When I originally wrote The Best Websites For Students Exploring Jobs and Careers, there were quite a few free resume-writing sites out there that had a lot of scaffolding to help people write resumes, but only one gave you the option to print it out so it looked nice on paper.
Apparently, over the past year most of these sites figured out that in order to get a job, most people were going to need a hard copy of their resume and not just a virtual one online. So, happily, there’s more of a choice out there, and all of them seem pretty equally accessible to English Language Learners.
In fact, there are enough of them to warrant their own “The Best…” list. Thanks to a recent Mashable post, I was able to learn about more of them.
Here are my picks for The Best Places For Students To Write Their Resumes (not in any order of preference):
Emurse was the original free and accessible online tool to create resumes that I originally listed. It walks you through the process of making one. They basically have a series of text-boxes to fill-in, and have instructions written in simple English. You then end-up with a professional-looking resume. The others sites are organized in a similar way. However, now the other ones on this list make it easier than Emurse to actually print-out the resume.
How To Write A Resume also lets students create their resumes. It’s free, very “scaffolded,” and provides multiple ways to download and print a hard copy.
GigTide is another similar site.
And Razume is the final one on this list.
Resumega is a new and very scaffolded site where students can create their own resumes. Lots of samples are included, and it’s easy to print out the final product.
Job Spice is a new site to create resumes for posting online or for printing out. It’s very accessible to English Language Learners. Demo Girl has also created a screencast on how to use it. My only concern is that it appears you have to download your resume prior to printing it out, which might be a problem for some school computers that are configured to not allow downloads. I might just be missing something, though.
Resume Companion looks like a very easy, and scaffolded, tool to create a resume.
What NOT to do: 7 ways to ruin your resume is an excellent list of Yahoo. The 7 ways in bullet points are accessible to ELL’s, though the short explanations might be challenging. It’s a little out of place with the other links on this list, but I’m including it because it’s just so useful.
Careers Advice is a UK site that provides a pretty accessible step-by-step process for writing a resume. If you have students use it, though, you want to make sure they understand that a “CV” is another name for a resume.
“Free Resume Builder” is another new one
cvmaker is another good site where students can create resumes.
Resunate is an easy online tool to create a resume
I’d still encourage readers to check-out The Best Websites For Students Exploring Jobs and Careers because it has several other excellent resources related to job-hunting and exploring careers.
As always, feedback is welcome.
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April 15, 2009 at 3:42 pm
Thanks for the mention in your post! We’ve recently completed a major update to the GigTide application and website. Please feel free to check us out – we’d love to hear some feedback on the upgrade.
August 24, 2010 at 8:17 am
I think the value of the resume as a job search tool for teens is almost nil. They would be much better off practicing completing job applications. Resumes rarely give the information an employer needs — or that a student needs to complete a job application.
I worked a couple summers in the Human Resources department of a resort which had many jobs for entry-level, unskilled workers. By law, we had to have a completed job application in order to consider a person for a job. We could not accept an application that said “see resume.”
One of my tasks was to watch to see which applicants had information with them to complete an application and which had to borrow a telephone book or make a couple cell phone calls to get information needed on the application. Those people’s applications went to the bottom of the pile.
An article based on my experience in that office gives advice to job seekers: http://bit.ly/aJa94R