Resume Critique

[sandhandsman]

Hi everyone,

Please critique my resume.

Thanks in advance!!

[jwitt25]

IMO, the resume needs work. Your verb choice is weak. Your resume comes across as passive. Based on the resume, I picture that you are the person who updates a lot of workbooks with well documented processes.

The tense of your experience bullets is inconsistent.

Also, there is the potential red flag of applying for a new job with under 1 year of actuarial experience. The red flag would be dependent upon the position for which you are applying and the reason for wanting to leave your current role/company. If you provide additional context on why you are job seeking, it could help with a critique.

[sandhandsman]

Thanks for the tips. I’ll make sure to make the suggested adjustments. I’m wanting to leave bc I do not like the culture at the company I currently work for and there isn’t really any room for growth

[vjvj]

I'd indent all the text under the section headings a little. That makes the overall format stand out a little more and usually makes the resume look a little more open. And if you do that, you don't need the all-caps and underlining of the section headings.

It looks like you're not right aligning the RHS. That is the dates don't line up.

I think it looks better with months abbreviated.

The exams would be slightly easier to read if you made it more tabular. I'd put the exam first, then left aligned "Passed"/"Sitting" fairly close to the exam. Then you don't need the "for".

1st bullet is awkward. You start with "calculate", but that's not consistent with anything else in the bullet. Yeah, we know what you mean, but your sentence literally doesn't say what you're calculating. I'd leave off the "ensure reporting accuracy" part. Some more along the lines of Calculate reserves for ... and resolve any discrepancies or something.

Communication is never worth mentioning imo. Everyone communicates. That ", and ..." makes it confusing to read. "Reconciled reinsurance" pretty well covers it.

Requirements always has a doing-what-you're-told feeling to it and I'd avoid it. Are you talking about the regulatory statements? Say statements, then. "through the utilization of" is a very long way to say "using".

The first 3 bullets are kind of the standard valuation act stuff and I might see if they can be combined/condensed a bit.

Assisted is a particularly weak start. How did you assist? By performing market analysis? Then say you performed market analysis.

Is created forumulated a typo? It's best if you put the result first, then the what you did, then the tool if necessary. Do you know how much you sped up (shorter than accelerated) the processes? If so, say so. Excel should be capitalized.

1st BD bullet isn't very clear.

I'd probably get rid of the second. For one thing, just the sheer number of cold calls makes it sound like that's pretty much all you were doing (and in particular, that you weren't doing what you said in bullet #1). Second, communication is generally a pretty lame thing to put the focus on. The real point (and something that would indicate OK communication skills without you ever having to specifically mention it) would be how successful you were in generating business. If you can hype that, definitely make a bullet on that. But don't make it up. But really, if you're not talking about how you're generating business and instead are talking about communication, it sounds like you weren't very good at it, which brings into doubt your communication skills despite you bragging about it. jmo.

Initiated meetings isn't particularly bulletworthy. Again, if you can attribute an increase in sales to this, it is bulletworthy. But don't make it up.

Attended is never bulletworthy.

1st sales bullet again isn't very clear.

2nd seems long and awkward. Assisted is a weak start. You start by mentioning "a possible company", then mention "multiple companies". BTW, multiple is rarely necessary, nor helpful. I might simplify all that down to due diligence.

3rd isn't as strong as either of the other two. I'd get rid of it, and maybe another.

I'd probably not bullet the education. I'd leave off "cumulative", as that will be assumed and will let the gpa be more easy to be read.

You don't need the comma after Access.