For Public Review: Quinlisk

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 am a recent graduate who is looking for a position as a cataloging or metadata librarian. This resume is for an entry-level position in a public library, though I am more than willing to accept a position in an academic or special library if one is available.
Quinlisk-Resume-1 Quinlisk-Resume-2

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3 Comments

Filed under CV review, For Public Review, Resume Review

3 responses to “For Public Review: Quinlisk

  1. I like the overall format of your resume. It is easy to read and has enough white space. I have a few suggestions:

    1) Just looking at your resume, I am having trouble figuring out what the “cataloger” entry at the top is for. I presume it is an “objectives” entry. If so, this is no longer the convention and takes up unnecessary space.
    2) The description under your Masters coursework is unneeded. Most ALA accredited programs are known to employers and they will look it up if it is important to them. Consider listing relevant coursework rather than summarizing; alternatively, list your masters thesis or end of course paper topics.
    3) It is assumed that everyone in the working world can use Microsoft Office, leave it off. You might undermine your other technological qualifications by listing it.
    4)Your headings for “education” and “professional experience” blend into your job titles since they are similar in size, typeface and are bolded. Consider changing one or the other so that they both stand out.

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  2. I would leave the objectives section off of your resume — it looks dated. For the same reason I would leave off your knowledge of Microsoft Office. It is pretty much assumed that everyone who works in an office now has Microsoft Office skills.

    I would also rethink your description of your MS program. You aren’t giving potential employers much information, but you’re taking up a lot of space. In my experience, employers assume that your MS is ALA accredited unless you give them a reason to believe otherwise. Your statements about the emphasis of your coursework would be more powerful if you could quantify them, potentially by discussing the final papers/projects/book trailers etc that you completed for the courses you are emphasizing.

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  3. Rachel

    For someone fresh out of library school, this feels like an overly long resume. Generally, I expect a one page resume from someone right out of library school. A longer resume always feels like it has filler in it, unless they are coming from a long established professional career and library school was attended later in life. I recommend going through your resume carefully and deciding what is the most crucial material to maintain and what material you can cut.

    For example, some of your work examples feel repetitive. Under your work as a library page you list that you both assisted, instructed and provided service to patrons. Isn’t that all providing service? I don’t feel like I understand anything more about your duties after reading all five bullet points that I couldn’t have gotten in two or three.

    I’m not sure what the text above the education is supposed to be. I think that is an objective statement, but since I’m not sure I would cut it or reformat it. It doesn’t add anything and is confusing.

    I also wonder about the number of positions you have listed under your employment. I would remove census work, unless it is directly related to the job you want. Non-library related experience is not always curcial when looking for library jobs. (The exception would be teaching experience for an instruction job, for example, or programing experience for tech job.)

    Under your technical skills, you list a lot of things, but do they have equal weight? Also, you’re assuming your audience knows which of those are programs, which are programming languages and which are metadata standards. Not everyone is going to have the knowledge base, so you might want to clarify.

    You seem like a fairly qualified entry level candidate for a job. I wish you the best of luck.

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