Introduction to Indesign and Writing A Great Resume

Hello Students,

ROP stresses a strong foundation in the basics of career development skills. We will introduce that foundation today by learning how to write a resume. This is just the first part to your career skills portfolio. In this class you will develop:

• A Website Portfolio containing three of your best work examples and a written explanation of each piece
• Letter of Introduction
• Resume
• List of References
• Letter of Recommendation

Introduction to Indesign:

Indesign is a powerful document layout and creation software. You can create everything from simple 1 page documents to tri-fold brochures and even entire books. We will learn the basics of Indesign and use it to create our resumes. Watch the screencasts below and work through the tasks in each video, I will play these for the class as well.

Link to Introduction to Indesign Screencasts:  http://www.wwu.edu/techcenter/webresources/video/indesign/indesign_intro.shtml

Writing a Resume:

A resume is the first key piece you need to begin a successful job. 

It should describe:

• Who you are
• Your job objective
• How you can be contacted
• Your level of education
• Your work history or experience
• You special skills and abilities

Make you resume well written, without typo's, mistakes or incorrect or misleading information. You resume's appearance will reflect your ability to organize. Use bold text and clean formatting to highlight the different sections of your resume. Make it easy to search out the information that your potential employer wants to see...

A resume is meant to convey an impression of your skills and experience, it's appearance also says a lot about your organizational skills and attention to detail. Note the difference in layout styles above.

You should use a document layout program, such as Indesign or Word, so you can control the appearance of your resume. Additionally you should save your resume in a format that can travel over the internet or email easily, such as a PDF file.

Download the ROP Portfolio Handbook and begin working on your resume. The handbook has an example of a resume and a good list of information to include in yours.


If you have advanced skills, use this tutorial to create a grid-based layout for your resume: Grid Based Resume Layout Tutorial

Resume's are due on Monday

Have fun!

 - Mr.W