College students should market themselves to future employers by stressing their flexibility as new members of the work force and perfecting their resumes, a speaker at the School of Management said Wednesday.
Professional development consultant Brad Karsh spoke to an audience of about 250 students and faculty members about the inside details of the job-hiring process in a lecture titled “Confessions of a Recruiting Director.”
The lecture was hosted by Sigma Alpha Mu and Delta Sigma Pi and sponsored by Boston University Hillel, BU Taglit Birthright Israel Alumni Association, the College of Arts and Sciences and SMG student governments.
“I thought it was pretty effective. People here got something that they wouldn’t from many other resume-building techniques,” said Sargent College of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences senior and Sigma Alpha Mu Vice President Alex Abzug.
Karsh, who has appeared on Dr. Phil, CNN and MSNBC, offered attendees a few tips on how to make their resumes stand out and how to avoid common application mistakes.
“I would throw 50 percent of the resumes in less than 50 seconds,” he said. “Your resume is kind of like an advertisement for you.”
As the president of JobBound, a career services provider for professionals, executives and students, Karsh addressed a number of common resume mistakes. To illustrate his point, he provided an anecdote about an incident when a candidate presented his resume in a pizza box on which he had written, “delivering you a great applicant.”
“Delivering me an idiot was what I thought,” he said. “There is a fine line between showing personality and being stupid. You don’t want to cross that line.”
Karsh said college students should market their flexibility in order to land themselves jobs.
“One of the advantages as college students is you are not tied down to a lot right now,” he said. “And if you are competing against people who may have been working for a couple of years, flexibility is what can help college student stand apart.”
He advised applicants to apply to a variety of different jobs, not just the most popular ones.
“I see a lot of college students saying “I want to work for the top five firms on the Wall Street and if I don’t get that job, I’m going to be devastated,'” he said. “Well, there are lots of finance jobs out there. Don’t just narrow your search that way.”
School of Hospitality Administration senior Paul Worgaftik said he jumped at the opportunity to learn how to refine his resume because he is graduating in May.
“Now that the economy is just terrible, anything I can do to boost my resume, to excel in this job market at all is good,” he said. “I heard Brad Karsh was great, and he knows what to expect because he has been in human resource business before. Since he’s seen thousands and thousands of resumes, he’s the obvious go-to guy to edit and make your resume the best possible.”
College of Communication senior Tanya Bechara said the presentation was helpful for her resume.
“We’re all trying to find jobs so it was really helpful to learn about resume writing,” she said.
CAS junior Aparna Garg said Karsh’s tips were very useful.
“It was a great learning experience,” she said. “I wish I had attended this event before. I just applied to a whole bunch of internships. Some of the tips that he gave were really great and you can’t find this kind of stuff online and on websites necessarily, so I’m really glad I attended.”
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