The Global Health Resume

by Alanna Shaikh · 2009-06-03 00:37:00 UTC
Topics:

(photo credit: SOCIALisBETTER)

Global health resumes are a little different from your standard corporate version. Your jobs may have weird titles, or be hard to explain. Your technical skills matter; they're not just filler for the bottom of the page. You may have worked on a project with a name, implemented by an NGO with a name, funded by yet another name. There aren't any hard and fast rules for how to cope with this, but I've picked up a few tricks that may help.

Use a summary. Putting a summary at the top will frame the rest of the resume. It will tell people how to use the information you're about the give them. Call yourself a monitoring and evaluation specialist, an epidemiologist, a manager. Give them something to cling to as they read. Just don't call yourself anything the resume doesn't back up.

Use Bullets. I know, your job is hard to explain and you don't want to. Use bullets anyway. Everyone expects them, and they force you to think hard about what information is pertinent.

Use a Skills Section Put it right after experience if your skills are solid. You can lump together language skills, software like SPSS or EpiInfo, and techniques like LQAS or the Hearth model. I like to use two columns of bullets for skills, since they tend to be one or two words.

Keep your headings simple. Record your employment experience in years. No one really cares the exact months you worked. And 2007-2008 looks much cleaner than January 2007 - September 2008. Using the shorter version saves room for all the employers and projects you need to fit into your headings. Also, leave out the donor's name. It doesn't matter who funded the project; that didn't affect your work.

Alanna Shaikh
PREVIOUS STORY:
How to Leave a Job You Hate
NEXT STORY:
Campaign about Apple Factories in China Gains Wide and Diverse Support

COMMENTS (1)

    Comment Policy

    · All fields are required to comment.

    [X]

    Comments on Change.org are meant for further exploration and evaluation of the campaign on Change.org. To that end, we welcome constructive comments. However, we reserve the right to delete comments which, as determined solely in our discretion: (1) are offensive, abusive, or off-topic; (2) include content solely intended to personally attack the campaign creator, (3) are designed to subvert or hijack comment threads rather than contribute to them; and/or (4) violate our terms of service and/or privacy policy. Repeat offenders may be permanently removed from the site at our discretion. Please also be advised that: (A) we do not actively curate and/or monitor in any manner whatsoever the comments made on the Change.org platform, and (B) the creator of each campaign on Change.org may remove any comment at her/his/its discretion.