ my daughter. She hasn't thought much about it, and neither have I, but should she be starting to think about "building" a resume? (She's a freshman in college.) How does one do this? How soon to start? </p>
<p>Also, should she be getting letters of recommendation from the professors she has done well with now in order to have them on file for potential use later (when their memory of her may be less fresh)? </p>
<p>I hate to even ask this, and I don't mean "what should she do to look good" -- just how and when to think about it.</p>
<p>In terms of building a resume, she should take the opportunity to get involved – deeply involved with things like academics, research, and extracurriculars that interest her. This means, for instance, doing research papers on subjects that interest her, and taking the time and effort to delve into the material deeply, including using the professor as a resources. When it comes to ECs, it means having the guts to pursue ECs that interest her even though she hasn’t done them before. It means having the guts to speak up about her ideas, and to help implement those ideas. It means being willing to pitch in and help with events and other things.</p>
<p>It also would be a good idea for her to use her college career office and/or counseling office to find out what fields would be good fits for her, and what she can do now to prepare for those fields.</p>
<p>Building a resume in college: It’s a little bit like building a resume in high school. I do not think that freshman year profs should be approached for recs as the courses tend to be the introductory kind. Usually, students begin building dossiers in their junior year or early in their senior year. They can certainly approach profs who taught them in their sophomore year if they had a good experience in these profs’ classes and can be reasonably sure that the profs would remember them (even with a bit of prodding). Make sure that your student keeps all the papers she has written so that she can send copies to the rec-writers to jog their memory. Ordinarily, though, most of the rec-writers should be profs from junior year.</p>
<p>Depending on whether your D wants to go to work or to grad school, the resume will be a bit different. Graduate programs will care only about performance in the specific academic field. They won’t care whether the applicant was Ultimate Frisbee champion or concertmaster in the college orchestra. But any experience or skills that might enhance the student’s qualifications would be great, e.g. computer skills, lab experience, research experience, internship in an NGO/bank/law firm/Capitol Hill/tutoring or similar experiences.</p>
<p>Throughout college students may apply for summer programs, internships, or other jobs. Having a resume that is regularly updated would be helpful. If you have to put one together in a hurry, it is much more difficult. As time passes, drop off the older things.</p>
<p>My son put together a resume his freshman year in college when he was looking for internships. since he’d worke in high school he was able to put that job experience and he put some of his high school awards on it and then something about his computer programming experience. He still called us in a panic last week, when the internship wanted to check out his references and he wasn’t sure who he should supply - the high school job obviously, but what else? So think about who else - in the end he figured out which professors did know him and his work, but you should try to get to professors so that they can be references. Working 10 hours or so a week at school may be worth it so that you have something you can put on that resume - even if it’s only shelving library books - which is what I did throughout college - except the semester I corrected calculus homework which turned out to be a lot more work for only a little more money.</p>
<p>Our son has asked for a fair number of recommendations from professors for scholarships and internships. In general, the professors wanted to know about the jobs and scholarships before they wrote the recommendations. He knows a lot of professors in different departments and spread around the requests to different professors so that he would be a big burden on anyone in particular.</p>
<p>Your career center may be able to provide a lot of advice for putting together a resume. They may even do it for you.</p>
<p>Jobs look good. I generally think that Fall Freshman students shouldn’t have jobs but anything after that looks good on a resume. It would be nice to have something related to the student’s major but if that’s not available, anything else will do. It demonstrates that someone can show up on time, take orders from someone else and that they have some familiarity with the structure of work.</p>
<p>Another advantage of keeping a resume updated is that when you ask for a recommendation, you can hand the professor a resume. If the program/job/internship is looking for something special, you can also write a paragraph explaining how one of your activities meets that requirement. Teachers and professors I am sure appreciate anything you do to make their letter more to the point, and the result is a stronger letter. The professor can use any or none of what you provide.</p>