In order to prepare students to enter the first stages of their careers in high school, a resume workshop was presented in the Student Commons on April 4. Career counselor Anthony Gliffe partnered with librarians Rachael Bild and Laurel Dooley from Skokie Public Library and Nathan Miller from Morton Grove Public Library to deliver the workshop.
Students learned the basics of writing a resume and were given a question-and-answer period to learn more information from the librarians.
“It was like a resume 101 for what is a resume, what goes on there, what’s important to include on there and what are some do’s and don’ts. We then provided them a template and allowed them to ask some questions about how to take what they’ve done at their job, volunteering or extracurricular activities and how to implement that into a resume. We had a part of the presentation where the librarians would take a student’s real-life situation and help them develop action verb statements within a resume,” Gliffe said.
Bild brought along senior Esha Ali who volunteers at the Skokie Public Library and participated in the workshop.
“As part of her Distributive Education Clubs of America (DECA) project, [Ali] did resume workshops and because I knew her through being a volunteer, I knew that she knew a lot about resumes too. Also, I think it’s always a more powerful experience when you have more collaborators, especially student to student,” Bild said.
Students learned new methods of writing resumes and displaying their unique accomplishments and skillsets.
“They gave us a lot of methods like this way to structure your sentences to make yourself look better. It was called achievement sentences, and you would say what you did, how you did it and why you did it. I know I’m probably going to use [this workshop] to apply for jobs or internships,” junior Jahnavi Thakore said.
After the workshop, Gliffe advises attendees and students to follow up with him for more extensive help making their resumes.
“We’re hoping for students to follow up with me as the career counselor on an individual level where we can start to get in-depth help for their resume,” Gliffe said.
The workshop was a pilot project this year, but Bild hopes to expand and improve on it to further help high school students be career-ready.
“We’re going to deliver the same workshops at Niles North and because [Skokie Library] has so many volunteer opportunities happening this summer, I want to offer another workshop at the end of summer at our library for people who volunteer, so we can help people remember what they did all summer and the job skills they built. In terms of timing, if we’re going to do this again next year, we probably need to do it earlier, in time for summer job application deadlines,” Bild said.
