Steve Hall’s Resume Workshop: What I Learned

Kiley Fletcher

AAF has given me many opportunities to further myself in the advertising field, so I’m very fortunate that I get to be a member of such a valuable organization. It recently held a workshop that was hosted by Steve Hall, an advertising professor at the university. He’s known for having fantastic career advice, so when I found out he was hosting this workshop, I knew I had to attend.

He told us that weak resumes contain basic descriptions that make it difficult for someone to stand out. I looked at my own resume and realized I was guilty of that in some areas. He further explained that you have to ask yourself: what did you accomplish? What makes you different from all the other applicants? That made me realize that in order to further myself in my advertising career, my resume can’t be basic. I have to stand out in order to prove myself worthy of a certain position. Along with being more descriptive, he told us we need to prove why we were an asset to a company or organization. By discussing the scope of what we did and the impact of our actions, employers are able to see why we made an organization better.

Another aspect of the workshop that I never considered before was including an ‘interests’ section in your resume. He told a story of someone that had a 40 minute conversation about hip-hop music because they included it in their interests section. They ended up getting the job just because of a bond over something. This made me add an interests section in my resume because that could be a deciding factor of me getting a job over someone else.

Overall, the workshop helped me and other students make improvements to our resume so that we can enter interviews as strong as possible. I highly recommend taking any opportunity to improve a resume, especially with more internships opening up.