In this episode of Status Check with Spivey, Anna Hicks-Jaco speaks with two Spivey consultants—Karen Buttenbaum, former Director of Admissions at Harvard Law School, and Nathan Neely, former Associate Director of Admissions and Director of Global and Graduate Programs at the University of Houston Law Center—about the law school application resume: what to include and what not to include, differences from professional resumes, common mistakes, best practices, and more. You can read Karen and Nathan's full bios here.
This episode is part of an ongoing deep dive series on the main components of the law school application. You can listen to our episode on personal statements here. Next up: diversity statements (the new versions—also known as E/P essays).
You can listen and subscribe to Status Check with Spivey on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube.
Full Transcript:
Anna: Hello and welcome to Status Check with Spivey, where we talk about life, law school, law school admissions, a little bit of everything. I'm Anna Hicks-Jaco, Spivey Consulting's President, and today we are continuing a series on the various law school application components. We did an episode recently that was a deep dive into personal statements, and today we'll be getting into the nitty gritty of resumes—how law school admissions officers view resumes within the context of the application, differences between law school application resumes and job application resumes, common mistakes that applicants make, specific advice for each of the main sections of the resume. I'm joined today by two of our wonderful consultants, Karen Buttenbaum and Nathan Neely, and I'll go ahead and let them introduce themselves.
Karen: Hi, everyone. I'm Karen Buttenbaum. I am a partner at Spivey Consulting. I have been with Spivey Consulting for 11 years now, I think. Prior to that, I worked at a couple of different law schools. Most recently, I was the Director of Admissions at Harvard Law School. I was there for 12 years. So law school admissions is my thing. That's all I know.
Nathan: Hi, everyone. I'm Nathan Neely. I have been with Spivey Consulting slightly less, since 2019. I was able to come in and join the party, if you will. Along those lines, my most immediate role within legal education which has been about for 12 years or had been 12 years up until that point, was with a LLM office. So running admissions and working with student services for our international population and our U.S. JD/LLM- seeking students at the University of Houston.
Anna: Wonderful. So let's start at the base level. What is the purpose of a law school resume? From your perspective as you're an admissions officer, you're sitting down to read an application, how do you see the resume within the context of the application? How do you use it?
Karen: I always saw the resume as a snapshot, reference material. A way to see how the applicant has spent their time. The rest of the application is going to go into detail about the applicant and their experiences. But if I needed a quick reference of how they spent their time, what kind of industry they were in, if they were involved in school or not involved in school, I always saw it as a visual snapshot of how the applicant spent their time.
Nathan: Yeah, I like to think of it as an accounting of where you've been and what you've been doing.
Anna: Yeah, it gives sort of that overview, that broad level, biographical information. What used to be sort of a more common mistake with personal statements that I think has probably become less prevalent over time is people will go through a narrative of all of their professional and academic experiences in their personal statement, which we talked about in our recent personal statement podcast. That's not what you want to do. That's not the purpose of your personal statement. That is the purpose of your resume, to show everything that you have been doing to go through all of it and to highlight the most important accomplishments, most important duties that you've had in your various jobs, honors and awards. All the things that you would expect to see on a typical resume.
But there are some ways that a law school admissions resume differs from a job resume, from a resume that applicants may have used in the past applying to internships, applying to full-time work. So let's talk about that a little bit. What are some ways that a law school application resume is different from other types of resumes that applicants might have put together in the past?
Nathan: You're no longer having to shove it all into one page. You're no longer having to keep the most important elements in that top third of the one page that you're looking to do. One of my favorite things when I'm working with my new clients is to start building the resume. I'll ask to see their professional resume just to kind of see how they see themselves. There's just so much information that's packed into many of these resumes. The margins are so tiny and the font so small, compressed and very tight language that they're using in the professional resumes that you just don't need to be restricted to with the law school application.
Karen: I totally agree. It's one of the things that I look at when I work with clients is their resume. Because when we start to talk about other parts of the application, it all has to be in context. So if your resume is a snapshot of all the things that you've done, it needs to fit into the rest of the application.
One of the things that I see from clients a lot when they show their professional resume is a lot of industry jargon. And the tailored look of the resume for a specific industry and if my client had scooped ice cream for a summer beachside resort, that should be on the resume.
You can't take out things just because they're not related to law or they're not related to a specific industry. It really should be an accounting of all of your time, whether that is related to a specific field or not.
Anna: Yeah, that's a great point. I see so many first drafts of law school resumes that I can just tell are incomplete. Or even when I was reading applications, I would read a resume and the resume would have some various things that are somewhat related to legal work or office work, and then I would see in the personal statement the person talking about, “I had to work two jobs throughout undergrad,” but that wasn't on their resume. And I'm like, why didn't you tell me about this? I really would have liked to see those two jobs that you worked throughout undergrad on your actual resume.
