WISJ x SAGE Resume Workshop

On Saturday, April 23rd, WISJ hosted a resume workshop for high school girls in partnership with Students Advocating for Gender Equality (SAGE) at the American School in Japan (ASIJ).

Participants learned how to make their resumes stand out on internship applications. Often, high school students list every activity they’re involved in with the hopes of impressing the reader with a long list of experiences. Quality is more important than quality, however! Workshop participants learned how to narrow down their list of activities, as well as how to use active verbs to describe the activities that are most relevant to the positions they’re applying to.

Noe Topping, the WISJ representative at ASIJ, landed a summer research internship in Tokyo by cold-emailing professors. She shared her insights on finding research opportunities in Japan. It’s key to craft an email that strikes the right balance between describing your personal goals and demonstrating your understanding of the professor’s body of work.

In addition to the main workshop, each student had the chance to meet with Yukari Nakano, an HR expert in Japan with more than 10 years experience working for multinational companies. Before the workshop, Yukari reviewed each submitted resume and provided feedback to each student 1-on-1. Each student left the workshop with actionable steps to improve their existing resume, as well as exclusive resume templates and resources created just for this workshop.

All said and done, 100% of the students that completed the post-event survey would highly recommend our resume workshop to a friend!

Of course, it’s not only high school students that need a little help with their resumes. If you are hoping to update your resume or CV, check out our mentorship program and connect with our community of women scientists in Japan.