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Resume Length - leave out activity descriptions?

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LawGirl30 Just gettin' started! Default Avatar
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28 Feb 2012
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Resume Length - leave out activity descriptions? Post Fri Mar 02, 2012 5:34 pm
I'm having a hard time condensing my resume down to 2 pages, let alone 1 page. I'm actually a law school administrator (in career services) so it's kind of ironic to me that I cannot take an axe to my own resume. I'm also constantly telling my students to only have a 2nd page to their resume when they have 10+ years of Work Experience. I've now gotten it down to 2 pages for my #1 choice (Harvard) but none of the activities have descriptions. I've figured that the app allows you to describe the activities so just listing the activity and the numerous leadership roles I've held is 1-2 lines.

Education: College - Completed a BA/MA program from a top 40 school according to USNWR national university rankings. MA was in a health care field so substantial practicum experiences. Law School - Ivy league top 10 law school.

Work Experience: Total of 6 years of FT WE post-law school --> 4 years FT (49 months to be exact) of big law firm Commercial Real Estate/M&A experience. Resigned from job and took a "break" for 7 months for personal reasons. (Did some non-profit consulting work part-time for 3 months during that 7 month stint and also remained very involved with community activities and did some GMAT prep and self-exploration while also taking care of mother who was going through chemo.) Will have about 18 months of FT work experience as a law school administrator at point of application, 25 at point of matriculation.

I've seen that on some apps the schools also count up FT internships during college/law school. In that case, that would add another 19 months to my total for one semester in Washington DC and 2 other unique summer stints worth mentioning (I've taken 4 other summer jobs off my resume), not to mention the time between November '12 - Summer '13 before starting grad school. All in all, that would put me at 93 months of FT work experience.

Other/"Extra's" (that I'm trying to fit onto the resume!):
-Have served in leadership positions of 3 non-profit Associate Boards in my city (one dedicated to domestic violence and two to empowering minority high school students), eventually becoming the Chair/President of 2. I've left off all of the events I chaired/planned for these. Just no room!
-Was also very active in my firm's diversity and pro bono committees (and led sub-committees/programs for 2-3 years there). Also the director of a pro bono legal clinic for victims of domestic violence (with personal experience handling family law and immigration cases for some of these clients) and handled an interesting international human rights case while at the firm. Also a VP of an ethnic bar association that has 6000+ members across north america.
-Award recipient of 6 awards in the past 2 years (just found out I got a new one today!) for my community involvement, pro bono legal work that I do, and law student mentoring I've done, 1 of which was a national ethnic bar association award.

Advice? I'm trying to tell stories wherever I don't have descriptions and to NOT tell stories in my essay (like the Domestic Violence clinic) where I've used 4 or 5 bullets to describe what I've done.

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Post Mon Mar 05, 2012 1:47 am
Well, the wisest thing to do would be to send your resume! Wink
http://www.precisionessay.com/services/a-la-carte-services/

Because it's quite hard to say exactly what should be put or not without seeing it all. Overall stick to the Achievements rather than responsibilities, and keept he best stuff, EVEN if it's in your essays. This is one area where we DO want to see some overlap. Your best stories should be both in your Resume and Essays. And if you have leadership, it stays in.

That should get ya started...

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Harvard MBA, 2005
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