Resumes for Jobs in Policy, Planning, and Administration
< Design

Always include your name, contact information, education, and professional experience. Optional sections include: objective, summary of qualifications, honors, professional, extracurricular, and community activities, professional memberships, research techniques, foreign languages, computer programming competencies, and selective personal data. Choose categories which showcase your qualifications. Your name, address, e-mail address, and telephone number(s) should always be at the top of the page. After that, continue with whatever category is most important to your career goal. Usually this is "Education." Add categories in decreasing order of importance. Within each category, give information in reverse chronological order.




Name, address, e-mail and phone number(s)

Use only phone numbers which you are sure will be answered by a reliable message-taker or answering machine. If you will be available at a given address or number before or a fter a specific date, say so. Any time this information changes, print a new resume.

Objective

An objective should answer the question, "What does this person want to do?" It can be general enough to include more than one type of position, but a strong objective inevitably indicates that you prefer some things to others. Can you omit an objective? Yes, but we advise it only if your career goals are obvious from the content of your resume. However, no objective is preferable to a hopelessly vague one. "A challenging and creative job in which I can use my experience and education" will tempt most employers to move on to the next resume.

An objective can specify a type of organization ("a public utility"), the role you want to play ("position using experience in systems design and data analysis"), or the types of issues you wish to be concerned with ("interest in economic revitalization"). If you are specific about at least one, and preferably two, of these, you can be open about the rest. An alternative is a general statement ("a position in land use management"), followed by a more specific "interests include" statement. For private sector jobs (with the exception of a consulting firm doing mainly government work), mention only private sector interests in your objective, and, if necessary, a develop a second resume oriented toward the public sector.

Qualifications-also Summary of Qualifications, Professional Strengths

An optional category, which can follow, or sometimes replace, an objective. A well-written qualifications section can direct the reader to what you want him/her to focus on. Like the objective, it must be specific. Writing a good one requires you to think carefully about exactly what you are offering. For example: "Two years' experience serving as liaison between community groups and government agencies. Familiarity with budget preparation and administration. Skill at public speaking and negotiating working relationships between public and private sector organizations."

Education

List graduate and undergraduate work in reverse chronological order. Include degrees, institutions, major courses of study, and graduation dates. Your grade point average is optional, often included only for undergraduate work, and only if it is strong. You may indicate some of your coursework by using phrases such as "Coursework includes," "Substantial coursework in The Wharton School includes:" Omit high school. If you would like to include it so that alumni of the school will recognize it, include it in an "Additional Information" section.

You may give the title of a thesis, final project, or other major research paper. Employers are often particularly interested in team research, particularly interdisciplinary work, or in projects which resulted in presentations to management or government authorities. If any of your research includes these features, mention them. Activities may be indicated under either graduate or undergraduate entries. If you were very active, give details about only your most impressive/interesting activities. If you want to discuss an activity at length, it can also be included under the experience category. Students with substantial work experience many want to give less space to activities.

Honors and Activities

Whether you use either of these categories depends upon how major a qualification they are for you. If you have received several prestigious awards, for example, you might highlight them with a separate section. Commonly known honors, such as Phi Beta Kappa, need no explanation, but others can be briefly explained. Foreign students should stress the degree to which an unfamiliar award was competitive. For example, "One of three selected from among 2,000 graduating engineers nationally."

Experience

This is one of the most important sections. Use it to describe any job, internship, or volunteer experience which is relevant to your goals. Use reverse chronological order. If you have several different types of experience, you may wish to group them under subheadings calling attention to functional or content areas within your experience. For example, someone might divide experience into "International Project Management," "Agricultural Planning," and "Policy Analysis".

Pick a format for describing your experience and use it consistently. Include at least the organization with which you were associated, your responsibilities and accomplishments, and dates. List either your job titles or the names of organizations first, depending on which, on balance, sound most interesting and impressive: "NATIONAL POVERTY LAW PROJECT, Clerk," "MANAGER, Klein's Corner Drugs." Emphasize material in proportion to its probable relevance to your employer audience. All employers are interested in leadership potential, communication skills, mathematical facility, and organizational abilities. To let an employer know you have worked at positions you have chosen not to discuss because they are not related to your objective, use a phrase such as "Other positions as: taxi driver, clerk, and construction worker."

Describe each experience so that the reader has a general overview of what you did, together with details about the most interesting or impressive aspects of your position. Stress what you accomplished and uniquely contributed. Use verb phrases and make every word count. "Coordinated conference arrangements for participants from 30 countries," is more interesting than "Handled conference arrangements." Wherever possible, use quantities to indicate strong job performance, "Decreased absenteeism by 30%" or "Initiated contracts with 5 clients." Indicate any commendation you received for outstanding performance "Received Mayor's Award." Stress what you learned from an otherwise routine job: "Obtained valuable exposure to zoning procedures."

Professional/Civic Activities

Work with professional associations, not-for-profit groups, or civic or political groups can be of interest. You do not need detailed descriptions of these activities. Occasionally you may be concerned about reaction to membership in a controversial, political, or religious group. If so, use more general phrases such as "the Pennsylvania Senatorial primary," rather than identifying the campaign by the candidate's name. In other cases, of course, specific mention of a candidate or organization may serve you well.

Computer Skills, Analytic Techniques

Use this section only if the techniques or languages which you have mastered are a particular strength. Usually it is in the form of a list.

Additional Information

An optional section for additional information which does not fit elsewhere, such as foreign languages, travel, and interests. It can humanize your resume and make an employer feel that you might be fun to talk to, as well as well-qualified. If you are willing to travel or relocate, say so. If you have paid for much of your education through any combination of scholarships, work, and loans, you might make a statement such as "Self-financed 75% of graduate and undergraduate education." Do not include birthdate, health, or marital status. If anything on your resume, such as an undergraduate degree from another country, may make an employer question whether you have U.S. work permission, list U.S. citizenship or Permanent Residency if you have it. If you do not, but want to work in the U.S., make the most positive statement which you honestly can, for example, "Visa status allows for 18 months U.S. work permission."

A one-page resume is often best. Academic settings, other not-for -profit organizations, and government agencies are the most tolerant of length. In most businesses, one page is strongly preferred. If you do use more than one page, put the most important information on the first page, and put your name on the second page.

Examples of resumes in planning, in resume books from previous years, are available for you to look through in the Career Services Library, Suite 20, McNeil.

Click on the links below to see sample resumes.  Do not copy them.  They are here to give you ideas for your own job hunting materials.