Illinois Institute of Technology · Resumes & Cover Letters
You have ten seconds. Make them count.
Your resume is not a record of where you have been. It is a case for where you are going.
A strong resume does more than list jobs. It positions you as the right candidate for the role you want next — translating your education, experience, and skills into evidence an employer can act on in the ten to twenty seconds it takes to scan the page. And before a human ever reads it, software has to be able to read it too. Section 7 covers the cover letter, which does the one thing a resume cannot — argue why any of it matters to the employer reading it.
Common Questions About Resumes and Cover Letters
How do I write a resume? Start from the Illinois Tech resume template above, write achievements rather than duties, then book a free review with a career coach.
Where is the Illinois Tech resume template? In the first card above. It is ATS-friendly and built for our students, so you can focus on content instead of formatting.
What is an ATS and how do I get past it? An Applicant Tracking System parses your file before a person reads it. Section 1 explains how it reads your resume; section 2 lists the formatting rules that decide whether you are findable.
How long should my resume be? One page for most students. Two pages only once you have five or more years of relevant full-time experience.
What do I put on a resume with no experience? Coursework, class and personal projects, campus jobs, research, student organizations, and leadership roles all count. Section 4 lists the eight sections every strong resume carries.
Do I need a cover letter, and how do I write one? Write one whenever the application allows it. Section 7 has the four-paragraph structure plus annotated engineering samples.
Can I use AI to write my resume? Only narrowly, for finding missed keywords and proofreading. Never to write your bullets, and never as the last read before an employer sees it. Section 5 sets the limits.
Where can I get my resume reviewed for free? Thirty minutes with an Illinois Tech career coach, booked through Handshake. It is free to every student, at any stage of a draft.
Start Here
Illinois Tech Essentials
Resume Template
ATS-friendly, industry-standard layout built for Illinois Tech students — so you focus on content, not formatting.
Download the Template →Resume Guide
The full Illinois Tech guide with examples, section-by-section advice, and action-verb lists.
Open the Guide (PDF) →Free Review
Bring a draft to a career coach. Thirty free minutes with a human catches what no tool will.
Book a Coach →Do This First
The Thirty-Second Test — free, and better than most paid tools
Save your resume as plain text (File → Save As → .txt), then open it. Or select all, copy, and paste into a blank document.
If the order scrambles, if your contact details vanish, if bullets collapse into a wall of text — that is close to what the ATS sees. Fix what broke, and you have fixed your parsing problem. No subscription required.
Build your resume and cover letter — select a row to open it
1Get Past the Software. Get to the Human.
How an ATS actually reads your resume — and why that form makes you retype everything▾
Nearly every large employer runs applications through an Applicant Tracking System (Workday, Taleo, iCIMS, Greenhouse, Lever, SuccessFactors) — researchers detected one at 97.8 percent of Fortune 500 companies in 2025. The ATS does not decide whether to hire you. It decides whether a recruiter can find you.
Step One · Parse
Software reads your file and tries to sort the text into fields: name, employer, job title, dates, degree, skills. This is where most resumes break.
Step Two · Search
Your parsed record lands in a database. Recruiters search it by keyword, degree, school, and skill — the way you would search a spreadsheet.
Step Three · Shortlist
Some systems rank applicants against the posting. A human reviews the shortlist. If you parsed badly, you were never in the pile to begin with.
The Question Everyone Asks
“I just uploaded my resume — why is it making me type it all in again?”
Because that screen is the parser showing you its work. The ATS extracted what it could from your file and is asking you to confirm it. When a resume parses cleanly, those fields arrive already filled in and you simply click through. When it parses badly — columns, tables, text boxes, graphics, contact details stranded in a header — the fields come back empty, scrambled, or wrong, and you retype everything by hand.
The honest caveat: a few systems (Workday especially) will ask you to confirm no matter how clean your file is. You cannot always skip the step — but a well-built resume turns a twenty-minute retype into a two-minute review, and far more importantly, it means the recruiter’s search actually returns your name.
