The Need for Multiple Resumes

It is application season yet again, and you are feverishly crafting your resume, trying to make it perfect for each opportunity. That is excellent — and certainly necessary, given that reviewers spend an average of only six seconds perusing a resume prior to sending it to the next round or tossing it in the recycling bin. Submitting the same resume for each job, scholarship, internship, and college application is simply not going to cut it, however, as you are unable to showcase the skills needed for each individual opportunity.

Tailoring your resume is one route to take to optimize your chances of getting an interview or being awarded the scholarship, but another option is to create entirely different resumes for each unique application. This way, you do not necessarily need to continually edit and restructure your resume but rather have separate copies saved for various purposes. (Sure, you may have to go in and tweak various components and/or update accordingly, but the document as a whole will largely stay the same.)

As a high school student, you probably want to have at least three versions of your resume ready at a moment’s notice: one for college applications, one for scholarship applications, and one for job applications. These may not be vastly different, especially since there may not be an abundance of material on your resume at this stage in the game, but each requires different pieces to be highlighted.

For instance, the college application should start with academic information, likely including your GPA and areas of study (i.e. AP, IB, and honors courses).

Your scholarship application may start with the same academic information — if you are applying for a merit-based scholarship. If you are going for an award based on philanthropy, however, your resume should begin with your volunteer service. If you are shooting for a performance-based award, you may want to embed a video of your solo at the top of your resume.

Finally, your resume for job applications will likely include your academic achievements as well as your service and extracurricular involvement, but it should begin with your work experience or your skill set (i.e. how you exemplify teamwork, responsibility, leadership, etc.).

There are many ways that you can create multiple versions of your resume, but one of the simplest is to use Kudoswall Pro, an online AI resume builder that easily allows users to customize their resume and save multiple versions of it. It is especially convenient in that you do not need to input your information each time; rather, simply click the drop-down menu at the top, click “create new resume,” title your resume accordingly, and hit enter. In mere moments, your entire resume will be copied over, and you can drag and drop components as you deem necessary.

Having individual resumes for each venture is incredibly convenient and is definitely the way to go to ensure the application committee sees the best “you” that you are trying to convey. All the best!