Welcome to crowd-sourced resume review for LIS job hunters!
Please help the job hunter below by using the comment button to offer constructive criticism on her resume. Some guidelines for constructive feedback are here, and the ALA NMRT has brief tips for reviewing resumes here.
This 2 page resume was submitted by a job hunter who says,
I will soon be relocating out of state because of my partner’s job situation and as such will need to make sure my resume is in good shape. It is a basic resume and I will probably be applying for both public and academic jobs. I know that my decision to leave my AmeriCorps experience in chronological order is probably controversial. I leave it in a prominent place because I am very proud of my AmeriCorps experience, I did it during a time of unemployment, and I was able to incorporate many of my librarian skills into the position. I would love to hear back from others on the logic of this decision.
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Hiring Librarians 
I have to say, this is the first time I’ve seen a “Career Summary” on a resume before. If I were in a hiring position, it would catch my eye. Not sure how it would change your chances, but it would certainly get me to stop and take a look.
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(caveat: I am an academic librarian who works in technology that could be called emerging, so this is going to colour my responses a bit. I also have Opinions on resumes, so if what I say about structure/style/content does not josh with you and you think I’m a fool, that’s probably okay).
I would junk “career summary”. Most (all?) academic libraries applications will ask for a cover letter and that’s probably the proper place to make a narrative about your career summary. Having it in the resume itself looks odd or bad, like having a “career objectives” or (god help us) an “inspirational quote”.
I don’t really like a “key skills” section either but I’m much more okay with that than I am with the summary. I’m not sure it needs a box around it, and I’m gonna quibble with some of the contents anyway (one in particular…)
… which is “Emerging Technology”. I don’t really see anything reflected in the resume that says to me “Hey this person has skills in emerging technology”. It kinda seems to me that you think that librarians *all* need to be emerging technologists so you figure you should probably put it on the resume so you don’t look like a fuddy-duddy traditionalist. If that’s the case, just take it off. Technology people will be way more impressed with an honest admission of “I don’t know much about emerging tech but would be excited to learn” (which could go in the cover letter) rather than a totally nonspecific claim to emerging tech skills. If I’m totally wrong and you *do* have something of consequence — entirely possible — to talk about, then put it somewhere in the resume text!! Like in the ref head thing maybe? What is the *specific* “emerging technology”?? How did you train staff? Gimme an example!!!
I am also of the Opinion that mere membership in professional orgs doesn’t matter. It’s open to whomever’s got the requisite cash and five minutes to fill out a form, whoooop de doo. I *am* how ever jazzed about mentorship stuff and if you’ve done *specific* things in mentorship that you want to bring attention to, it would be a Very Fine Thing to have them in the resume or possibly the cover letter. The list of presentations is fine (and some look way cool) but it would be really great to have the slides at a URL, or even better, video of you giving the presentations if you have it.
fwiw I have ambivalent feelings about AmeriCorps itself but I have absolutely zero problem with you including it in the resume or formatting it the way you did — don’t worry about it, it’s fine.
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Drop the summary statement, that’s a lot of subjective text. As a hiring manager, I’d rather read accomplishments in your resume that reflect those skills and outcomes. So see if you can build off those concepts and prove to me you are/did those things instead of just stating it.
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I agree about both the summary statement and the key skills box. I think those types of sections are primarily helpful for career changers and people without much experience; you don’t seem to fall into either category. I have no problem with the AmeriCorps experience where it is, since you’ve demonstrated how it’s relevant to your library career.
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Thank you all for the feedback. The key skills section is something I added recently. In all honesty I’ve been thinking that putting the summary with the key skills is a bit much and the comments here seem to agree. I’m not sure I’m ready to completely give up on the idea of putting something before the education section, but I will certainly do some work to make sure that everything is supported within the body of the resume.
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In a headline, you might not have to put the (LRC) along with the entire work, usually from what I have read, it just has the entire word so even if the job post knows what you are talking about, it is always better to clarify than not. And you could add the summary to your skills, which I like a lot. I like how they are boxed in. I know they always tell you to keep your resume simple, but I think that is simple enough to get by. It’s like the garage sale advertisments, the ones with the circles always get noticed first.
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I agree that the key skills section is great. it’s eye-catching. I would personally leave it in. The Americorps is also great. Leave that in too. I would move education after experience but before professional development. You have lots of experience. Showcase that.
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