I have a huge problem, i am putting my FRC team as an activity on a resume, and the teacher wants me to say more than “Build a robot in 6 weeks, then compete” A little help would be greatly appreciated.
I had a small sub-bullet that said the following (From my college sophomore year). In retrospect its not that great of a blurb, it could be a lot more specific to what I did. I got pretty lucky too, the manager I interviewed with had been on a team back in '94.
FIRST Robotics, (2004-2009)
Teams of high school students and adult mentors, design, build and construct a 120 lb robot in six weeks. Extremely
involved high school participant. Experience with design, metal fabrication, wiring, systems integration, testing.
As is the general case with resumes, you need to highlight specific skills you’ve learned and responsibilities you’ve had while on your team.
Important phrases like “work in a team”, “problem solving”, “systems engineering”, and “leadership” are pretty obvious when looking at the experiences students have on a FIRST team.
I think more important than describing FIRST, even, is outlining your leadership and involvement in the team. Remember - a resume should focus on you and what makes you qualified, so if you can say “FIRST is this, and we did this” that’s good, but if you can say “As elected team leader / lead programmer / head of inventory, I was responsible for X, Y and Z” that’s much better. You want to convince them that you’re a team player who can get along with others, while also being capable of making decisions and putting forth your own ideas.
With that said,
“FIRST is an international robotics competition in which teams of high-school students from across the world are given 6 weeks to design, build, and program a functional robot which is able to fulfill the unique and complex challenges specific to that year’s game.”
your responsibilities and leadership roles, especially elected positions ]
You definitely want to be results based and get into the skills you achieved. Although we’re in different points in our FRC careers, you can see my resume at jessicaboucher.com.
If you’re looking for general resume advice, rezscore.com is pretty good.
Thank you everyone, i really appreciate your help. any more ideas would be great too.