Resumes, Portfolios & Finding a Job

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How Can We Help?

ADPList is a free global mentoring platform tailored primarily for designers, developers and instructional designers. It connects you with experienced industry professionals from over 40 countries who volunteer their time.

You can register for a free account to book one-on-one sessions for:

  • Portfolio Reviews to sharpen your presentation.
  • Mock Interviews to practice your communication.
  • Career & Leadership Advice from seasoned experts.

Job fairs are in September and October. Students do make connections and get job offers from these job fairs. So if you have any spare time, we urge you to work on your resumes and online portfolios now. We promise that you will not have time once classes start. If you do not have much material, it is fine to just put up a shell for now. Include an about-me page, link to your resume, contact information and blocks for future projects. Just getting the content and the style the way you like it will take you at least 1-2 days.

Create a Winning Resume and Portfolio

Resumes

Mike Stowell and Farhana Hasan (Grad-CS-Careers@andrew.cmu.edu) are our career placement representatives and are available to give you feedback via email on your resume and portfolio. Here are a few examples of strong, results-oriented resume bullet points:

  • Recaptured 10% to 20% of program costs annually, dramatically increasing center effectiveness by adjusting project budgets according to spend rates.
  • Developed a corporate partners program, leading to the adoption of our research methodology by Ernst and Young, Pearson, Kaplan and Carnegie Learning, and thereby improving learning outcomes for millions of students.
  • Developed a summer internship program, a diversity workshop and a learning science workshop that annually educated 100+ researchers from industry and academia.

The verbs that you use matter. See this article on indeed 200+ Action Verbs to Make Your Resume Stand Out to know which ones work the best.

We link LinkedIn profiles for our alumni and students on the MSLE website for prospective employers. We strongly recommend adding your portfolio link to your LinkedIn profile to ensure recruiters see your full body of work.

Other sites for resume templates:

Portfolio

You’ll want to make sure your portfolio is mobile ready (can be viewed equally well on a PC, tablet or phone). Fortunately, two good options exist.

 – Option 1: Create a static portfolio on Google sites:

This is a super easy solution if you have a static website.

– Option 2: For dynamic websites use WordPress

WordPress has some really great portfolio templates that make this really easy.   You can make a very professional website without any programming experience. A good template that looks nice is Neve or Astra.  You’ll see if you shrink your browser, that this page automatically rearranges itself.  That’s how you know it’s mobile-ready.   

For hosting your portfolio: https://www.hostgator.com is offering WordPress web hosting, domain name and email inexpensively!  Also if you haven’t built your portfolio, you can find good WordPress portfolios here: https://www.wpbeginner.com/showcase/37-simple-wordpress-themes-you-should-try/.  If possible, you can claim your own url or you can host at another site. 

More WordPress templates can be found at: https://premium.wpmudev.org/blog/free-responsive-wordpress-portfolio-themes/

What makes a good portfolio? The goal is to present yourself in the best possible light to indicate that you are talented, interesting and have a great skill set so any company recruiter seeing this would want to hire you. So you will want your resume, a section about you, your interests, another section on interesting projects that you have worked on, and definitely a section on the MSLE program and your plans and progress. As you progress through your classes, you will have more to enter.

Finding a Job

General Fall Events

The schedule for events open to all CMU students can be found on Handshake

Make an appointment with your Career Consultant!

Log into Handshake and schedule an appointment! https://cmu.joinhandshake.com

You can meet with your Career Consultant to discuss…

  • Mock Interview and/or Interviewing Skills: Discuss how to best prepare for an upcoming interview or practice your interviewing skills in a mock environment
  • Job and/or Internship Search: Questions and assistance with your internship or full-time job search
  • Networking: Learn benefits and strategies for setting up and growing the connections in your professional network
  • Career Exploration: To explore career options in your major, field(s) of interest, etc.
  • Resume / Cover Letter / Portfolio Review: Assistance with (or a review of) your professional written communications
  • Job Offer Evaluation and Negotiation: Once you have received a job offer (or multiple offers), select this appointment type to discuss the finer points of comparing your offer and negotiating salary, bonus, and benefit options
  • Elevator Pitch and/or Job Fair Preparation: Develop or practice your professional self-introduction when first greeting employers. Learn how to sell yourself as a candidate and make the most of a job fair
  • Graduate School: Questions about researching, selecting, and applying and preparing for graduate school
  • Other: For questions that do not seem to fit into any of the types of appointments

Where is CPDC located?

The Career & Professional Development Advising Center is located on the 2nd Floor of the West Wing building (facing the track and football field). Please check in at the front desk and type in your full Carnegie Mellon student email address at the kiosk upon arrival.

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