{Green Careers} March 2016 Recap: “Speed Up-Dating Resume Workshop” March 8, 2016

By Brigitta Berze  

On March 8th, 2016, the GreenHomeNYC Green Careers group once again held its popular Speed Up-Dating Your Resume workshop. Hosted at Steven Winter Associates, Inc., the workshop got its name from the well-known dating technique, speed dating, where individuals meet briefly in timed sessions before moving on to the next person. The workshop helped transitioning professionals understand what hiring personnel are looking for, and how to present themselves properly in a resume.    

  The workshop consisted of 12 pairs of participants and resume critics. The critics came from a wide range of professions, including sustainability consultant, green real estate broker, architect, and green analyst, and the participants were recent graduates of varying environmental programs. Participants were asked to come with enough copies of their resumes for a chance to have them critiqued by a number of professionals. After everyone introduced themselves around the room, the group broke out for a series of 15-20 minute rounds, during which each critic had the opportunity to critique and give feedback on participants’ resumes before they moved onto the next critic. At the end of the workshop the critics were given a chance to point out the most common resume mistakes they observed, and offered the following advice:    

1. Have a summary of qualifications which states your total years of experience, and what you want to do.
2. “Steal” the language straight out of the job post.
3. Be careful with your verb tenses when describing past and present job positions.
4. Shrink the margins, eliminate wasted white space.
5. Do some LinkedIn “stalking” of people you admire. Research how people came into their current position.
6. Check out Onetonline.org, a great source for researching different career paths.
7. Read the book “What Color is Your Parachute?”

  Participants left the workshop with the tools to create a more powerful resume, and then headed out to a local bar, where they socialized and continued to share and build on the guidance they’d just received.