I think that's definitely one thing that is a difference, is your law school application resume should not be limited to things that are directly relevant to a legal career, to the law. Certainly you should be including anything that is relevant in that regard, but also your job scooping ice cream, also your job as a server, also your job in retail, that should be there too. Because that's context for everything that you have brought to your life and your academic experience, your professional experience up until the point of law school. And I think especially things like working during undergrad, it's really important for law school admissions officers to have that context.
Nathan: I'm consistently amazed at the ability for people to sell themselves short.
Anna: Yeah.
Nathan: Not give that full kind of representation of their experiences that they think people don't care. It's really interesting that people still do that.
Karen: Or even with family businesses too. I think a lot of people who grew up with family businesses and doing work, like actual work for a family business, that belongs on a resume. How you account for your time, how you spent your time, how you helped your family, that belongs on a resume.
Nathan: While you might have been paid in ice cream, it still has a place on the resume.
Karen: Exactly.
Anna: Yeah, if I'm reading an application, I definitely want to know if you worked for eight years in your family restaurant. Okay, so it sounds like the biggest differences are that you're not tailoring this resume to a specific field. You aren't using that industry jargon. You're not trying to only include experiences that are relevant. And Nathan, you also spoke about length. A lot of job resumes, people do try to limit it to one page. Unless a law school specifically tells you that your law school resume has to be one page, your law school resume can be longer than one page. Now, do not fluff it up. Do not add a million bullet points just to get beyond one page. A one-page resume is perfectly appropriate for many, many applicants, especially those who might not have a ton of professional experience. But you should not be cutting substantive things from your resume in order to get it to one page.
The other difference that I think is a small one, but it can be an important one, many professional resumes, it depends I think to some extent on the industry, but many professional resumes do not include an interests section. Which we always recommend law school applicants include skills and interests at the end. So you have those skills, but then also the interests, the personal side of things, that's another element where it might be different from a professional resume.
Karen: I am a big fan of that section. I love the skills and interest section. When I was reading applications, it was a way to understand the non-academic interests of the applicant. And it's a way to be a human and connect with the other human who's reading your application. I remember one time, there was somebody who I interviewed at Harvard who had bagpipes as an interest, in their skills interest section. And I spent the interview asking him about how his interest in bagpipes came to be. He had no idea that my mother is Scottish, and I actually like bagpipe music, which is unusual. You don't put something on your skills and interest section just because you think somebody might have a connection to it, but it did make that connection. Being yourself and showing your human side and sometimes your quirky side. Not that bagpipes are quirky.
Anna: A little quirky!
Karen: Maybe. But if you're somebody who really likes to build the perfect burrito or find the perfect burrito somewhere or something like that, you know, it's a really good place to show who you are outside of your academic interests.
Nathan: You're right. It's those details that you add to that section that just gives someone else that tangible thing to connect with rather than just this kind of esoteric, “I like philosophy.” That's great but give me some more information there. Like why does this rise to the level of being important to put on your resume? That's great, but what's your favorite song? How long have you been playing it? You know, those are all things I like to ask my clients, to just add those little extra details that show that you're actually legitimately interested in these things.
Anna: The example that Mike Spivey likes to use when talking to people about their resume, about their interest section, is try to get a little more detailed. Instead of putting, for example, just “running,” Mike would put “high-altitude trail running” because that's a little more specific. It's a little more interesting. It gives more sort of color. And moreover, if the admissions officer reading your application happens to also like high-altitude trail running, you've made that connection.
One thing I will say, Karen, you were talking about asking that applicant about bagpiping during the interview, is if you list an interest on your resume, you have to be prepared to back it up and be able to talk about it.
Karen: Absolutely.
Anna: If you list reading as one of your interests, which it would probably be better to get a little more specific, what genre, what types of stories. But if you list reading under your interests and an admissions officer asks you in an interview what you're reading right now or what's the most recent great book you’ve read and you clam up and you don't know what to say, that's not great. Be prepared to talk about every element of your application if you're going into an interview, but certainly only put something in your interests section if you can back it up, if you can speak about it.
Let's get into talking about some mistakes that applicants make on their resumes. I think we've already touched on this with the differences between professional and application resumes. What are common mistakes that you saw in resumes most often?
Nathan: How much time do we have? I think the two things that come quickest to my mind would be, first and foremost, including a summary. Harkens back to the professional resume, there's no need for you to summarize. If you're summarizing, you're not connecting to the fact that there's someone on the other side of the page reading what you've submitted. And to that same extent, because someone is on the other side of the page reading what you've submitted, you want to be consistent with your format. Some HR algorithm might not pick up on the fact that you used an em dash versus a dash, but the human eye is drawn to outliers, especially when you're looking at formats. And so when you have an inconsistency in your format on the resume, it’s easy for someone to spot it pretty quickly.
Karen: I think one of the things about a resume is, it really is a visual document. I know Nathan mentioned this earlier, but trying to fit everything on one page, not using enough white space or having a font that's too small. Most people who are reading applications are staring at pages all day long. And so making it a normal size font is really important. I know it sounds ridiculous to be focusing on that, but the reading glasses have to come on for a lot of the people reading your applications.
