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Now that summer is over and you have some free time before school starts, take a minute to update your resume! Add your most recent company and position at the top of your work or related experience section. Think about the projects you completed for your employer. Which ones are you most proud of? Which ones will help you get your next great internship? What are some of the new skills you learned?

To learn more about creating a competitive resume, I asked Lauren Borgardo, the Human Resources Manager at Boston based PAN Communications, for tips to make it stand out. Below you will find her great suggestions!

–Stephanie

By Lauren Borgaro
Human Resources Manager
PAN Communications

You find a promising PR internship opening. Excited, you send a well-crafted cover letter and resume and wait for a response. Four weeks later, you’re still waiting, your enthusiasm has waned, and you’ve concluded your resume has fallen into a black hole.

Our intern candidates frequently come to me and ask questions in how to better craft a resume that will stand out. I will say, that in an industry where people excel in creating targeted communications, it can be a struggle when it comes to writing about yourself on a resume. When you’re a college student trying to write a resume, especially your first one, you’ll face questions you typically won’t find addressed in the blinding blizzard of online resume writing sites.
In my experience, I’ve seen many versions of the following resume-related questions. Below are some helpful answers when putting together that all-important resume.

1) Should my resume be one page or two? If you read enough books or talk to enough people who “know” about resumes, you’ll come across a rule that your resume should be only 1 page long. It’s time to let the myth go, along with the resume handcuffing it creates. It’s great if you can do this. But if you end up leaving out so much good material that you wipe out your interview chances, what good have you done?

2) Should the Education section go first or last?
Usually, it makes the most sense to put the Education section at the beginning of your resume since you’re a college student or recent grad. But if you have some great PR internship experience, position your Experience ahead of education.

3) Should I include my GPA on my resume?
If it’s above a 3.0 (on a 4.0 scale) YES. If not, try to make it looks better by highlighting your major GPA instead of your cumulative one.

4) Should I put down my school address, permanent address, or both?
If in doubt, list both—as long as you can actually be reached at both. If not, use and address that an employer can reach you within the time frame of a couple months.

5) Should include pre-college information on my resume?
Normally, no—perspective employers aren’t likely to care about it much. Of course, there are exceptions. Suppose you won a special award or recognition in high school or accomplished something note-worthy. Then highlight it, especially if it’s related to the communications field.
Remember, creating a resume is much more art than science. Just as you would with an art project, express yourself in a way that works best for you and the information you’re trying to represent. Consider that your resume is your voice and can speak volumes on your behalf. Equipped with a well constructed resume, you’ll also be ready to update your resume when you graduate. Good Luck!

By Ariel Diaz
Co-Founder and CEO
YouCastr.com

There is a lot of very specific ‘how to’ for internships, so I will offer a slightly more general and unconventional approach to thinking about internships.

The advantages of internships
Internships offer a very low barrier way to try something. This means you can try out new things that you are unsure of, or do something fun that you don’t really know how to turn into a career. At worst, you’ll waste a few months, but even learning that you don’t want to do something is valuable. Additionally, internships also offer a taste of real world experience before actually getting there, which can help ease the transition.

Take advantage of both of those things. If you are unsure of a career path, use internships to experiment and try different things. If you are certain, use your internships to work towards that.

Create an ‘elevator pitch’ about yourself
A rule of thumb for startups is to have a really compelling, ‘elevator pitch’, that should be able to explain what you do and why it’s interesting in one sentence. It has to be memorable, clear, and compelling, or you’ll miss out on potential investors and customers. Do that for yourself. Summarize your internships, resume and career goals in one sentence. Share it with others.

Use internships to support your story
The key is to look at internships as a way to support your story, your elevator pitch. It’s not just a resume or a list of high profile companies. Stories are important because that is how people remember what you are doing and what you want to do. Stories let people absorb new things into their existing framework. The more compelling the story is, the more you can take charge of how people categorize and remember you.