2The Formatting Rules That Decide It
Seven things to do, seven that quietly delete you from the search▾
Do This
One column, top to bottom. The parser reads like a book, not a magazine.
Boring section headings. Experience. Education. Skills. Exactly those words.
Contact info in the body. Never in the header or footer — many parsers ignore those entirely.
Send .docx, or a text-based PDF. If you cannot select the text with your cursor, neither can the ATS.
One date format throughout. Month YYYY – Month YYYY. Pick it and never deviate.
Spell it out, then abbreviate. Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Recruiters search both.
Mirror the posting’s exact words — wherever they are honestly true of you.
Do Not Do This
Tables, text boxes, or columns. Resumes built this way can lose half their content in parsing.
Graphics, logos, icons, headshots, skill bars. They carry no readable text. That rating dial says nothing.
Scanned or image-based PDFs. Also design-tool exports with outlined text — invisible to a parser.
Creative headings. “Where I’ve Made an Impact” maps to no field in any system.
White-text keyword stuffing. It is detected, and it gets you removed from consideration.
Acronyms alone. If the posting says “Python,” write Python — not just “scripting.”
Decorative fonts. Stick to Garamond, Cambria, Calibri, or Arial at 10–12 pt.
3Check It Against a Real Posting
Jobscan, Resume Worded, SkillSyncer, Teal — all with genuine free tiers▾
Resume Worded
Free overall quality score in about thirty seconds. Re-scan after each fix.
Score It →A score is a diagnostic, not a grade. Chase the missing keywords these tools surface — then stop. No recruiter has ever seen your match percentage.
4What Makes a Resume Work
Six principles, and the eight sections every strong resume carries▾
Six Principles
Length. One page for most students; two only with 5+ years of relevant full-time experience.
Typography. Professional fonts at 10–12 pt, consistent throughout.
Layout. Margins 0.5–1 inch, strategic white space, headings that stand out.
Accuracy. Zero typos. Have two or three people review before you submit.
Consistency. Uniform dates, titles, bullets, headings. The eye notices misalignment.
Scannability. Ten to twenty seconds — put the strongest evidence up top.
Essential Sections
Contact Info — name, phone, email, LinkedIn, location
Professional Summary — 2–3 lines on your value to the role
Education — degree, graduation, GPA if 3.0+, coursework
Technical Skills — languages, software, tools, certifications
Experience — action verbs plus quantified results
Projects — academic, personal, or hackathon work
Leadership & Activities — orgs, volunteer work, community
Honors & Awards — scholarships, wins, recognitions
5Where AI Helps, and Where It Does Not
A narrow, useful role — and why it never replaces a coach review▾
Start with a career coach, not a tool. A coach knows the employers hiring Illinois Tech students, reads your resume against the posting you are actually applying to, and will tell you the thing a tool will not. Career Services does not recommend outside AI as a substitute for professional resume review, and a resume written by AI reads like one. Where AI genuinely helps is narrower than most students assume: finding keywords you have missed, and catching mistakes on a final pass. Inside those limits, and with the rules below, it is a reasonable last step before you book your review.
Two things AI should never do for you. It should not write your bullets from scratch, and it should not be the last thing to read your resume before an employer does. Both of those are the coach’s job.
Claude — refine tone, tighten wording, get honest feedback.
Google Gemini — pull keywords and must-haves from a posting.
Microsoft Copilot — free, and works inside Word.
Grammarly — catch grammar, clarity, and tone issues.
Perplexity — research the company and the role before you write.
Best Practices
Tailor, don’t generate. Ask for keyword gaps — then write in your own voice.
Never fabricate. AI enhances real experience. It does not replace it.
Protect your privacy. Never paste your address or ID numbers into an AI tool.
Finish with a coach, always. Read it yourself, then book a review. This step is not optional.
Four Prompts Worth Stealing
Gaps: Here is my resume [paste] and this job description [paste]. List the 8 most important keywords missing from my resume and where I could add them honestly.
