Should I include all organizations and conferences on my resume?

[Ashley1nOnly]

I wanted to know if I should list every honor society and other organizations that I'm apart of or should I just pick a few? If I should pick a few then which ones are more important? Also, which conferences should I keep? I'm trying to condense my resume but I have a lot of leadership experiences(10) (president, Vice President, treasurer, newspaper editor) and conferences (8) that almost take a page.

 

[berkeman]

I wanted to know if I should list every honor society and other organizations that I'm apart of or should I just pick a few? If I should pick a few then which ones are more important? Also, which conferences should I keep? I'm trying to condense my resume but I have a lot of leadership experiences(10) (president, Vice President, treasurer, newspaper editor) and conferences (8) that almost take a page.

You don't say yet what level you are in school, or what positions you are applying for. That information would help us a lot in giving feedback.

That said, when we interview recent graduates, I personally like to see all of your honors and extra activities like conferences. You can organize your resume to have all of the summary information on the first page, and then expand on that in the next couple of pages. I wouldn't leave good stuff like that off of your resume just to make it shorter...

EDIT/ADD -- And be sure to include all of your leadership experience (on the later pages is fine). That shows a lot to the folks who are going to be interviewing you. Good job.

 

[Ashley1nOnly]

Applied physics
Post bachelors: Fall 2017 ( just graduated)
Post Bachelors Internship at national lab and APS bridge program
I would also like to prepare a nice resume for graduate school for th next cycle.

 

[Ashley1nOnly]

I would like to go into high energy physics, condensed matter physics or computational physics.

I've been able to get it down to two pages but I've been told I should get it down to one. I have seven research experiences at national laboratories that take an entire page. Then my leadership experiences and conferences take a page as well.

The reason I wanted to keep everything was because my leadership experiences account for what I did at the beginning of my school career. Then the research experiences show what I did for the rest of my time.

 

[Bigjoemonger]

You're resume needs to be tailored specifically to what you are using it for. It's not meant to list every single thing you ever did. Sure you have some leadership experience or conferences (whatever that means) but is it actually relevant to what you are applying for? Did you attend the conferences or did you present at them? If you only attended then it really only warrants one line on your resume, maybe a little more if you completed relevant workshops, certainly not a whole page worth of explanation. If you have anything on your resume resembling a paragraph, that means you have too much.

Later in your career when you have vast amounts of work experience then a longer multi-page resume is warranted. But fresh out of school if you hand them a multi page resume then it usually means it's filled with lots of irrelevant stuff. I've heard of recruiters glancing at a multi page resume, finding it unorganized and then put it right to the bottom of the stack. A typical recruiter will only spend about 15 seconds looking at your resume. If you have a second page they probably won't even read it.

If you do have a lot of relevant experience, like projects or reports, then consider making a website. On your resume put the title and a very brief description of the project. Then on the website go into as much detail as you want. And then put a link at the top of your resume.

 

[Ashley1nOnly]

How many honors society should one really keep on their resume? I have a lot that I joined but I feel as though only my schools officially honors program should be listed.

This will help condense it a lot.

 

[Choppy]

Something you should keep in mind is that if you're putting this together for academia, i.e. getting into a graduate program, is that they're not looking for a conventional "resume" in most cases, but a curriculum vitae.

A conventional resume should generally be kept to one or two pages in length because people reading dozens of them are unlikely to get through something that's much longer. A true CV on the other hand is more like a detailed record of everything academic that you've done. It should include a list of your peer-reviewed publications as well as conference abstracts. A CV is generally allowed to be longer than a couple of pages. That said, make sure to follow the specific format requested by the departments you're applying to.

Society memberships are not likely to be decisive factors in admission decisions, but they can demonstrate a willingness to get involved in a particular field. If you have to cut things out, start with those where you haven't really played much of an active role. The ones you want to highlight are the ones where you've accomplished objectives that you can articulate and demonstrate in an objective way. So for example, a high priority would go to having been the president of your local undergraduate physics society where you organized a series of student lectures, or started up a high-school outreach program. A low priority would be society memberships bestowed on you for having paid your $50 student membership fee.

 

[Dr. Courtney]

I usually recommend that students keep a longer CV that is comprehensive and then edit it down to custom resumes for each job application that calls for a 1-2 page resume, leaving the details that are likely most important for a given application.