Resumes are one of the few documents that you can copy and paste into all your clerkship applications, so it pays to do it well the first time. For clerkships, the length of your resume should not exceed 2 pages.
The role of a resume is simple – it’s a medium to showcase the extent of relevant experience, interests and community involvement that you have. As the resume is packaged with your cover letter and written answers, there is merit to being extensive and to include details that the recruiter would not know about you from simply reading the two other documents (although this isn’t necessary). If you want to draft the perfect resume, the key takeaway is to make your resume simple and easy to follow. Here are some tips that I would recommend you do to improve the clarity of your resume.
The key takeaway is to make your resume simple and easy to follow
Headers are your best friend
The best way to introduce clarity in your resume is to use headers but it is often easy to overdo it. Keep your format and headers simple and clean. For the employer, headers allow them to evaluate how well-rounded you are as an individual so it’s important to have each header substantially populated.
A simple structure that I have used in my resume has included the following headers:
- Name, Contact Details, Email
- Education
- Work Experience – work experience relevant to the role
- Other Employment – non-relevant work experience
- Extracurricular & Academic achievements
- References – many students leave this as “references available upon request”, which was acceptable to most employers.
Format properly
While the aesthetics of the resume is not important, your resume really needs to be formatted properly. This simple step in improving your resume is also (surprisingly) the most time intensive. Consistent headers, justified text and aligned dot points go a long way towards building a clean and more accessible resume!
Focus on impact
Your resume should not be a simple job description of each experience you have had. Recruiters already know what a ‘paralegal’ or ‘legal assistant’ does. What you need to show in those precious lines of description is IMPACT — how you took an opportunity and transformed it into something meaningful. The best way to show this is to include metrics. Why? Metrics are the clearest way to show you have contributed to the firm’s growth. Not to mention, numbers and figures stand out in the sea of words that is your resume.
Be selective with what you expand on
As the resume should not go over 2 pages, you need to be selective about the experiences that you want to go into detail about. I would recommend using dot points to elaborate on your achievements. Similar to your cover letter, the substance of your experiences ideally should not overlap. The focus should be on what difference you have made and include any interesting matters or cases you worked on during your employment.
As a guideline, I would consider this hierarchy when deciding what to expand on:
- Work Experience
- Extracurricular
- Other Employment
- Academic Achievements
- Education
- References
I would recommend 4-5 relevant experiences where you provide 2-3 dot points of detail. As a student, you are still relatively new to the workforce so I would not exclude any other work experiences that you have had. Instead, concisely list these non-legal experiences under the heading “Other Employment” with one-line descriptions of what each role involved.
When using dot points, I recommend having at least one dot point where you use a verb that leaves a strong impression. Verbs like “led” or “advised” were my go-to ones as it showed initiative and ownership of the task. An example I have used – “Advised on real estate acquisition and disposal in NSW, QLD with the highest acquisition price of $245M”.
Checking your resume – The 30 Second Rule
An easy way to improve your resume is to think about the 30 second rule – an employer spends no more than 30 seconds on your resume, so find ways to make it even more accessible and concise each time.
To learn what makes a winning cover letter, check out this article.