Updating Your Resume

Updating Your Resume

My goal is both personal and professional when it comes to my motivation for pursuing a BA.GS. My goal is to become a certified residential appraiser, which requires a Bachelor’s degree in order to take the state certification exam, although it doesn’t matter what you get your Bachelor’s degree in. My personal motivation for pursuing this goal mostly stems from wanting to improve my social status in life as I’ve gotten older, grown more mature, and want to prove to myself and others that I’m fully capable of becoming a college graduate. Becoming a college graduate is something that’s been very elusive to me, but I’m finally closing in on it after many years, and many failed prior attempts.

I have discovered through using the SMART worksheet four measurable ways to track my progress toward completing my goal, two long-term and two short-term. My first short-term measurable method will be becoming a Senior here at SNHU, which will put me that much closer to my goal. My second short-term measurable method will be reaching my halfway point for apprenticeship hours which is around 1000 training hours to become a certified residential appraiser. My first long-term measurable method will be based on graduating from SNHU with my BA.GS. My second long-term measurable method will be completing my 2000 required apprenticeship hours before going on to take my certified residential state exam. All four of these measurable methods that I have listed are simple enough to help track my progression toward my goal.

The inherent strength that sticks with me most and I feel fits me best from my list is “Dedicated”. School is all about being dedicated to it; as long as you stay dedicated to what you want to achieve in school, you’ll do just fine. I haven’t always been a person that I would consider to be dedicated as I wouldn’t always finish things when starting them. As I found my motivation towards school and my goal, I have become a much more dedicated student, which is key to being a successful student. I believe this also stems simply from getting older and more mature as you generally become more responsible. The way to leverage this towards my goal is to simply stay dedicated and keep my eyes on the prize.

The inherent weakness that I believe will be the most difficult for me is the “Difficult to Relax.” I’ve always been a “hot head,” but I’ve calmed down by using different techniques over the years to try and help to relax during stressful situations. I believe this will be the most difficult because the field that I’m planning on getting into is a high-stress career. I do believe it works both ways if you can at least get yourself under control and are able to relax even a little bit. The reason I think it works both ways is because I find that I actually thrive under stressful situations, which leads to my work getting done that much faster.

There are a lot of different driving forces behind my drive to succeed in accomplishing my goal. From a professional standpoint, I’ve never been happy with the professional side of my life as far as jobs go, especially when it has come to working with and more so for individuals that I’ve felt were not as hard of a worker as myself, but were financially better off than me. The personal side of my passion for this is the real driving force behind all of this. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve naturally wanted more things to happen in my life, like marriage and kids, which are incredibly expensive. I’ve been with my girlfriend for going on six years now which is a major reason for this turnaround. The biggest reason of all is to show not just everyone that doubted me or wrote me off but to show myself that I can actually make this happen and that I had it in me all along.

The estimated time for me to achieve my goal is about eighteen months. I anticipate finishing my BA.GS degree in December of 2018 (about 15 months), so this lines up fairly well with my specific goal timeline. After graduating from SNHU in December of 2018, I should be done with my apprenticeship training hours, so all that will then need to take place is scheduling, preparing, and passing the state exam to become a certified residential appraiser, and my journey to my goal will come to a close.

There are many KSAs that relate to my specific goal of becoming a certified residential appraiser, some that are essential and others that I simply just desire as they would still be beneficial to have them rather than not. There are a few areas of knowledge that stand out, the first of which is administration and management because, as a residential appraiser, you do most of the administration work yourself as the majority of the time, you’re a sub-contractor. Surprising to most people, you wouldn’t think that having a background in building and construction would have a large impact on my goal of being a residential appraiser, but it is immensely helpful in knowing how buildings are constructed and with what materials.

Most skills are extremely important and much more of a necessity than simply just desired when it comes to my goal. The first of which is mathematics; now, I’ve never been that great at math, it has always been my least favorite subject in school, but appraising revolves around mathematics, so I’ve grown to at least tolerate it. You do a lot of writing as an appraiser between taking notes and filling out your forms, you must sound knowledgeable with how you word everything, or under-writers (reviewers) will ask you to “touch up” and explain your work more thoroughly. Critical thinking is a major skill that is necessary to be a residential appraiser as your entire job is more or less opinion based; it requires a mass amount of critical thinking to solve the numerous problems that you come across. The last skill that managed to catch my eye out of the many that I found to be probably the most essential is time management because it’s necessary to have great time management in most jobs, and residential appraising is no different. You tend to work off of appointments as a residential appraiser so you need to understand how to map out your routes from property to property on a daily basis to get to your appointments on time and still manage to leave yourself with enough time at the end of the day to finish your paperwork.

