How To Make a College Master Resume

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With college comes the inevitability of having to look for a job and create tailored resumes. By creating a college master resume, you can speed up this process and make yourself more prepared for future opportunities! In this article, we go over what a college master resume is, why you should make one, and how to get started with making one.

What Is a College Master Resume?

When you make a normal resume, you tailor your experience to whatever you’re applying to. For example, if I was applying to work in a social media coordinator role and I had experience waitressing, I would emphasize my customer service skills, my ability to know my audience, and my ability to direct any other servers. If there was anything more relevant (i.e., creating a social media campaign for the restaurant or helping the owner to reach out to other vendors), that would obviously go first. Similarly, if I were to apply for a receptionist position with that waitressing experience, I would emphasize different skills.

So, with that being said, where does a college master resume come into it?

In a master resume, you put everything you can about different positions you’ve held. Instead of simply putting three or so recent positions that apply most to the position you’re applying for, you record all of them. Every volunteering job, work, internship, research, etc. goes onto this document. Then, when you go to make that perfect resume, you have more information to draw from that will be specific to that job.

That might be a little abstract still. Here’s an example for a position I held as an Instructional Student Assistant:
  • Facilitated conversation amongst first year students
  • Served as a resource for them as they adjusted to college in a virtual setting
  • Delivered curriculum equipping students with life skills such as time management, goal-oriented planning, and learning tools
  • Fostered a sense of community in an online environment
  • Assisted students with transitioning into university life through delivering content over live Zoom seminar classes to equip them with college-success skills
  • Prepared and delivered lessons developed by program creators; created presentations on Google Suite
  • Utilized Canvas (LMS) to communicate with students, grade, and plan assignments
  • Coordinated with program supervisors and other ISAs to ensure optimal learning experience for students
  • Worked with supervisors to develop a thorough capstone project for borderline students with valid excuses to meet a passing grade (student name/example)
  • Individually helped students to meet class criteria, connected them with other resources to further their academic and career goals (student name/example)
  • Responded to several emails weekly and helped students to troubleshoot technology problems (student name/example)
  • Consistently substituted for other ISAs when they were unavailable
  • Forged a significant relationships with students to the point where they contacted me after the class was over for advice/questions they had
As you can see, this is a lot. Now here’s what I put on my most recent resume for this position:
  • Taught three sections of a student success course over live Zoom seminar classes to equip students with college-success skills and assist them in transitioning into university life
  • Utilized Canvas (LMS) to communicate with students, grade, and plan assignments
  • Coordinated with supervisors and other ISAs to ensure optimal learning experience for students
I took 13 bullet points and narrowed them down into the three most important, most relevant aspects for the position I was applying for. However, even years later, the information was fresh in my mind.

Later in this article, I will go into more depth on why this is so important and how you can make your college master resume even more effective. For now, however, consider what this might look like for a recent position you’ve held.

Why Should You Make a Master Resume?

There are plenty of reasons to make a college master resume, beginning with the fact that it will make your life so much easier. By putting everything in one place without the stress of page limits, it’s easier to keep track of it. Below are the three main reasons to considering making your college master resume.

Record Keeping

As time goes on and you do more and more, you forget the details. You forget every platform you used, every task you carried out, and every requirement of the position. When you do interviews later, even if the position is completely relevant, the details might be fuzzy.

That’s why it helps to consistently record everything that went along with that position. You will be able to tailor your normal resume more easily, copy and paste those bullets, and find out what might complement your other achievements.

Additionally, this is a great way to keep everything in one place and see what you were doing throughout college. When I look at my college master resume, it’s almost nostalgic. I remember, oh yeah, in Spring 2021 I was doing X, Y, and Z, and I was involved with this club and this leadership position. In my master resume, I also like to write down information like the hours and any references I had from that job, so it also serves as a good reminder to connect with people periodically.

Internships

As you get closer to your junior and senior years, internships become even more important. When you try for internships, you naturally need to create resumes and go through interviews and the other lovely parts of an application process. With your standard resume, you can only say so much. By putting everything on the master resume, however, include things like club and student government experience, you can have talking points built in for interviews that might not have fit on your regular resume. As a result, you go in far more prepared and you have a more holistic view of your career journey and interests.

Job Applications and Career Transitions

When you apply for jobs, you often target your resume toward their job descriptions. While this is a great practice, it can also disservice you in the end if you solely rely on that resume and forget details about a position.

Additionally, if you want to switch tracks, it will be even more important to justify that. By referencing your master resume and examining your work history holistically, you can point out specific skills, platforms, and duties to employers that don’t only apply to the old career. For example, say that I started out in politics (which I did) and switched to education (which I did). I was later able to reference software like Google Suite, Photoshop, and more when talking about hard skills. Additionally, I used this experience as a justification of my ability to communicate professionally, resolve conflict, and organize people. I firmly believe that my background in politics helped me to succeed, and a large part of translating that to potential employers is through having those anecdotes and position details ready to explain.

How Do You Make a College Master Resume?

I like to start out by listing the semesters out. For example, if I were doing a master resume starting with the 2021-2022 school year, I would label sections “Fall 2021,” “Winter 2021-22,” “Spring 2021,” “Summer 2022,” and so on. Even if you’re not in class over the winter/summer, it helps to put those since many of us do volunteer work or internships during those seasons. Like with a normal resume, make sure that you have the oldest things at the bottom and the newest things at the top (i.e., Summer 2022 at the top and Fall 2021 at the bottom).

From there, list out every semester you want to include. If you want to include high school, make sure to put that first. With high school, you can clump every position together, as you likely won’t reference those positions much once you get further into college. Those are better to tell anecdotes about specific skills or experiences.

Once you’ve listed out your semesters, it’s time to bring in the experience. For me, it doesn’t necessarily matter what order I put these things in. All that matters is that I include every position I held that semester and everything I can remember about my duties. Additionally, I like to put my references and their information, the dates I held this position, and the amount of hours I worked.

Something important to note is that you should include more than just jobs or internships! A college master resume is a tracker of everything you’ve done throughout college. This includes clubs, mentoring, volunteer work, research, TA positions, and more. Especially if you hold a leadership position in something, this becomes very important.

Some tips for tracking your experience:
  • Don’t limit yourself. For a master resume, there’s no such thing as too many bullet points. Nobody is going to read this but you. Even if it sounds silly, just write it down. You never know what kind of job you might apply for in the future.
  • Look at old resumes to see what you put, especially if it’s been a while. That can be a starting point for writing down bullet points for a position. It can also be a good reminder of when you did everything.
  • If you can, try to find the job description for your past positions and copy/paste that into the master resume. Again, you’re the only one who will see this, and it helps to have everything in one place.
  • You should have four foci while doing it. Taken together, these will grant you a really solid foundation for interviews and your final, polished resume:
  • Write down any specific anecdotes you have! For example, in teaching interviews, they love to ask you very situational questions. It is so helpful to have a college master resume to reference beforehand and pop out with a story immediately about a time I did that in any of my teaching positions. Even if you just write a keyword or phrase for yourself to remember, you’ll thank yourself later.

By following these steps, you’ll help yourself to create the perfect reference point for any position going forward!

Conclusion

When it comes to tracking your professional positions and keeping everything in one place, college master resumes are critical. Once you get out of college, naturally, they expand into simple master resumes, but during college, this is the perfect way to stay organized and show your commitment to various causes. It also helps to update this every semester, that way everything is fresh in your mind. Don’t wait another minute–start making that master resume now!

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