Work your network to get the word out
Networking is not a bad word, it’s much more important than people realize. It is more than just having 800 friends on Facebook, it’s about cultivating and maintaining relationships, online and off. More often than you will imagine, you will have mutual friends with potential employers and customers, and having a positive word is very valuable. Finally, personal, individual introductions are infinitely more valuable than cold emails and resumes, and are more likely to get you an interview, call, internship, or job.

Think about the bigger picture
Getting to college is a pretty linear process. It’s pretty clear what the goals and requirements are before and during your college years. Careers, on the other hand, are not linear. There are a million paths to take. Internships are not just things you do to pad a resume and achieve a linear goal. Once you see it that way, the priorities quickly shift from finding the internships that look best on paper, to the ones that are most interesting to you personally.

If you are able to use internships to create a unique, dynamic, and consistent story, you’ll be a lot more memorable, a lot more interesting, and a whole lot more likely to achieve your career goals.

Adam Zand
Consultant,
Almost Ubiquitous
ThisDudeAbides.Zand@gmail.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/2008adamzand

The last time this wonderful site let me ruin its good reputation, my byline looked at the importance of meetings for observing motivations and picking mentors. This time, I’m going to hand over the article to someone who should be your mentor on how to get a job following your internship.

Without further delay (besides, I need to go look at Facebook, LinkedIn, Utterz and Twitter feeds for my job leads), let me introduce and interview Ashley Girard (http://www.linkedin.com/in/angirard). Ashley is an account coordinator at SHIFT Communications (usually hiring at all levels!) and one of my former interns and personal inspirations while we were at Topaz Partners …

1. Ashley, how did you end your internships at SHIFT Communications and Topaz Partners? For example, did you have or ask for evaluations and exit interviews? Northeastern University requires an evaluation for its co-op program, but both Topaz Partners and SHIFT Communications provided me with an exit interview and went through the evaluation with me. They also asked me for my feedback based on my experience.

2. How did you stay in contact with people you interned for? E-mail, Facebook, LinkedIn, phone, events? Facebook has really taken off in the past year or so in the professional realm, so before that, I maintained contact through e-mail and networking events.

3. Did you pay more attention to some people? H.R., mentors, friends, boss? My SHIFT internship was 2004, Topaz in 2005 and I graduated in May 2007. I stayed in contact with people I worked most directly with (as opposed to H.R.), because if there were any openings/industry insight, they were more apt to clue me in since we had the relationship. My current boss at SHIFT was also the intern coordinator when I was here, so she already knew my working style, etc.

4. How did the companies stay in touch with you? The individuals, not so much the companies stayed in touch with me. It would have been nice to have been added to any newsletters, etc. I also had RSS feeds set up so if any big news were to hit, I would be on top of it.

5. Did anything change the closer you got to graduation? Nothing really changed closer to graduation other than I made it clear I was beginning my career quest. People from both companies were helpful and provided me with opportunities inside, and outside, of their companies.

6. Anything else you want to add about the importance of internships for your career path? I think that with the job market being so competitive today, internships are a great way to get a “leg up” on the competition. Let’s say I graduate the same year as someone else, same major, maybe even a lower GPA, etc. - except, I have two internships under my belt. I’m probably the closer to ideal candidate because I have real-world experience, and there’s not necessarily as much training involved when I am taken on. Through previous internships, I should be able to comprehend the baseline responsibilities and office life.

7. What is your title at SHIFT and brief career goals? I just had my one-year anniversary at SHIFT as an Account Coordinator – I’m very happy here. I would say my “brief” career goals are to continue working in an environment were I can actively contribute to the company, as well as continuously develop and learn in my current position.

Well, that’s the easiest byline I’ve worked on because Ashley did all the work – and she also did hard work during and after her internships. Fair Disclosure: It only slightly pained me to serve as one of her references for SHIFT, since back then I wanted her to work at my previous firm, Topaz.

I hope the messages about working hard and staying in contact with your internship hosts came through above. So, Intern Class of 2008, get those e-mail and social networks cooking and start drafting update notes for sending after you’re done. Get a Job!