Building Your Resume for Grad School or Job Applications in the U.S./U.K.

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Discuss differences between Taiwanese and Western resumes and CVs and how to adapt them for applications abroad.

1. Keep your resume to ONE page with clear section titles! 

   Recent graduates, keep your resume to one page! If you’re applying for college, only use information from high school. If you’re applying for graduate school, only include activities from university and after. Any older information (usually 3-5 years old) is out of date. 

   Share your education (school name, degree title earned, and name of majors and/or minors), all clearly labeled under a section header. 

   However–don’t list relevant classes and their corresponding grades. Many students want to include this information, but since it’s already submitted to the school in the transcripts, this information is redundant. Don’t make the admissions team read the same information twice. 

   If you have more than 5 years of work experience, especially if you’ve done extensive work in technical (scientific, research, design, or software) fields, then you might have enough work to break into two full pages. Better still to fit onto ONE page with short, punchy action verbs (see point #2!)

   
   

   ✅ Suggestion for Section Order

   • EDUCATION

   • PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

   • **RESEARCH

   • **PUBLICATIONS

   • **INTERNSHIPS

   • **EXTRACURRICULARS

   • SKILLS

     • TECHNICAL

     • LANGUAGE

       
       

   If you have received awards or special recognitions, please put them under the corresponding section title, and share how you were awarded.

   For ALL activities you share, put the most RECENT activities to the top. Keep older activities below. Share the month and year on start and end dates for each activity, aligned on either side of the page.

2. Use powerful action verbs and numbers to show what you achieved!

   For your graduation project, big work assignment, or the personal project you’re working on, show me what actions you took to complete it! 

   Rule of thumb: if you don’t tell them what you did, they won’t know. Don’t assume that all labs and all projects and all experiments work the same way. If you don’t communicate your accomplishments, they won’t see them. 

   If you participated in a lab experiment, be specific! Did you design the experiment? Did you analyze and evaluate the results? Did you adjust the status of your experiment according to the different results? Did you use PCR analysis, or did you use software to check your results? (Note that this is not an exhaustive list, it’s on you to report what you did in detail.)

   If you were involved in a personal project, how did you set up the process for your craft? What specific skills did you master along your way? How (in terms of %) did you increase efficiency, sales, or measure progress? 

   If you were involved in a work project, don’t just say you “joined” or “participated” or “contributed to” an assignment. How did your actions turn into accomplishments, what does the process look like? Practice verbally explaining this, as if to a stranger. Don’t merely list your daily responsibilities–how could you share what you did? To put the question another way, if you didn’t do your job, what would go wrong? What’s your actual impact? 

   
   

❌ Avoid this: General statements

• Responsible for social media marketing.

• Worked in a lab.

• Did banking (stuff).

• Improved an app. 

✅Try this: Clear Action Verbs

• Managed a social media campaign that increased engagement by 50%.

• Trained 4 incoming junior students in biological lab management and maintenance.

• Streamlined corporate banking processes by deleting redundant questions on internal software, raising client satisfaction by 30%.

• Developed a machine learning model that improved prediction accuracy by 15%.

As an editor, this is the part I struggle with the most. I can ask students for more details time and time again, but they still fail to share details that would make their resume pop. If you have questions or are asking, “how specific is specific enough?” or “What kinds of details do I need to share?,” contact Thrive English for specific help developing and refining your own CV. 

3. Don’t include your picture, full address, or birthday on the resume

   In the US, admissions committees judge you based on your achievements, not your physical profile. 

   Fortunately or unfortunately for us, accomplishments have nothing to do with appearance, where you live, or your age. Don’t include these on your document! This is considered unprofessional or inappropriate in the US and UK.

   Instead, save your professional or graduation headshot for your LinkedIn profile! This would be a better use of your profile picture. As a general tip, you want a clear view of your head and face in good lighting. Wear a clean, unwrinkled, button down shirt–something you might wear to an interview. Avoid using photos that are too casual or cute for this work-oriented site.

   As a word of caution, check that your email address is professional (no adjectives or sports) and does not include any personal information (your birthday or identification number). In the US, hackers are much more to steal your information if they have access to your birthday or identification number. 

   
   

   ❌ Avoid this: tylerlovescutemanga0104@hotstuff.com, BTSnumber1fan520@yahoo.com

   ✅ Try this: tyler.lin01@gmail.com 

   
   

4. Highlight Leadership through Extracurricular Activities

   Many students just follow instructions of their leaders, professors, and instructors. However, they prioritize applicants who take initiative to accomplish their goals. 

   This necessarily includes putting yourself in positions that demand discomfort: giving public speeches, running events, taking leadership positions. 

   If you have already joined a club, see how you can step up to help run an event, organize a bake sale, or push an initiative forward. For example: if you want your school to be more environmentally friendly, set up a day to clean trash along the streets. If you already join a volunteer activity teaching children at a nearby school, set up a new game the kids could play, or set up a craft activity or workshop to teach them in a creative way. If you work in a lab or in an office, seek opportunities to train or mentor other people that are “greener” than you are. 

   In short, the more leadership potential you show (regardless of if you want to work in management or not), the more attractive you will be to schools and employers.

   
   

   ❌ Avoid this: Passive participation

   • Listing passive participation "Member of school marketing club,” or “participated in a graduation project”

   ✅ Try this:

   • Taking credit for what you did: Organized 3 marketing workshops for 100+ students.

   • "Collaborated on a graduation project addressing campus sustainability with a team of 5 to reduce waste by 20%."

     
     

5. Don’t use Taiwanese English

   There’s one piece of advice that students in the US learn in Grade 1 of Elementary School: Show, don’t tell.” This advice encourages students to always use examples as evidence to prove a point. If there’s no clear evidence proving something happened, it’s not worth believing.

   Many students say they “led meetings successfully” as a team leader, or “ran a successful lab experiment” without stating any of the details related to these. While this might seem related to Point #2 I made above, this dependence on using “success” or “successful” repeatedly reflects a broader desire to look successful, without explicitly stating what you did to achieve this. In the US, no one will believe you claiming you’re successful without showing the process. 

   Don’t claim leadership, teamwork, problem-solving, or communication as skills without sharing examples. Break down the success into a process where you can show me what your success specifically looks like. 

   
   

   ❌Avoid: “Abilities,” “successful,” and Coursework (with percentages)

   • Recruited club members successfully.

   • Took an online course successfully.

   • Developed communication and problem-solving abilities.

✅ Try this:

• Led recruitment for new club members, resulting in a 200% increase in club participation among freshmen.

• Took an online course in Python, where the professor routinely used my assignments as in-class model examples, and asked me to present my final project at a school-wide tech conference.

• Developed adaptability in Mechanical Engineering class, where our professor gave us increasingly difficult parameters for a semester-long team project.

With these five tips, you’ll be on a solid start to finishing your first CV/resume! Please consider these thoroughly (especially point #2), and ask us for a consultation at Thrive English if you want more personal help improving your CV before you apply to graduate schools or to a job at an international company. 

I (Cate) have worked on hundreds of resumes so far, and want to help you stand out from a crowd of applicants! Let’s highlight your unique characteristics and accomplishments, and work together to polish the final draft of your resume!