Dear 1L, Here are 4 steps to take before you submit your resume for any 1L summer internship. (Part 2)

🔷 Check the formatting of your punctuation marks. 🔷

1st:

If you have commas, semicolons, or periods at the end of bolded, underlined titles, is the punctuation also bolded & underlined? Should it be?

—> I prefer that it not be not, but whatever you do, be consistent throughout.

2nd:

If you place a period at the end of one bullet in an entry, make sure you end all other bullets that way.

3rd:

If you want to use curly quotes instead of straight quotes—which I recommend—make sure they’re consistent. I regularly see resume-writers switch back and forth.

{—There are countless other examples of little punctuation things like these. Try to proofread your resume backwards, aloud, or presented in a different-color font if you’re having trouble picking up on little mistakes.}

🔷 Hold your resume up to light. 🔹

—Does it require a magnifying glass to decipher?
—Does it look like a big wall of text?
—Is it taxing to keep track of what line you’re on?
—Is there any white space, where weary Readers’ eyes can rest?

You likely won’t understand this yet, but most of us get far-sighted past 42.

Even with glasses on, reviewing a densely-packed, 10-pt font resume can be daunting and frustrating.

The last thing you want your reviewer to feel is daunted or frustrated!

⭐️ Use a bigger font & cut more useless words!!

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Here’s the TL;dr Recap of Parts 1 & 2:
1: Set right-facing tabs in Word, so text is aligned evenly at the margin.
2: Remove needless articles like “the” & “a/an” from bullets.
3: Check for consistency in punctuation-mark formating.
4: Make your resume easy on your Reader’s eyes.
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Sending you all extra motivation for starting up again this month.

—Gearing up again in January is brutal for a lot of us!

Fondly,
💌 Amanda