So having it a visually pleasing document, but at the same time, the resume is not somewhere where you really want to stand out with some funky font or really strange formatting. You want to go basic. Maybe that doesn't suit you to go basic, but you really need to, with a resume, be as simple, as commonplace, boring as you can in terms of selecting the formatting and font size and making it uniform. I know it sounds ridiculous, but resumes are not meant to be pored over. They're not meant to be read word for word. And you should definitely read it and it should be as perfect as you can make it before you submit it. But it is meant to be a document that is scanned, and then somebody who's looking for something and then they'll find it. So you need to make it easy to find and easy to read once they find it. You don't know where their eyes are going to go. But it has to be easily accessible.
Nathan: What about the color of the paper, Karen?
Karen: It should be pink and scented.
Nathan: We all knew it was coming.
Anna: For anyone who has zero sarcasm detector, it should not be pink and scented. I don't know how you would do that digitally.
Nathan: Isn't there a new Apple product coming out that incorporates scent?
Anna: We as a firm have been talking a great deal about the increased focus in admissions on employability; that has been a larger trend in law school admissions. An admissions officer wants to read your resume, see your resume, and think this person is prepared to create a resume during law school, applying to jobs. We want this person to not need a bunch of rehab from the career services office to get their resume to a point where it's acceptable for legal employers. You want your resume to generally look and feel like a law school resume for employment. And that does mean no pink, that does mean no crazy fonts, that does mean you probably shouldn't have your picture on the resume. If you are looking for, "how should I format my resume?" I think a great place to look is law school career services offices. You will not have the same exact substantive information, of course, on your resume as someone who's in law school in their 1L or 2L year applying for jobs. But in terms of look and feel, in terms of format, that's what you should be aiming for, is a resume that is already ready to be adapted into a law school employment resume.
Any other common mistakes that we are used to seeing when we are reading applications?
Nathan: I mean, one of the other things I think about is along the lines of what you're talking about with the format. I don't want to harp on the format too much, but margins and playing with the margins so you can work to fit as much as possible onto the page. I think this is not the time to play with those types of formats because you do want to have that kind of aesthetically pleasing piece overall.
Karen: You need the white space.
Nathan: Yeah.
Anna: Yeah, we've all seen the wall-to-wall resumes that are just covering every inch of the page.
Karen: Pepper flake font.
Anna: I mean, unless you do something truly egregious, the formatting of your resume is not going to make or break your application on its own. But I think a big part of what we do at Spivey Consulting is looking at all of those tiny little details and trying to button up every last little thing to be optimal. And I think this is important in buttoning up every last little thing to be optimal, is having a resume that is readable, that is decent to look at, that looks generally professional and standard, and like a law school resume. I do think these things are worthwhile for applicants to think about, even if they're not make or break.
Nathan: I think one of the other mistakes would be—and this sounds relatively obvious since we're doing this podcast and recording—but not using a professional resume. There are so many times in the application review process where I would see a resume that was thrown together. You can tell that the effort was to satisfy the requirement of the application and there was no additional effort to actually make it understandable or follow any kind of consistent format.
Anna: We've talked about this in the context of things that applicants should not do. Let's talk about what they should do. What's the sort of ideal format of a law school resume? We've talked about page length. It can be one page; it can be two pages. You probably shouldn't be going to three pages unless you have just a ton of experience. There are some cases where it might make sense. Maybe you have a ton of publications, you've done a PhD, you have had several significant research jobs, whatever, you've been working for 20 years, maybe. But I would say one to two pages is a good rule of thumb for anybody.
Karen: Yes.
Nathan: I agree.
Karen: I think the ideal resume, the third page is really only if you have publications, and it should just be the publications on the third page. That's my rule of thumb.
The content is always going to drive how the resume looks. So, it is highly individual, but I do think that for me, I think having education section first, you're applying to law school. That's not the same for a professional resume. You might want your experience section first in a professional resume. But you're applying to law school, so education section first, then experience. And there's definitely some room for debate here, but I like to just have any old experience, because for most people, it doesn't have to be professional experience. It doesn't have to be relevant experience. It's just, this is my experience. And sometimes that's a job. Sometimes that's an internship. Sometimes it's scooping ice cream. You can tell where my mind is right now. Ice cream, summertime.
So the experience section would include all of your experiences. I think having it as simply formatted as possible. If you have a lot of volunteer work or leadership within school or outside of school, that can be its own section, but it also can go in the education section if your experience or activities is just part of your education. The same is true with honors and awards. That can be a separate section or that can be part of your education section. So I think the content again is going to drive whether or not those are separate sections.
And then there's the skills and interest sections, and if you have publications. But I think having those simple sections, with your title, the organization, the dates, location and a few bullet points for some of them. Some of them you only need one bullet point. Your most recent or substantive should be longer. So the longer you've spent somewhere, if you've had progressively responsible positions within the same organization, that should be lumped together. You can show visually that you have been promoted within an organization. The more bullet points, the more substantive the job.