Bullets: Rewrite this bullet to open with a strong action verb and include a measurable result. Give three options: [paste].
Quantify: Ask me five questions about this experience to help me quantify my impact, then turn my answers into two bullets: [paste].
Proofread: Check this resume for grammar and consistency of tense, dates, and punctuation. List each fix — do not rewrite my content: [paste].
6Free Resources You Can Trust
Purdue OWL, Harvard, MIT, and the federal databases recruiters pull keywords from▾
Every link is genuinely free from a trusted source — no paywalls, no “free trial” traps. Skip any site that asks you to pay to download your own resume.
Writing Guides
Purdue OWL — the gold standard
Harvard — build a strong resume
MIT — action verbs
The Muse — advice library
Government Data
CareerOneStop — Dept. of Labor
BLS Outlook — role keywords
O*NET OnLine — skills by job
ATS & Templates
Jobscan — free ATS scans
Resume Worded — free score
Overleaf — LaTeX templates
Illinois Tech Template
Illinois Tech
Handshake — jobs & internships
LinkedIn Index — see the #Resume section
Elevate Careers Hub
7The Cover Letter
Four paragraphs, and the annotated engineering examples worth copying the structure of▾
A resume lists what you did. A cover letter argues why it matters to this employer, for this role. That is the only job it has, and it is the reason a generic letter is worse than none — it takes the one chance you get to sound like a person and spends it sounding like everyone else.
The Only Structure You Need
One. Name the role and where you found it, then say in a sentence why you are writing. No throat-clearing.
Two. Pull two or three requirements straight from the posting and give evidence you meet them. Specific projects, specific tools, specific results.
Three. Show you know the organization. One concrete detail about their work is worth more than a paragraph of flattery.
Four. Thank them, state your availability, and close. One page, three to four paragraphs, never more.
Annotated Engineering Samples
Real letters with margin notes explaining why each line is there. The fastest way to learn the form.
Carnegie Mellon — undergraduate engineering →four annotated letters: civil and environmental, mechanical, materials and biomedical, electrical and computer Carnegie Mellon — graduate students →R&D, computer vision, and machine learning research roles, plus a twenty-point self-review checklist The letter beside the job posting →numbered callouts mapping every claim back to a requirement — the single best thing here on tailoringLearn the Writing
Instruction rather than checklists, for when you are stuck on what to actually say.
Purdue OWL — cover letters →the standard reference, taught as writing: purpose, audience, and what each paragraph is doing Purdue OWL annotated sample (PDF) →a full letter with each section labelled and explained MIT — how to write an effective cover letter →strongest guidance on the hardest case: when your degree does not obviously match the jobTemplates and Checklists
Start from a structure instead of a blank page, then check it before you send.
Stanford Career Education →template, worksheet, review checklist, and five sample letters — all editable documents MIT sample cover letters →six by field, including mechanical and environmental engineering and two consulting examples Northwestern Engineering guide (PDF) →includes a chemical engineering internship letter with the tailoring highlightedBeyond the Application Letter
Yale — cover letters and correspondence →samples by stage, plus the acceptance, withdrawal, and follow-up letters almost nobody teaches Illinois Engineering Career Services →the Anatomy of a Cover Letter breakdown and a Top Ten Reasons to Hire Me worksheetFour Mistakes That Cost You
Restating the resume. They already have it. Tell them what it does not say.
Writing about yourself only. Every paragraph should connect to something the employer needs.
The wrong company name. It happens constantly with reused letters, and it ends the application.
Sending it unread aloud. Read the whole thing out loud once. You will hear what your eyes skip.
Writing a letter for a field where your background is not an obvious fit, or applying from outside the United States? Those are the two cases where a coach is worth the thirty minutes — the framing is genuinely harder and no template solves it.
A resume opens the door. A letter tells them why to hold it.
Career Services helps you write the one that does.
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All external resources independently verified by Career Services, August 2026. ATS usage figure: Jobscan 2025 Fortune 500 research.
