When Writing Resume: Do You Speak in Past Tense?

When Writing Resume: Do You Speak in Past Tense?The other day I heard from a reader who was wondering how to write a resume in the correct way. She had graduated from college and wanted to get a job as soon as possible, but was having trouble getting a job based on her poor academic record. Her reason for asking this question is that she knew that she would not get a job based on her academic background, but she was not sure what to say about her job-hunting efforts.She knows she needs to show she has the work ethic needed for a job, but her academic record does not exactly help that aspect. She told me: 'I am a pretty smart girl, but in my current situation, I need to write a resume using my good grades from college. I know I have to show I am able to work well with others, but I also need to show my employers that I am able to learn fast. How can I make the most of my academic experience in my resume?'So what she did was, after she had done her research and collected all of her wor k, she asked one of her teachers if she could use their letterhead in the curriculum she was using at school. Since her teacher usually had the letterhead from years ago, it was a great idea. She said that her teacher had recently started using one of the online courses, and she wanted to look into that further.What she ended up finding out is that the curriculum they were using was one that was based off of the use of lessons that were from the old syllabus, but with updated standards and materials. Since she already had the letterhead from her original faculty, she then got her teachers' credentials and photocopied them. In this way, she could use her letterhead as a summary of her academic resume.She then took a look at her old letterhead and simply used the old letterhead for her academic resume. After doing this, she then sent the resumes off to various employers. She found out that she was able to get interviews from all of them and she also was able to get some interviews wit h companies she was interested in.I realized that there were two things that she needed to make sure she did. First, that she did not use her academic resume to talk about her work-related experience. She had enough work experience already.Second, she needed to make sure that she did not use the term 'Degree.' This is a common term that you will find in some degrees that are earned outside of your major. So she took a look at the school's syllabus and made sure that she only listed her major in the academic resume. This made sure that she did not take more time from her resume to talk about her educational background and it also gave her an easy way to link the academic resume with the original letterhead that she had used earlier.She was able to go from looking at her old letterhead to now using the same letters, and even the same letterhead, that her school's syllabus used for years. In fact, she found out that she did not have to worry about how to write a resume in the correct w ay since she had already done that at the school.