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Resume

Resumes are documents that summarize and highlight education, experiences, and activities relevant to your career goals. A well-constructed resume documents skills you have acquired throughout your experience, and helps to convince an employer that you possess the skills they are looking for. For active job seekers, you should continue to tailor and edit your resume, according to the positions you are applying to – ensuring you are accurately addressing the needs of the job and how they match your skills. The goal is to have employers clearly see the value you bring to the organization.

The MAC program empowers all students to update their resume utilizing the most current and appropriate business standards to ensure they are marketing themselves appropriately for accounting, business, and finance roles. That is why the UNC MAC Career Services team provides resume templates, guides, resources, and resume reviews to students in order to ensure you are putting your best foot forward. Our guidance comes from employer feedback, business resume standards, years of professional advising experience, and a track record of success. That being said, we also recognize a resume is personal, and that each individual student may have their own standards and views on how their resume should look. We will work together to ensure your resume is in a good place. (Please note: all students participating in the Structured Recruiting process are required to utilize our resume template (option 1) in order to participate in the process.)

The following sections will help provide you with a resume template and guidance that is most appropriate for your situation.

After you decide what type of resume template works best for you, we suggest you take some time looking through our MAC Resume Style Guide, that breaks down the various components of a well crafted resume and provides students with guidance on how to style and edit their resume.

Additionally, if you are considering using our experienced resume template (option #2), we recommend you also review the corresponding guide that walks you through the elements of that resume. Click here to download the Experienced Resume Style Guide. . 

Another important component of a strong resume is having strong action verbs at the start of each bullet in order to really give your resume a concise and interesting dynamic. Looking for some inspiration? Check out our Action Verb List, to give you some inspiration on various ways to describe your experiences. It’s always recommended to diversify the various verbs you use, ensure you do not reuse the same verbs within the same section of your resume.

Your resume will vary based on your experience level, as well as what type of positions you are targeting. For example, if you are an early career professional who has limited work experience, you might have to also draw upon your recent academic experiences, past internships, and/or community service activities to draw out transferable skills. If you are a more experienced professional, you may get more detailed in your work experience section, and focus less on academics experiences. Regardless, a traditional business resume is always one page, but for experienced professionals who have over 10 years experience, two pages can be warranted.

The MAC program provides two resume templates for students to choose from, empowering students to choose the one that most accurately reflects the type of resume that is appropriate for them.

For early to mid-level career professionals, or students participating in Structured Recruiting, we recommend the following template:

For more experienced professionals, we recommend the following template: 

Each template can be tailored and adjusted for your own needs, but provides a starting place to gather your thoughts. It is  recommended that you schedule a resume review with a member of the MAC Career Services team after putting your resume in the template. Students who are participating in the Structured Recruiting process are required to utilize template Option 1 throughout the process. 

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In addition to the resources we have discussed, there is a variety of tools that can help you build an effective resume:

  • JobScan – As we all know, AI has become very common for companies and organizations to use when scanning a large volume of resumes. This tool can help you optimize your resume for any ATS scanner, and enable you to reach more recruiters.  Click here to access this tool. 
  • UNC University Career Services Resume Resources – The UCS Career team has a variety of resources and guides to help students build their resumes, and include templates for other types of resumes like CVs and governmental resumes. Click here to access this page. 
  • Military to Civilian Resume Resources – Career One Stop is an organization devoted to the work of helping retired Military Veterans and current active duty military transition into civilian work. If this applies to you, you may sometimes find it difficult to translate your work into civilian terms. This website will help you with that, as well as provide other great resources. Click here to access this tool.