Rhiannon Saegert/ reporter
Many students seeking employment or looking to start professional careers don’t know how to present themselves as serious contenders.
That’s why career center coordinator Monica Miranda and senior office assistant Sherry Boyd presented Blueprints for Your Future, a seminar on effective résumé writing, on South Campus Oct. 10.
Writing a good résumé goes beyond proper grammar and spelling, they said, adding that word choices are very important and that the résumé must be arranged a certain way to catch an employer’s eye.
“The first place an employer looks is the middle of a résumé,” Boyd said, adding that an improperly formatted résumé is the most common mistake she’s seen students make when job hunting.
Students “may proofread, but after looking at the same thing for so long, they may miss mistakes,” Miranda said.
Miranda said she always suggests having a second person look over a résumé.
In addition to résumé advice, Boyd and Miranda described various tools students can use to make their job search more fruitful. For example, Career Coach, an online employment tool located on TCC’s website, allows students to search for specific job descriptions, then links them to job listings within 100 miles of downtown Fort Worth.
The seminar was the second in a three-part series by Boyd and Miranda in preparation for South Campus’ Holiday Hiring Fair. The fair, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Oct. 25 in the Student Center, will be open to the public as well as students and will feature 80 prospective employers.
“We wanted the students, the community, to be prepared for the job fair,” Boyd said.
Miranda said that in previous years, students who attended usually haven’t known the proper protocol of a job fair.
“We want to prepare them to present themselves in a professional manner to their employer,” she said.
Miranda and Boyd also suggested downloading the Bump and Cam Card Applications, which allow people to swap contact information quickly.
Student Julie Morabec attended the seminar for career guidance.
“I’m trying to get out of the restaurant business and trying to get a career going, and I’m not sure how to go about it,” she said.
The seminars have helped confirm her current goal to find a job in health care administration, she said.
Another student, Nancy Gracia, said she hasn’t had much luck in her job search, and “needed to see if her résumé was any good.” She also said that, overall, the seminars have helped her.