Anna: Yeah, definitely include your ice cream scooping job on the resume. It probably does not need 2 or 3+ bullet points. Not all jobs need bullet points. There are multiple things that go into consideration for that, I think. But anything that is in an office, anything that has any relevance to the law or legal field, anything that's sort of substantive professional experience, I think is going to need at least a couple of bullet points. Is that fair to say?
Nathan: I think so.
Karen: I think so. Yeah.
Nathan: I think with all things when it comes to resumes or really any other element of the application, you really just kind of want to lay it all out so that you can see what you have. So that you can understand that kind of concept of, it depends, you know, we've kind of danced around a little bit, not every resume should look the same. There's not a specific format that I think we as a group tell people, “You have to have this format.”
Anna: Yeah, we don't have a template or anything.
Nathan: You want to see what you have, what you're able to convey to admissions committee members, and then make good choices from there.
Karen: Yeah. And I think we go back and forth. So there is a balance of being visually pleasing, but it doesn't have to be symmetrical. Because I do know that there are some people who are like, “Oh, I need three bullet points for everything.” And I don't think that's true. Like Anna said, there are some jobs that what you did is evident with your position title, scooping ice cream or whatever. There's some jobs that just require a little bit more substance than others.
Anna: Formatting-wise, we've gone over some general basics. It can vary, it should vary for different applicants. The other thing that I will bring up that is probably a pretty hard and fast rule is that you want to be in reverse chronological order. I was surprised at the number of resumes I saw where I couldn't discern any logical order among the professional experience, like maybe it was by order of importance. Don't do that. Do typical reverse chronological order starting with your newest position or your current position and going down.
Karen: I'm firmly in that camp.
Anna: In general, there are lots of little formatting decisions that you will have to make that there is no hard answer. So things like abbreviating months versus writing out the whole thing versus using numerical indicators. Things like the type of dash that you use, what your bullet points exactly look like. They can vary, but the overriding rule here is to be consistent about it. So don't write January in one place and then Feb. at another place. Be consistent with it. Don't use a regular dash in between your dates in one place and then an en-dash—what's technically correct is an en-dash in this situation with the dates, but no law school is going to ding you or think poorly of you if you use a regular dash in that situation—just do it consistently. As Nathan was talking about earlier, those things do jump out on the page, inconsistencies, just when you're looking at it. Not even necessarily trying to suss out, “oh, has this person been perfectly consistent?” It just shows up on the page. So be consistent with those decisions that you make.
Karen: I'll add a few more of those types of decisions. Some people put periods at the end of each bullet point and some people don't. Either is fine. You can do periods or no periods; you just have to be consistent. I'm a big fan of no periods just because a lot of times they're not full sentences, and I'm a little bit picky about that. I'm a big fan of no periods; that way you don't have to worry about whether or not you put a period somewhere.
But, for consistency, in my opinion, I like using present tense for your present job and past tense for your past jobs. So if you're currently doing something, it should be present tense. And if you've already completed the task, it's past tense.
Nathan: Which gets tricky if the current job has a project that you completed in the past.
Karen: And that's fine. You can complete it. It can be a past tense there, if you recently completed something or if you completed it a year ago, that's totally fine. But I think current job duties should be in present tense.
Anna: Yeah.
Nathan: So I definitely agree with you about the periods. I love that you can free yourself from the shackles of the narrative structure in the resume. I mean, you're telling a story in the resume, but you don't have to do it in that same kind of creative way that you're thinking about with the other pieces that you're putting together. It's nice to not have the sentence structure in the way that you would when you're telling a story, but you have the kind of buzzy resume-esque style of talking.
Anna: Let's talk about the different sections of the resume. What advice do you both have about the education section? We've already talked about putting it first because you're applying to an academic program. So that's one piece of advice for the education section.
Nathan: Don't feel like you have to capture every program you've attended. I've run into folks that will put every school that they've gone to, whether it's as a transfer student or something along those lines. It certainly falls under the "it depends." If you're losing the opportunity to add a Dean's List or an honor from the program that you transferred from, and you didn't secure any of those kinds of experiences at the program that you graduated from, that's a hard decision, I'm sure. But you don't have to, again, be under the obligation to put every single program as you would with your law school application.
Anna: Another example there is study abroad programs; I'll see people who'll put every institution that they studied abroad. Sometimes they studied abroad twice and have both of those institutions separately from their undergraduate degree. I think it is perfectly reasonable in a lot of cases to fold those under the degree-granting institution and say “studied abroad” as a bullet point of that, in a lot of cases.
Karen: I agree. Yeah, I think it depends. Again, if it's just one study abroad and it was pretty substantive, you can have that as its own separate entity, but making sure that it's labeled appropriately as a study abroad. You’ve got a lot of flexibility, I think, in the education section on what you want to highlight for the reader. They are going to get a lot of information from the rest of your application, in the CAS report, they're going to have your transcript. You don't need to put your LSAC GPA, especially if it's not as strong as you want it to be. You don't have to put it on there. They're going to get it elsewhere. You can highlight it if you want. So there is some flexibility there. I would always put Latin honors if you have them, Dean's List, those kinds of things if you want to highlight those. You don't need to put monetary scholarship awards if you received them. You can put named scholarships. Again, there's so much flexibility, and I think it depends on what it is that you want to highlight. And I mentioned earlier, you can have separate sections of honors and awards and activities, or you can fold them into the education section. If your education section is getting more than half of the first page of your resume, then you may want to break it up into separate sections. But if it's about a third or a quarter of the first page, I think that's fine.
Anna: I would agree with that. I think that's a good rule of thumb generally. And I appreciate your way of phrasing it in terms of what people want to highlight, what people want to emphasize. Because yeah, things like the GPA. If your GPA is a strong point of your application, put it in there. If your GPA is not a strong point of your application, no need to include it on your resume. If your study abroad was this huge, important thing for you, and you did all of these interesting things, maybe you won an award there, maybe you participated in a specific activity, sure, your study abroad can be separate. If it was something that was not a hugely impactful experience for you, or it was not something that you want to highlight in this particular context, it can go underneath your degree-granting institution. A lot of these things are flexible and depend on how you want to depict yourself to the admissions office, how you want them to be seeing you from looking at this document.
One thing that I will say that is a pretty hard and fast rule, I would say, is do not include your high school. Some applications actually do ask for your high school information. They'll ask for every institution that you have attended, including high school, within the application itself. Definitely include it there if it's asked for, but on your resume, do not include your high school.
Karen: No. I can't believe we didn't bring this up earlier in the mistakes people made! Because including jobs in high school or the scooping ice cream job, if it was in high school, you don't put it on your resume, but if it was in college, that's when you put it on your resume. No, admissions officers, for the most part, do not want to see anything prior to when you first entered college. Are there exceptions?
Nathan: Yes.
Karen: Sure, there's flexibility, and if there is something that is really important to you that isn't going to be brought up elsewhere in your application—so if you went to high school abroad and it may be considered a different type of degree.
Nathan: The thing that comes to mind is if it bridges into an experience that you had while you were in college. So if you had a summer job prior to your college education, but then you did it the next summer or something along those lines, that makes sense to include.
Karen: Yes, for jobs, you can definitely include a start date that begins before college, if you did it throughout college or into college. But in terms of including where you graduated from high school...
Anna: Almost never.
Karen: Almost never.
Anna: Any other advice for the education section?
Nathan: One thing that comes up for me a lot is thinking about honors and awards, whether or not you have them in different sections or not, if you are including them under the education section, list every Dean's List you made. Don't just offer a range. You earned it each time that you were awarded the Dean's List, and you're selling yourself short if you truncate that, in my opinion.
Karen: I think it's okay to put, “Dean's List seven semesters,” or “Dean's List all semesters.”
Anna: I think this one can vary, especially depending on the rest of your honors and awards that you're listing. I think it looks a little bit odd if you have nothing else under your education and then you list Dean's List seven times. I also think on the other side of the spectrum, if you have 17 awards, you probably don't need to also list Dean's List eight times. Somewhere in the middle, I think it can definitely be valuable to include all of those, and I don't think admissions officers are going to ding you for either choice.
Karen: So one last thing on the education section. When you list your degree, list the graduation date. The date you receive or expect to receive your degree. You do not need to have a start date in your school. It's usually just the date you received your degree.
Anna: The month/year.
Karen: Month/year, exactly.
Anna: I do think it's common enough, it's enough of a convention in law school resumes and in law school application resumes, to include just the date that you got your degree. And I think the difference lies in what you're listing. So, you have a job, your job role, you did that role from this date to this date. If you're listing bachelor’s in political science, you got that degree on this date, so I can see the difference there. And I think it's enough of a convention that nobody's going to look sideways at just listing the degree date.
I do think it can be helpful to include start and end dates, especially when you have a sort of more complicated educational history. If the admissions officer might be wondering, okay, you went to this school and then you went to that school, like, what were the dates of this? And you can easily visually represent it on a resume so that they are not confused by that, I think that can be helpful.
I will say that if you are currently in school, if you are anticipating your degree at a later date, you should definitely include that later date on your resume, not just, “August 2020 to present,” for example. You want to make it clear when you are graduating, when you are set to graduate.
Nathan: I think that also helps benefit people that maybe went through their undergraduate education a little bit more promptly. For someone that graduated in three years or, if you took that extra lap, it helps capture that too and make that clear.
Anna: Let's talk about the experience section. So we've talked about this a little bit already, the fact that in a lot of cases, it probably makes sense to just have a general "experience" and include paid jobs, include internships, and include significant volunteer type experiences within that. We've covered the fact that sometimes it makes more sense to have a separate sort of volunteer and community experience section if you have a lot of that, if that's a really substantive part of what you bring to the table as an applicant. But either way, what are some tips and advice for this section?
Karen: One of the things I see quite often is, students selling themselves short on their experience. One thing that I see a lot is when you're asked to be a TA or a research assistant or something during college where you may not be paid for it, but it's an honor to have that experience. If you're asked to be a tutor or something along those lines, that can go in your experience section, because you're helping fellow students, you're helping peers, you're doing research for a professor, you're grading papers. Those are really good experiences that you're having. So like Nathan said earlier, don't sell yourself short here when it comes to what experiences you've had.
Nathan: If you're an entrepreneur, establish a business structure now. Having an LLC, just creating some sort of business entity that you can put on your resume has such a better professional look to it, to show that you understood that you needed to have a legal entity or needed to legally establish your endeavor. I think that's one aspect of the experiences that I run into a lot with people with that entrepreneurial spirit. They have an ongoing business endeavor, but they just don't have it officially set up. And so it becomes wonky to try to figure out how to talk about that, how to title it, what the name of the business is, to stick within that consistent format. So I think for experiences, that's one thing I would offer pretty quickly. If you're an entrepreneur, certainly contemplate having some sort of business set up in an official way to ensure that you have the ability to use that on your resume to account for that time that you're doing that thing.
Anna: Yeah, I think that does come up with folks who have done tutoring or freelancing of some kind. Like, how do I fit this into my resume format? Should I just put freelancing generally or whatever? I was in that boat when I was applying to law school, and I was happy that I had put together my little business; I did freelance graphic design. I had "Anna Hicks Design," so I was able to put that as the organization and then "Designer" as my position. And I didn't have to worry about how am I going to phrase this and how am I going to make it consistent with the rest of my application. I definitely think that's good advice. Other advice for the experience section?
Karen: I mentioned earlier about how everything should go in there. So if you're doing work for a family business, it should be in there. Even if you're taking care of a loved one, which happens. It could be either you have children that you're taking care of or a parent or a grandparent where you're the primary caretaker, that should be represented on your resume. A lot of schools want to see what you've done with your time, and you can just be straightforward about it. “Taking care of so and so.” You don't need to go into great detail about it, but just give an overview so that you account for your time.
Whether you put that in the experience section or in a different section, it sometimes would make sense to put that in a completely separate section. That really depends on the content for the rest of the resume. Accounting for your time. So making sure that all of your jobs—don't sell yourself short—all of your responsibilities are in there.
In terms of length of each section, I mentioned this earlier, but if you have been promoted within an organization, having the title of the organization as the entry, for lack of a better phrase, in the section, and then listing your title and the dates of your titles and then responsibilities under each of those titles. I think that shows a really quick visual of progressive responsibility within an organization. So if you've been with an organization starting as an intern, and then you had an entry-level position, and now you're in a management position, you'll have three different entries under the same heading of an organization. That's just something to keep in mind in terms of how to present things in your experience section. But the more prominent and important the position or the job, the more space it should take up. Your current job or your most important job should be the most bullet points. They don't all have to be the same amount of bullet points.
Nathan: And in that case, you run into space issues. And if you're doing a triple entry for that same business to cover each role separately, space is at a premium. You buy back at least two lines to pull it all together and to show more clearly that kind of rising responsibility and rising investment that the company is making in you.
Anna: And admissions officers really like seeing that progressive responsibility. That is a big positive in your corner if you have that.
Maybe this is too broad a question; I'm sure the answer to some extent will be “it depends.” But how many bullet points are too many bullet points? How much detail is too much detail?
Karen: Yeah, that's a tough one. I would say after four, you're in a gray area. I think four is probably max. Three is probably max for a lot of people. You don't need more than three for a lot of people. But again, It totally depends on what you have to say.
Nathan: I think regardless, whether you're starting with four or three or six, adhering to that kind of ratcheting down rule or just staying similar. We've talked about it before, but you don't want to have more discussion about the second-most recent job that you've had over the one that you're currently in. You're supposed to be excited about that role, your current endeavor. And so if you go from three to six bullet points, that doesn't look good from an aesthetic point of view, but also, how excited are you about this new job?
Anna: This is such a difficult decision because so much of it is idiosyncratic to the individual applicant. Because I could totally see a situation, Nathan, where someone had just started a new job, and they were in their previous job for like ten years, it very well might make sense to have more bullet points for that one.
There are so many exceptions to the rules that we talk about here that are sort of on an individual case-by-case basis. I will just say, generally, for anyone listening to this podcast, if you hear us say anything as a general guideline or a general piece of advice, and you think to yourself, “Man, that doesn't make sense at all for my resume because X, Y, Z,” you very well might be right. Most of these are not hard and fast rules. I can't foresee a situation where it would make sense to have your resume in funny fonts and crazy colors—there are some of them that are pretty hard and fast—but in terms of talking about the content and how you depict the content of your resume, there are a lot of exceptions to rules. And if something really just does not make sense, does not resonate with you that we're saying, you very well might be one of those exceptions.
