BUILDING AN EFFECTIVE RESUME

Lesson Plan for Week 12

TEACHING GOALS & LEARNING

OBJECTIVES:
Understand the importance of a resume early
on in the college career
Understand the components of an effective
resume
Learn how to describe ones talents and
experiences

EQUIPMENT AND SUPPLIES NEEDED:

Attendance record sheet
LAS101 text book
Classroom technology
Your personal resume (or anothers) for
examples
Time
suggestions:
2 minutes

HOMEWORK/ASSIGNMENTS TO BE
COLLECTED:
Homework due: Resume Development
Worksheets, LAS 101 Textbook, pp. 79 - 80,
due at the beginning of next class
HOMEWORK TO BE ASSIGNED AND DUE
DATE:
Read: LAS 101 Textbook, pp. 71-75; 81-83
Homework: A printed resume due in class next
week
NOTES:
Remind students to bring their Career Wheel
Worksheet to class next week.

Teaching goals with suggested lesson activities:

Check attendance by doing a roll call. Mark present students (P), absent students (A), and
later anyone who is late (L) on your attendance record sheet.
Understand the importance of a resume early on in the college career
Warm up Activity:
The main goal of this activity is get the students transitions into the topic of resumes
by building the bridge as to what the purpose of even having one is, future career (referring
back to their career wheels).

3 minutes

The goal of this warm up is to understand the importance of creating a rsum. The
students may be freshmen but it is never too early to have a resume. Especially with the
generations growing dramatically with technology and the high competiveness in careers,
creating a resume shows preparedness for future goals. A great example I will share, is during
my high school years, which was only 7 years ago, internships was not a big thing that was
emphasized to do. Now, multiple of my students already have internship experience from high
school. I really want to emphasize competitiveness as the importance for creating early on in
the college career. I will also share my personal resume.
3 Min: I will set up these three questions on as my first PowerPoint slide. Students will
already be set in groups before class. I noticed group tables are more beneficial for my
students because they are more likely to participate and they really enjoy getting to know all
their classmates. Below are the questions I will show.
1.
What is the purpose of a rsum?
2.
When do you think is a good time to create your own rsum?
3.
Why?
5 Min: After the 3 minutes of students answer the questions within their questions; we will

Fall 2014 LAS 101 College Success

College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

BUILDING AN EFFECTIVE RESUME

Lesson Plan for Week 12

debrief the warm up activity. When I debrief, it all depends on the response of the students.
Based on what the students say, is how I will follow through. I will reiterate the importance of
how the career world is only becoming more and more competitive and LAS 101 is here to
prepare them for beyond college, but the career world. I will then pull up another slide
showing the Career Centers purpose as to why a resume is important:
1.
Hiring preference
2.
Showcase skills
3.
First impressions on potential employees
4.
Example of your organizational and written skills
5.
Describes documents and quantifies experiences
6.
TO GAIN AN INTERVIEW
15 minutes

Understand the components of an effective resume

PowerPoint Slides: Lets Build a Resume
The main goal for this section is to go more in depth of the necessary items needed in
a resume.
15 min: I will continue my PowerPoint slide by focusing on the next goal, understanding the
components of an effective resume. The students are already set up into groups. I will give
each group the same scenario. This is a scenario activity will go throughout the class period.
The scenario is a description of a freshman boy at the University of Illinois. The scenario
describes all his experiences, activities and skills. Each group is responsible for a section of
the resume. Essentially, each group will be creating a quick resume based on the descriptions I
provided. This will go on during the whole class period because as they learn more
information about resumes, they will be able to add on to their groups resume. Also, this way,
students are more likely to pay attention and not daydream because listening to me means that
they will make a better group resume.
So continuing with my slides, I will begin with the necessary components a resume
needs. Based on the lecture by the career center, you need your name, contact information,
education and work experience/internships/volunteer/RSO. As simple as listing these things
sounds, I will explain more in depth each section and how it should look because aesthetics is
key for a successful resume. So this includes the format of their resume as well has optional
sections they can add on to their resume.

5 minutes
Learn how to describe ones talents and experience
Slides: Bullet Points
The main idea here is to demonstrate proper bulleting and how important and
effective the content of the bullet points are in a resume.
5 min: I will move on to my next section of the power point about bullet points. I think bullet
points are the most important part of a resume because what you say and how you say
descriptions of your experiences will make or break your opportunity to score an interview. I
will continue following the advice form the career center.

Fall 2014 LAS 101 College Success

College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

BUILDING AN EFFECTIVE RESUME

Lesson Plan for Week 12

7 minutes
Activity: Whats Wrong With These Bullet Points?
The main idea is to put what they learn about bullet points into their own actions to
demonstrate their understanding on bullet points.
5 min: To take a break, I will add a short activity here on bullet points. I will give an example
of a resume, but edited with very bad bullet points. Each group will look over it and catch all
the mistakes.

13 minutes

2 min: we will talk about the mistakes they found and why it is wrong. If they miss any
points, we will go over those as well. Since I used a bad version of my resume, we will be
able to compare the bad resume with my proper one.
Ending Activity: Lets Play Interview
The main idea here is to put everything they have learned about resumes and its
importance into action. This will deepen their understanding.
12 min: Finally, to end the class I will explain the whole point of creating the group resumes. I
will play the role as an interviewer. One representative from each group will do a short mock
interview with me in front of the whole class. I will focus on asking questions that are based
on their resumes. If I see any mistakes on the resume I will make it clear and show the effects
of that mistake on the resume, essentially meaning they failed the interview. Hopefully, there
will be some funny comments to make this a more enjoyable activity.

2 minutes

The purpose of this activity is to demonstrate this is what real life will look like. This will
show them an idea of what interviews are like. This will show them based on what they say,
effects what the interviewer will ask them or think of them. This will be a great general
practice for my students to understand the importance of a resume.
Wrap Up:
Incorporation of the Association of American Colleges and Universities Data Regarding
Diversity (www.aacu.org/leap/students/employers-top-ten)
Reminders:
I will use the last 2 minutes to ask if anyone has questions as well as state all the reminders
for next week.
1. Read page 71-75, pp. 81-83 in the LAS 101 textbook
2. Bring in a printed resume and submit it to your intern at the beginning of class
3. Advisory Sheet

Fall 2014 LAS 101 College Success

College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign