Be Yourself: On Paper

Use this step-by-step guide to create the best resume possible. Included below are tips on how to make your content sweet as well as instructions on how to use our technology.

HIVE Stages & Sections


Registration

  • Middle Initials:  If you want to include a middle initial, make sure you put a period after the capital letter or it will not let you move forward. 
  • Preferred Pronouns: Currently these will show on your digital application only, not on your resume, but this will be enhanced when we introduce our new technology in the spring. 
  • Current/Most Recent University/School: If you do not see your school here, please email info@hellohive.com and we will determine why. Right now, registration is limited to students at 4-year colleges and universities in the US, but we will be opening to high school seniors, Associates degree students and others in spring 2024. 
  • Graduation Date: This should be the date of your intended or most recent graduation from your current college. 
  • LinkedIn URL: If you have a bunch of random letters or numbers in your LinkedIn URL, you can update that in your LinkedIn settings to make it cleaner and move it to something like linkedin.com/in/ByronSlosar.
  • Self-Identified Diverse Backgrounds: This is an optional chance for you to self-identify and share anything you’d like about the diversity of your identity and lived experiences. This information is only shared with employers and others when you choose to do so intentionally. Even if you do not want to include it on your profile, it’s wonderful information for us to know at Hive so that we can continue to build for lived experiences and identities of all types. 
  • Work Eligibility: Several of Hive’s clients and partners welcome applications from students who are able to work via OPT/CPT and/or require sponsorship now or in the future. If you do not answer this question, you’ll be able to see our postings but won’t be able to apply. The purpose of this is to help students focus time more efficiently on opportunities that they’re qualified for, and not spend time applying to roles that will not consider this qualification.
  • Check Inbox to Verify Account: If you do not receive a confirmation email within 5 minutes of your registration, contact me and we will determine why. It will be sent to both of your email addresses provided so that if by chance your school blocks the email, you can still receive it and move forward. However, if you do NOT receive this email to your school email address, let us know asap so that future emails from employers, and from us, get to you. 

Welcome Screen

  • HIVE5 Process: This is where you will go to move all of your current resume and LinkedIn profile content into your Hive database, which will protect your data and allow for you to toggle certain components of your profile and background on and off as you send your resume to others. You will also complete 4 other short career development modules that will help you identify careers of interest, and be more prepared as you move into applications and interviews. 
  • Profile & Resume: Once you complete the full HIVE5 Process, you’ll have the first version of your Hive resume completed, and you’ll have the ability to click this button to update your profile/resume going forward.
  • #FLYHIRE Portal: Click here to see all positions and opportunities that are currently posted by our Hive partners, and to see all of our partners regardless of whether they have positions posted. We’ll go into more detail about how to use the FlyHire Portal below.

Transferring Content from Other Resumes & Writing the Right Way

  • Moving Content from non-Hive Resume to Profile: When you do this, open your current resume and place your browsers side by side to your resume, so that you can copy and paste information in. 🎥Using the highlighter feature of Adobe or Microsoft Word, when you move content from your current resume into your Hive Profile, highlight that content with a certain color so that you know you’ve moved it over.
  • Moving Content from LinkedIn to Hive Profile: In addition to your current resume, 🎥 you can also make a resume from your current LinkedIn profile to do the same thing with. The goal of this exercise isn’t just to complete a one page resume, but to move all possible content that you might ever want to use into your profile so that you can access it more quickly going forward.
  • Save, Save, Save: Our platform does not save your content behind the scenes. In case your connection is unsteady and/or your connectivity isn’t wonderful, set a timer and try to save your work by hitting “View/Save Resume” every 5 minutes or when you complete a substantial amount of content transfer or curation.
  • Beware of Hangers: Use Space Efficiently: Bullet points should at minimum go 2/3 across the page, and a second line of a 2-line bullet point should go at least ½ across the page. Scan your resume to see if by chance you have any lines on your resume being used for only a few words, dates or other entries. If so, you can update that section, condense the content into a previous line – or extend the second line across the page – so that you’re using space efficiently.
  • Good Use of ChatGPT: While I would never encourage you to have ChatGPT write something randomly for you that is uninformed,🎥in this case I’ll show you how you can use the information provided from an online bootcamp description to start developing your own bullet points. Once the first version of the bullets are written, I would then review them to add specifics. 
  • Deets on Your Details: Bullet points on your resume should be specific enough so that it would be very hard for them to make sense if copied and pasted onto someone else’s resume. The majority of your bullet points should also be so detailed that they take up at least 1.5 lines, hopefully almost 2 full lines of content using our chain-link function that pulls 2 lines together for 1 bullet point.

Resume Section: Header and Education

Each level will have an overview video to watch, as well as a library of resources available for you to come back to when you need help. For Level1A, I recommend watching the video, quickly reviewing the “Resume Sections'' button, and coming back to the “Important Keywords'' button if you need it later, as I’m going to show you how to make some magic happen to your bullet points using ChatGPT in a few minutes. Once you’re ready, click “Let’s Go” in the Show Your Skills section and you’ll start your resume.  

  • Contact Information: You’ll confirm the information you input in the registration process here.
  • High School: If you’d like to include your High School information, you can do that here. I would suggest you add it regardless of whether you’d like for it to show up on your profile/resume. Once you input the information that you’d like to have included, the right arrow will light up. And once you have the info in here, you can move the radio button to “no” to have it not show up on your resume. 
  • Honors: You can  brackets to explain the honor so that the person receiving the resume understands its impact. Oftentimes honors without explanations just take up space and don’t add much value to a resume.
  • Academics: This is where you will add information about your 4-year college level experience. If you want to include information about a transfer school or community college, you’ll be able to do that in the next section.
    • Degree Type: Dual Degrees are reserved for students graduating with two full degrees (typically 150+ credits rather than 120). If you are a double (or triple) major, you’ll note that below in the Major(s) input. 
    • Degree: Try to select from the options listed, and if you can’t find yours, email me at byron@hellohive.com and we will determine why. There is an undecided option as well if by chance you have not yet decided/declared. 
    • Secondary College: This can be used if you’re part of a college that has a different name than your primary university. If you use this input, please use the View/Save button to ensure that the name of your college isn’t so long that it moves your content to a second line. ☢️ You might need to shorten the name of this input to fit it into our character limit. 
    • Major(s)/Minor(s): For these, if you do not see your current major or minor, you can select the “Other/Write In” option to input whatever you’d like. 
    • Cumulative GPA: This is required for your Hive profile but not required to show employers. It helps us match you to opportunities that require certain GPAs. If your school doesn’t publish GPAs or if you don’t have one yet, selecting that option will allow you to apply to any roles that have GPA requirements. I recommend you include your GPA as visible for 3.0 or better. 
    • Major GPA: You’re only allowed to include this if your Cumulative GPA is visible to employers, and you should only include it if it’s greater than your Cumulative GPA.
    • Scholarship(s): Similar to Honors as explained in the high school section above, I would suggest adding more context to the scholarship in [ ] if it’s not as obvious for the reader to understand. Anytime you’re adding information that is not clear to the reader why it’s important, try to always add more context. ✍️For any scholarships or honors that have experiential components while in college, you’ll have an opportunity to write bullet points about them in the Enhanced Experiences: Academic & Research Projects section that is a few steps away.
    • Honors: Same as above, but for this section you can select “throughout college” as a timing and it will not add a particular date to the honor. This is for those like Dean's List that might extend for most of - or all - of your semesters. 
  • Study Abroad (Community College/Transfers/International Secondary Schools): This section is very flexible. You can include information about the school you transferred from, or Community College, here. This also has an option for an international location for any previous educational experiences outside of the US. These will be made more formal options in our new platform coming in Spring 2024 but for now you can make it work here.

  • Enhanced Experiences: Academic & Research Projects: This is an incredible opportunity for you to write about experiences that are NOT internships and other traditional ones, but are equally - and sometimes more - relevant than what usually sits on a resume. Experiences you can include here are scholarship programs, class and research projects, online bootcamps and learning experiences, and others. Creating this as a separate section on your resume helps hiring managers and others understand that experience comes from many, many different arenas, and sometimes as earlier-college students (underclassmen) this section also helps round out a full page resume when internships have not yet been available. You’ll input the names of the experiences here and then on the next tab, you’ll write bullet points about them. The names of the experiences and positions have limited characters so that they’ll fit on one line.

  • Describe Your Experience: This is the first time that you’ll write bullet points in your Hive profile. While you have the option to include one line bullet points, it’s my recommendation that you use the chain-link option to create 2-line bullet points for the majority of those that you include on your profile and resume. This allows you to use the STARS format, noting details about what you did, how you did it, what you learned and/or achieved. 

  • Relevant Coursework: This section is for completed (or almost-completed) coursework only, and it has “relevant” in the section title for a reason. I suggest you add as many of your completed courses as possible to this section when you create your account, so that you can then select which ones you think are most relevant based on the person you’re sending your resume to or position you’re applying for. These classes currently will be presented in alphabetical order, and you should use the class names, not the numbers, so that the reader understand. 
    • If you’re copying and pasting the coursework from your resume and/or transcript, make sure that you do NOT copy any extra spaces after the name of the class. That will add an extra space before the comma separating the classes that are visible on your resume. 
    • Suggested length is enough classes to fulfill 2 lines of content. I would only go to three lines if for certain all courses are absolutely applicable. Go with the higher levels of coursework for similar classes.
  • Athletics: This is a separate insert on our resume so that the reader can understand any and all experiences that might impact the quantity of traditional experiences, like internships, that a student might have before the professional experience section is presented. Additionally, I’m including below a great bullet point written by one of our students that not only explains what he did, but gives awesome context to the reader about the pain points student-athletes encounter around internship pursuit. Ex: Competed in Division 1 activities every summer, and as this required remaining on campus in June/July, had to seek non-traditional career experiences as typical summer internship recruitment cycles never met my or my teammates’ availabilities.

Resume Section: Skills & Interests

  1. Computer & Technical Skills: Be thoughtful and exhaustive with any and all potential skills you have that could be used for this and other applications. There are several resources like these available to help you think about specific and relevant skills. When you note that you are “advanced” or “expert” as a proficiency level, Hive’s technology will call that out on your resume for you as well. These inputs are free-form (meaning you can write whatever you want) in Hive, so make sure you check your spelling, capitalization and if you’re copying and pasting from another resume, make sure you do not copy extra spaces before or after the input.
  2. Language Skills: If English is your native language, you do not need to include this. If English is not your native language and you are fluent, you should include that along with whatever native language you have as well. I would suggest only including additional languages if you are fluent and can use them in business conversations and writing.
  3. Certifications & Licenses: These can be general career certification programs like these, professional/industry certifications like these, online bootcamps and/or other complete programs that have certificates of completion. *Note that if the certification program is extremely interesting and was a decent time commitment, like Wall Street Prep, you can (and should) include it in the Research & Other Academic Projects section at the top of you resume OR the Leadership & Other Activities section (that you’ll get to in the next level) so that you can write bullet points about the commitment and learnings. I would also suggest that when you do list a certification, you do so in the following format: Wall Street Prep [January 2023] with the date being the month and year of completion, or if you have room Wall Street Prep [40 Hours, Completed January 2024] with the time commitment installed.
  4. Personal Interests: This is one of the few times you have to share something interesting about you as a person! Your professional interests should be obvious in other areas of your resume, so think about what makes you unique and get the reader interested here. If by chance you share a personal interest with who you know is going to be reading the resume (really in times of networking), you can change this up as well. Be specific, IE don’t just say Cooking, rather Cooking Homemade Pasta, or as I have on my resume, Certified Flying Trapeze Instructor. Make someone want to get to know you as a person!  Be creative and unique! Make sure every major word in the list is capitalized.
  5. My Diversities: This is a chance for you to share whatever it is about your background and identity with someone receiving your resume. We leave this open-ended and self-identified so that I can include whatever it is that I want someone to understand before they sit down for a conversation with me, and what I’m most proud of. I choose to list that I’m part of the LGBTQ+ community and that I identify with significant ADHD and OCD.  Other awesome inclusions we have seen here are students self-identifying as first-gen college students, dependents of military parents, of disabled parents, and several have identified as full-time and/or working parents. 