Nathan: I'm sorry to say this, but Wingdings never make sense as your font for a resume.
Anna: Regardless of the context. Maybe if you were the inventor of Wingdings, you could include, like, a quick…
Nathan: Okay, fine. Dang it.
Karen: But nobody will be able to read it.
Anna: It would have to be underneath something else, like that couldn't be your whole resume, for sure.
Nathan: If you are the inventor of Wingdings, I apologize for calling you out specifically.
Anna: Reach out to us. We will give you specific advice on this question.
Nathan: A hundred percent.
Karen: I do have a tip for the experience section. So a lot of times I find myself helping to get that industry jargon out of the resume. A lot of times the reader may not be familiar with the organization that they're a part of. Within a certain industry, people may know this organization. As a general rule of thumb, for the first bullet point, you want to give the reader a sense of what the organization does and what your role is within that organization. It could be a description of what your job is as a paralegal, doing research or writing for a litigation boutique law firm, or whatever the case may be. But just giving a little bit of information about what the industry does, if it's not Google or if it's not a very recognizable brand name, you really do want to give that, and I would err on the side of "everyone doesn't know what you're doing." Just to make sure that whoever's reading your application in that first bullet point understands your role in the bigger picture of what that company or organization does.
Anna: That's great advice, for sure. And then as you mentioned earlier, and as you just touched on industry jargon, if someone who has never worked in your industry would ask "what does that mean?" you probably should try to explain it in a different way, rather than using all of these acronyms and specific terms and software names and things like that that your average person will not recognize or understand. You do want it to be digestible and understandable by someone who may have no understanding at all of your field, with the exception of limited industry jargon for legal jobs. Thoughts on that?
Nathan: I agree.
Karen: I agree. It reminds me of a tip for the education section if we can go back to that for a second.
Anna: Yeah.
Karen: Because one of the things that we didn't mention about the education section is a thesis. If you wrote a thesis, you should write it in your education section. And what made me think of that is a lot of times, I had no idea what the thesis was. And the assumption is just assume that nobody knows anything about it. And if the title is self-explanatory, then that's fine. But if it is not self-explanatory, just give a little description about what the thesis was about.
Anna: Great advice. Anything else for our experience section?
Nathan: Try to have [your bullet points] in descending order of importance to you. You know, as far as, yes, you want to have kind of that first bullet point that orients the reader to what it is that you're talking about, but also make sure you're excited about what you're putting on the resume. Part of the experience, part of the role is something that you like doing, is something that you appreciate doing. Certainly, there's going to be moments where you're trying to get that third bullet point and you're like ehh... But, you know, the first two should be things that you like, as far as your affinity for it in your role.
Anna: I would generally say that your first bullet point and then your second bullet point to some extent are probably most likely to be read. Karen alluded to this earlier, but oftentimes the resume is skimmed at first and then later referenced for wanting to know more about something specific. So if you have really exciting accomplishments, or you did a project that you just thought was amazing, try to put that earlier. Try to put that further up within your job. You're still going reverse chronological order for your jobs, but within your bullet points, there is some room for highlighting the things that you like best that you are most proud of first.
Nathan: Don't bury the lede.
Anna: Let’s talk about the skills and interests section. So we've mentioned this a little bit in this episode, but what other advice do we have for this skills and interests section?
It should not be above your education or in between anything; it should be the last section of your resume.
Karen: I definitely like to start with languages. If you have any foreign language, you don't need to include English. That's fine; everyone assumes that you speak English. But if you have any other language abilities, this is I think a perfect place to add it. You can add proficiency levels. So if you're fluent in one language, write “fluent.” If you're conversational in another language, “conversational.” Going back to what Anna said earlier, that you're going to be asked about it, so you have to be truthful here. So if you write that you're fluent in Spanish and your interviewer starts to speak to you in Spanish, you're going to be in trouble if you don't really speak Spanish.
Nathan: That would be no bueno.
Karen: No bueno. Be honest with your skill level. So if you're basic in something, write “basic,” that's fine. But with the interests, I think they should be non-academic. You may have alluded to some of your other interests in your college activities, things that you've done in volunteer work. You don't need to repeat those things because those are shown. Whoever's reading your application won't know these things about you unless you write them in this section. That's where I see it.
I also see this section as a way to put down any certifications that you have, that you're proud of. I've seen security clearances there and it makes sense to put it there. You might want to label it differently than “skills and interests,” but I think this is a way to put extra information that just doesn't fit elsewhere in the application. Make sure to label it appropriately.
Nathan: First aid and CPR are important certifications to have in your legal education, I'm not even kidding.
When it comes to the skills—because I think skills gets looped into this section as well, so interests, skills, languages—those are all things that I think are appropriate in this section, this kind of catch-all section. For skills specifically, I see a lot of times people will offer the Microsoft Office Suite, they'll offer things that they don't necessarily have a certification in, and I don't know that those kinds of things necessarily make sense to include. “I can do Facebook,” I always question what's the benefit of putting this there. Did you do something extra that every other person has not done that is using Microsoft Office Suite or using the interwebs? I'm always a little hesitant on that particular section in this kind of catch-all place.
