UNO Students and Alumni...introducing:

The UNO OptimalResume service is a free and exciting partner in your career success. If you have never written a resume before or even if you have and need to update your version quickly and easily, OptimalResume will allow you to do that all in one place.

You can use this website to:

• Design high-impact resumes based on your major and career goals
• Easily create resumes in several formats, including Word® Compatible, Plain Text, PDF, and HTML
• Manage an unlimited number of resumes
• Include your resume in your own professional website, which you can update, deactivate, and reactivate as your career progresses

What is Optimal Resume?

OptimalResume is an online system that will assist students and alumni with creating career related documents but also helping in the career planning process. The UNO Office of Career Development has partnered with OptimalResume.com to provide the following services to University of New Orleans Students and Alumni:

Resume Builder

Even if this is your first resume, the Resume Builder makes the process fast and easy and ensures top-quality results. Career center professionals have carefully customized the Resume Builder so that you can create a professional resume that is appropriate for your career or employment objective.

To begin, you can choose from sample resume section sets for different majors, degree programs, and career tracks, or you can create your own resume sections. As you build your resume section-by-section, view hints, instructions, examples, and action words that have been created by career counselors to make the process straightforward and keep you on the right track.

Letter Builder

The Letter Builder makes it easy to create high-quality professional letters in a matter of minutes. Similar to the Resume Builder, the Letter Builder offers paragraph-by-paragraph instructions and examples developed by career center professionals to help you create effective employment letters for a variety of purposes.

The Letter Builder may be used to create:

• Cover letters
• Application letters
• Networking letters
• Rejection letters
• Withdrawal letters
• Broadcast letters
• Acceptance letters
• Follow-up letters
• Thank you letters

Skills Assessment

Skills Assessment helps you analyze your skills and experiences and present them in an attractive format on the professional website you create with the Website Builder.

There are two ways to evaluate your skills with Skills Assessment. One approach is to explore your experiences, which is recommended if you are not sure which skills you possess. The other approach is to describe your skills, which makes sense if you already know many of your skills. No matter which approach you take, the end result is to create an attractive page for your professional website that lists your marketable skills and provides information on each.

Website Builder

After you've created a resume with the Resume Builder and found an attractive presentation with the Resume Stylist, you can use the Website Builder to include it in your own professional website.
To begin, click New Website in the Document Center.

You will be asked to choose a website name, which will become part of the website URL (e.g.,niversityname.confidentialresume.com/WEBSITENAME), so choose a name that is both descriptive and professional.

The Website Builder has three major functional areas:

• Style Your Website
• Assign a Passkey to Your Website
• Select Your Website Content

To style your website, you can choose from different banners, colors, backgrounds, fonts, font sizes, and whether to display your university watermark in the background. Preview the different options until you find a website style you like.

It is important to understand that no one will be able to view your professional website until you activate it in the Document Center. For an added level of security, you can also assign a passkey to your website, which will prevent users who do not have the passkey from viewing it.

How does this work with the Opportunities Database?

It's simple. You will use UNO OptimalResume to create, perfect and manage your resumes and letters as well as the website builder. You can then save the resume on your hard drive or thumb drive and upload the final resume into the Opportunities Database for job searching functions, on campus interviewing and submission to career events.

I'm ready to get started...

All you have to do is complete the registration form and get going. The website is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

The UNO OptimalResume system will be up and running on August 11, 2008. Until then, you can visit the UNO OptimalResume site to learn more about the system