Résumés – What are we looking for?

This entry has more detail than our previous tips, but here Kristen provides her thoughts on what to include in (or exclude from) the résumé that you attach to your application. If you want us to understand your background in detail, a good résumé is key!

The Fletcher application asks you to include a résumé, and much like any company hiring for a job, we refer to it in order to understand your background. These résumés usually include education, professional experience, and travel/international experience, but many applicants also include hobbies, publications, and volunteer activities.

Some tips to help give your résumé maximum impact in the Fletcher application process:

• Please be sure to include months and years for each job. For example, we would like to know that your job lasted from January 2006 until January 2007, not just 2006-2007.
• Though there is no page limit, most polished résumés are just a page or two long. Unless you are submitting an academic CV for the PhD program, most applicants should be able to adequately represent their experiences in less than three pages.
• Generally speaking, you should not include high school activities, or events that required very little participation such as attending a lecture. We are most interested in more recent activities and sustained commitments.
• Spell out acronyms! DOS and OAS, for example, represent different organizations depending upon your professional context.
• We ask you to list information on your résumé that is also located in other parts of the application, such as job titles and duration, international experiences, and degree. Please include this information in both places even though it may seem redundant.