Karen: Definitely edit out the Microsoft Office Suite. I think that's understood; I think everyone has that skill. That's not something that's necessary, and it takes up a line.
Anna: Yeah, yeah.
Nathan: That’s true.
Anna: I think other software that is not Microsoft Office, definitely include that if you are proficient in it, if you have used it in the course of a job or in your education. Certainly include if you have experience with specific legal research databases; that's something you can include in the skills section.
We've been talking about things that are relevant for law school versus not relevant. If you have some skills that are not necessarily relevant for law school, but they are skills that you have acquired that are interesting or specific, those could certainly still make sense to include, even if they're not directly relevant.
Karen, Nathan, what are your thoughts on skills like "problem solving" and "teamwork" and "logical analysis," sort of these non-specific, broader skills?
Karen: I’m not a fan of putting in those general skills in this section, because you've probably already described some of those skills in your job description. If you are somebody who does research and analyzes things, that's probably in some of your bullet points. This is not the section to highlight those types of skills that you've gotten from your job. This is much more about additional skills that they can't get from either reading your resume or from the rest of your application.
Nathan: Along those lines, I think it’s important to show the action. The thing that you did related to the skill, whether it's teamwork or Microsoft Office. If you're showing that you did something related to that thing, as opposed to just putting the thing, it carries more weight. What is it, show don’t tell?
Karen: Show don’t tell.
Nathan: Yeah. So when you're showing someone, you're helping them connect to that. You're giving them concrete elements around that thing that you want to convey to them.
Anna: Yeah, because problem-solving, teamwork, research, writing, all of those are important skills and skills that you do want to showcase on your resume. But showcase them through the bullet points, showcase them through the things that you did, as opposed to just listing at the end, “I am a good researcher.”
Let's say that I am applying to law school; I haven't had the chance to gain a ton of professional experience yet. I just don't really know what I can put in my skills section, especially if I can't put things like problem solving and whatever. I don't really have familiarity with software apart from Microsoft Office. What do you advise in those sorts of situations where someone just doesn't really know what to put for their skills section? Do we do just an interests section?
Karen: I would do just an interests section, or you can label it “other” if you had other things that you wanted to put in there. But I think just interests is totally fine, because everyone has interests beyond academic interests. It makes you an interesting person. It makes you who you are.
Nathan: I think there's still a conversation that would need to be had that goes back to what I was saying earlier about the penchant for people to sell themselves short. You want to investigate that. You really want to ask yourself, “Do I have any skills? What are my skills? What are the things I do? What am I involved in? Is that a translatable skill in the resume?”
Anna: Yeah. Really dig deep into those skills. Don't just assume that you don't have skills that are worthwhile to put just because you haven't had a skills section on other resumes. Dig deep, think about it. I would look at all of your different experiences that you've listed and think about the tools that you used in those contexts, things that you learned. You very well might have some skills to list.
As Karen mentioned, languages are a good one to also include in this section. Certifications can be included in this section. But in lieu of all of that, it is okay to just have an interests section.
One thing I will say about the formatting of this section is that this should be the shortest section of your resume. It should not be you're listing out your interests with bullet points or you're doing a big description of these things. It should be a short list, no bullet points, interests, colon, and then a list with commas. I think that there are very, very few exceptions to that.
Karen: Totally agree. Absolutely. It should be a quick visual list of things that are interesting to you.
Nathan: Yeah, I agree.
Karen: I would say three lines, max.
Anna: Okay, so I think we've gone through all of the major sections of the resume. We've talked through common mistakes, we've talked through the way that the resume is looked at in the context of your full application. Based on your many years of experience both reading law school applications from the law school side and working with applicants, what's one last piece of advice that you would leave with our listeners?
Karen: The last piece of advice that I would want to leave listeners with and I'm going to steal Nathan's advice from earlier, is don't sell yourself short. Account for your time. Everything that you've done is valuable and should be represented. How you've spent your time, whether it was working to make money or an internship, or taking care of somebody, or doing a really good job for an organization that you care about, or just doing a job that you didn't really care about, but you were doing because it was your job. It all should go on your resume. Don't minimize the work that you've put in. It should be recognized.
Nathan: There was a time that if you put pivot tables on your resume, law school admissions folks loved you. But in all seriousness, understand that you are engaging with a person on the other side of the page. They want to root for you. They want to cheer for you. Just have that conversation with them and don't sell yourself short.
Anna: I think that's a great place to end as our final piece of advice that has been a theme throughout this podcast episode. Don't cut things because you think they're not relevant, and really present this full picture of yourself, and don't sell yourself short.
Thank you both so much and thank you to our listeners. If you found this helpful, please like and subscribe, and we'll hope to see you next time.
Karen: Bye!
Nathan: Thank you.