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UWM students spend thousands of dollars on their tuition and books every year in the hopes that one day they will land a dream job, but employers won't give a second look to candidates who make costly mistakes on their resumes.

Even the best students with good work experiences to list on their resume have problems getting jobs. An employer, on average, takes only seven seconds to make a decision about what to do with any given person's resume. If they can't make heads or tails of it in that time then they will just file it away in the circular receptacle and move on to the next.

I decided to take my resume to the Career Development Center (CDC) in Mellencamp Hall room 128 to get a few pointers on selling myself. I spoke with the assistant director and showed her my resume; within three minutes she had torn it apart to an unrecognizable pulp.

It turns out that I had some serious problems with both format and content. Even the header was wrong. It looks like I had a lot of work to do before I could go job hunting again.

I started the healing process before I even left the CDC, as there are many manuals and handouts available right next to the door that offer helpful hints on maximizing a resume and cover letter. However, a trip to Mellencamp to pick up the information is not necessary-the resume and cover letter writing guide is available in its entirety over the internet at http://www.uwm.edu/Dept/CDC/jobsearch_preparation_resume.html.

Thomas Bachhuber, director of the CDC, took some time to tell me about the pitfalls that students generally fall into while trying to design their perfect resume. It turns out that there are three common problems that most people's resumes have:

* They don't "look" like resumes. Either there is too much space and the employer is unimpressed with the lack of imagination, or there is too much content crammed onto the page.

* They don't have perfect spelling and punctuation; this is one of the most important things, especially if the job in question involves accuracy or writing.

* The resume doesn't help the reader see what the writer has done. Removing personal pronouns, tightening up language and adding action verbs puts a mental picture in the employer's head of that person spearheading or investigating.

Another common problem with student's resumes is that they don't have adequate information about their educational experiences. This can be remedied by looking at classes that provided excellent training highlighting difficult accomplishments. Also, when citing specific things on the resume, make sure that the full name of the study/assignment is present. An employer is much more likely to feel positive towards a resume entry "The cure for cancer: a study" than just "group project."

"You need to make business care about you...that you did this, and you did it well," Bachhuber said.

The most time consuming part of the process is altering the same resume for different positions or fields. It can mean creating more than two very different documents, especially when one format would work better than another.

There are typically two formats for resumes: the functional and the chronological. The functional focuses on skills and what the job hunter can do. This format takes all of the skills someone has, and picks the ones that the job is looking for; two resumes written for different jobs can look very different for the same people.

The chronological format logs the experience that the job seeker has acquired. This is listed in reverse chronological order- starting from the most recent and going back in time.

This is not to say that one is better than the other-writing a resume is a very personal thing that only the job hunter can do effectively; and although there is a stigma that they should never be more than one page, Bachhuber would disagree:

"If you have the substance for two pages then two pages is what you need," he says.

But when it's done, it's done. Don't obsess over the resume too much or it will never be useful. It's not doing any good sitting on a desk with red ink all over it. Resumes are only performing their function when they are in the hands of the employer. Besides, even the director of the CDC states:

"There are no perfect resumes."

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