Writing Your Resume: Listing your education

I am going to ask a question that may be painful to those of you who have just spent the better of four years and possible tens of thousands of dollars on your education. Why is education a selling point to an employer?

The good news is that I'm going to answer the question for you.

First off, the education you list tells them that you have the minimum qualifications for most of the top jobs. That means it must be on the resume.

An employer will want to know where you went to school and what degrees you hold such as an Associate’s, Bachelor’s, Master’s or other advanced degree.

They may also look for your major, date of graduation, and GPA.

But that doesn’t mean you should tell them.

Huh?

Let’s begin with your major.

Whether or not you share your major depends on what it is and what the job is. Here’s an example. Let’s say you just finished a degree in Classics. You know Latin. You know ancient Rome. But you also always wanted to work on Capitol Hill. So you submit a resume to a recruiter in Washington D.C. Now let’s pretend you are the recruiter. You have 50 entry level resumes for one job as a Legislative Aide. You need to find a way to pull out the top candidates. You look at their education. You have 20 political science majors, 10 that don’t say their majors, and 20 with majors totally unrelated to working for a congressperson. If you are looking to cull the list, you may start by yanking those who you know majored in something other than political science, pre law, or government. Your classics major just got tossed away.

“Not fair,” you say?

True. But a reality nonetheless. So what could you have done to keep yourself in that pile? How about putting a Bachelor’s degree and not stating your major? Then the reader could assume anything about your education.

The moral of the story is that you should avoid putting information on your resume that can’t help you, and sometimes that’s your major.

So when do you list it. You list it when it sells you. If you are applying for an entry level job in an architecture firm, then putting on an architecture or engineering major is a huge plus. Putting your minor in modern dance, probably isn’t. It’s a judgment call that will change with each resume you send out.

So what about sharing the date at which you will be a full fledged graduate? What could possibly be wrong with that?

Let’s go back to our rule #1: Does it sell you?

Let’s say you are a sophomore applying for an internship. You could put down that your prospective graduation date is two years in the future, or you could put down Bachelor of Arts in progress. Which would you put down? Do you think your being a sophomore would make you more or less appealing to the employer? If you are competing against older and more experienced students, you may want to avoid making your sophomore status obvious.

Now try the same thing with a permanent job after graduation. You have your freshly printed degree in hand. Do you put down the graduation date or just leave it as Unicorn State University, Bachelor of Arts? What does that date offer an employer? It offers them a way to try to gauge your age. Assuming you took between four and five yeas to complete your education, I can now subtract your year of graduation to figure out how old you are. Does it help you to be a twenty-two year old up against a twenty-seven year old? Not usually, so it’s best not to offer it to the recruiter. Just put your school and your degree and leave the age game until the interview. Remember, its’ illegal for them to ask how old you are, but not to do subtraction.

What about your GPA?

Go back to rule #1: Does it sell you? What does it tell an employer about who you are? Are you a geek who never got out much and spent most of your time studying? Are you a well balanced, hard-working student? Are you a slacker? It’s hard to know how your GPA will be interpreted. If you have a fantastic internship listed, but a lousy GPA, they might cancel each other out. On the other hand, if you had a fantastic GPA and no internship, the recruiter might see how hard you worked and include you in the interview. Finally, if you had a fantastic internship experience, but didn’t list your GPA, you would probably still get the interview. If your GPA is lousy, then be prepared to discuss it in an interview, but don’t share it on the resume.

The debate about whether or not companies care about grades rages on and on. Lousy students walk around saying “companies don’t care about your GPA,” almost as a mantra to laziness. The truth is that companies care about anything that can indicate if you are a good employee. A GPA may offer a clue in that direction. If it’s there, recruiters will use it. If not, they may or may not ask about it in the interview. Most companies will ask about GPAs if they are hiring on campus. Some never ask.

Rule of thumb: if your GPA is a 3.25 or higher, you want to share. If your GPA put you in the running for a cum laude or other designation, you can place that after your degree instead. Scholarships and honors can be added, but only if there is room and they are key items that sell who you are. Pledge of the year is much less valuable than Presidential Scholar. Some honors, like Phi Beta Kappa, are universal, most are not. You may need to explain the award to give it meaning to a recruiter. Example: Williams Fellow: chosen as one of 10 undergraduates in the country for exceptional community service combined with academic achievement.