Experiences

  • How Hive’s Line Counter Works:  🎥 See here for a quick summary of how our Line Counter helps you select from all available content in your background to ensure you can more easily access and showcase relevant experience to hiring managers and others who are reviewing your resume. If you need to open up additional lines for experience, you can review the preview of your resume (icon at the bottom of your browser) and go turn off other items that you have in your Education, Academic & Other Research, and/or Skills & Interests section(s). While it will take you a little while to get all old/previous content into Hive’s profile, the amount of time you save going forward by being able to toggle experiences on and off - and bullet points as well - is a HUGE win. Your goal is to use ALL AVAILABLE LINES to ensure you have a full, awesome, one-page resume

  • Moving Experiences from Old Resumes & LinkedIn Resume to Hive’s Profile:  🎥See here for a quick video of how to move content from a LinkedIn Resume PDF to my Hive profile, using ChatGPT to help enhance my bullet points and condense them to the character limit so that they are no more than 2 lines and are written in STARS/detailed format.
  • Work Experience: This section is where you present STRUCTURED career efforts, including internships and other career-focused engagements that are not academic assignments or student organization affiliations. You’ll use more bullet points for these experiences as compared to others. Make sure to use a descriptive word before Intern for your position (for example, Product Development Intern).
    • Select Transaction Experience (Work Experience): Finance students are able to use the technology to list this kind of experience in the following way.  🎥I’m also including a video here. You’ll need to add 2 experiences with the same company name and location, and in doing so the technology will treat your input like you had 2 different internships at the same company. We are making this easier for y’all in our upcoming new release, but wanted to make sure you knew you can do this now. You can also change from Select Transaction Experience to Specific Project Experience. You will need to have at least 3 bullets for this new section.
  • Leadership & Other Activities: This section includes your student organization involvement, conference participation, community service and other relevant but less structured activities.
  • Non-Industry Experiences: Oftentimes we forget that some of the stuff we have done that isn’t financial modeling actually makes us stand out more to hiring managers.  🎥Watch this video about part-time jobs, and how sometimes when you write about the WHY not just the WHAT it helps those who don’t share our lived experiences understand more about things we have done that are super relevant but might not always be so obvious. 

Writing the Right Way - STARS Format

Every bullet written on your resume should be in STARS Format, which stands for Situation Task Action Results and Specifics. Each bullet should lead with a different action verb and provide specific details on what you did, how you did it, and what you learned and/or what you achieved. These pieces of each bullet don’t have to fall in chronological order (for example, you can mention the situation after you lead with the task).

  • Situation: What was the overall purpose or background of the task?
  • Task: What was your specific project or assignment?
  • Action: How did you perform the task? Any particular programs? Part of a team?
  • Results: What did you learn? What did you achieve?
  • Specifics: Each bullet should be specific enough that it would not make sense if placed on someone else’s resume.

Example: Created original graphics (Task) using Adobe Premier (Action) to be used on social media channels for the launch of a new clothing line (Situation), Be Stylish (Specifics), increasing online traffic by 30% in two months (Result).

🐝 HIVE Helper: Always Action Verbs Never use “helped” or “assisted,” as these are passive. Even if you were part of a group project, you can still use an active verb to start the bullet point and include language later about being part of a team.

Hard and Soft Skills

Hard Skills include technical or task-specific training, function or expertise. You should reference them in your bullet points specific to tasks completed, and you’ll also mention these in your Skills & Interests section.

Soft Skills are specific to broader interpersonal or character strengths that you’ll highlight in your bullets as well, and in behavioral interviews (for example: Teamwork, Time Management, Collaboration, etc.).

Resume Keywords

These help you connect your skills and interests most effectively to the industry, job function or company/position of focus. For those associated with an industry or job function, you’ll want to include language that’s expected from someone with experience in that field.

Important Keywords | Companies & Positions: When preparing your resume for a specific application, review the broader language used by the company in their communications (website, etc.) and the specific skills they call for in the position description. Use similar wording when you can - and only when it's genuine - on your resume so that they can most easily understand, in their language, your interests and qualifications.

🐝 HIVE Helper: Resume Keywords