A resume is not something you should attempt to throw together when you want to get a job. It is a timeline of your personal and professional involvements that should demonstrate not just where you come from and where you are heading, but also how well you are aligning what you do now with what you aspire to become.

If you ask a UK freshman if they know of the countless opportunities and resources that are available on campus to advance their working resumes, chances are the answer is “No.” Ask them if they even have a working resume in progress; again, probably “No.”

Freshmen should take a look at the resumes many of them put together for their UK 101 class. What’s on it? Maybe you played soccer for four years in high school. That’s great, but is that going to help you get a job right out of college working as a mechanical engineer? Probably not, unless your boss is super into soccer and you’re the next Ronaldo. But don’t bank on it.  

There are resources and opportunities that you should be taking advantage of now as a freshman, sophomore, junior, or senior that will make future employers notice your resume out of the stack of hundreds on their desk.

Hiring and placement professionals generally agree that a resume has six seconds to make an impact. Does yours?

What’s important is that you show future employers that you put forth the effort early on to get a job or an internship in a related field. You need things on your resume that show you’ve been gaining knowledge and experience in the field before you can even attempt to apply for that higher-paying, full-time, post-graduation job.

And, of course, there are the career and peer writing centers on campus to help students find jobs, internships and build resumes. But realistically, how many students in the freshman and even sophomore classes are actually taking advantage of these resources? And if and when they do, it’s usually not until their senior year when panic sets in about what to do after graduation.

UK should be assisting students with a focus on skills and work history development. UK should be encouraging students to ask themselves: Am I doing the things I need to be doing now in order to be able to get to where I want to be when I’m 21?

College campuses tend to hold career fairs that are mainly geared toward the senior class. Frankly, the seniors should already be sending out applications for jobs before graduation, so these career fairs are a couple of years past due.

We should have career fairs targeted toward underclassmen –  the students that are in search of job and internship opportunities that they can add to their resumes to build up to that post-graduation career.

Lani Ceballos, a freshman media arts and studies major, said UK could be doing more to prepare underclassmen to build resumes and take advantage of job opportunities in their first year of college.

“As an underclassman, I do think UK could do a better job at creating job and internship opportunities for students that aren’t seniors,” said Ceballos. “Even if creating those opportunities doesn’t seem feasible, it would be beneficial to try and help younger students in other ways, such as helping with building resumes. That way when we are seniors, we’re even more so prepared to find job and internship opportunities for ourselves.”

Incoming freshmen should already have a working resume in progress, and throughout their college career, these students can build upon it and create a timeline of what’s related to their future career objective. They certainly should not be waiting until near graduation day to scrap something together and hope for the best.

Paidin Dermody is a journalism and English freshman.

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