This free resume course quickly teaches you how to organize, format, and write a resume that actually stands out

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• "How to Write a Resume" helps you strategically update, reformat, and improve your resume.
• The online course is led by a SUNY career counselor, with advice based on current job trends.
• It even includes a segment with an employer discussing how they approach a stack of resumes.

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If you're looking to optimize your next career move, it'd be wise to start with a strong resume. This seemingly simple document is what markets you to prospective employers, and as something you'll submit over and over again, it's important that it's polished to the best version it can be.

"How to Write a Resume" is a free online Coursera course taught by Holly Justice, a SUNY career counselor and recruiter that walks you through creating the cornerstone of your job search. In roughly five hours total, you'll either revise a current resume or create one from scratch with the help of an insider's strategy.

Broken down into shorter classes (which you can view at your own pace), the course covers everything from the foundations of a strong resume to the best formatting and buzzwords to make yours reach the top of the stack.

While "How to Write a Resume" is mostly designed for college students or young professionals writing a resume for the first time, it provides a useful peek behind the curtain for anyone hoping to gain meaningful career guidance. And while resumes vary depending on the industry, Justice helps you to build a universal framework that's applicable to most, if not all, fields. She provides a top-to-bottom look at its typical sections, tips on extracting transferable skills from past experiences, and advice on crafting action statements, maximizing data, and organizing your work experience into a strong thesis statement to recruiters.

Students also hear from an employer about how they approach a stack of resumes, so they can understand how the application process works from a different perspective. By showing students the purpose of a great resume and what a gamechanger it can be, Justice makes this class feel as genuinely engaging as it is useful.