When it comes to different ability sets for my goal, there weren’t really too many that stood out as essential to me. Although, the number facility is one that greatly stood out as you do a lot of on-the-fly math when it comes to measuring and dealing with square footage. Selective attention is another ability that is essential to have to be a residential appraiser and one that I personally have struggled with for a long time but have thankfully gotten better with as I’ve gotten older. Both near and far vision is essential for dealing with the day-to-day job of being a residential appraiser, as it probably is with most other careers. No other abilities really stick out to me as essential, but most of the rest are desirable in some way or another as they would probably make you a better appraiser, and they wouldn’t hurt to have as strengths.

My concentration that I’ve gone with for my BA.GS is business administration because this was what I was planning on getting my Bachelor’s degree in prior to swapping to a general studies major. A concentration in business administration aligns perfectly with my goal of being a residential appraiser because what you learn through your business classes you will be able to take apply directly to the business that you’re working in to make you a better employee or employer. One class that I’ve already taken within my concentration prior to coming to SNHU was Principles of Management which is a great class to take to learn more about the management side of a business which is great for the field that I am going into, which is mostly dealing with small business instead of large corporations. Prior to SNHU, I’ve also already completed both micro and macroeconomics,

which are essential to know the ins and outs of any type of business. The other two courses that I will more than likely end up taking for my concentration of business administration with be human resource management and organizational behavior; both of these courses I feel are better suited for a large-scale business which won’t be what I’m dealing with with, at least early on, but it will still be great knowledge to have it our business ever takes that leap into becoming a larger business.

Having a large number of different strengths in your arsenal is an obvious huge plus when it comes not only to college coursework but arguably even more so when you start your career following obtaining your degree. My current areas of strength, as I listed in my module one journal for this course, revolve around being dedicated, being direct and honest, and being excellent at organizing. Most of these strengths to me are not something you necessarily learn in school or working for somebody, but simply based on your personality outside of possibly the strength of being excellent at organizing. College, more so than high school, majorly taught me how to become more organized because it was of immense importance in college for me to keep everything organized to be able to be much more efficient with my time. These strengths will be extremely important as I move forward in attempting to complete my goal of finishing my BA.GS and on to becoming a certified residential appraiser. Dedication is an enormous reason why I decided to come back to school and set this goal up for myself as well as being able to be direct and honest with myself about my life situation.

When it comes to being a certified residential appraiser, there is a massive amount of KSAs that are beneficial to you to make you a much better appraiser. There are a few that I listed from milestone two that I would consider far from being a strength, unfortunately, but being able to recognize that they are indeed a weakness is beneficial because it means that I can take that and work on them to hopefully turn them into a strength to make myself a better appraiser in the long run. As I look through my milestone two assignment, there are a few KSAs that I listed that are definitely weaknesses for myself that I hope to be able to turn around in the future. The first KSA that I find to be a weakness for me is math in general, as math was always the subject that I struggled with the most throughout all forms of schooling that I’ve done now, but it, unfortunately, is a major necessity in appraising so I have to learn to love it and hopefully become better at it. Time management is the next KSA that stuck out to me; fortunately for me, this is an area that I’ve gotten better with as I’ve gotten older, but I still, at times, find myself struggling with it when hit with many deadlines at once which is basically the life of a residential appraiser, but I believe that through more practice with it, I’ll be able to become great at time management. The last KSA from milestone two that stuck out as a weakness to me is selective attention, which is probably the largest weakness that I’ve had for as long as I can remember. It’s always been extremely difficult for me to keep my attention on one specific activity for a long period of time which is a large problem because, as a residential appraiser, you generally work on a single appraisal for several hours at once. Unfortunately, I’m not sure that this is an area that can be learned, but hopefully, I’m able to figure something out so that it doesn’t gimp my work production too much.

The three categories or domains that I’ll be using to group my strengths and weaknesses are math, business, and communication. The three courses that will be contained within my math domain in order to achieve my goal of becoming a certified residential appraiser are Applied Statistics (MAT-240), my Math Elective (MAT-ELE), as well as Financial Accounting (ACC- 201) which I felt could be included in either my math or business domain so I just decided to include it here. These courses will help with my math KSA as I continue to strive to become a better math student. The three courses included in my communication domain include three courses that I took prior to coming to SNHU, all of which are counted as Communication

Elective (COM-ELE), but I believe they were called Introduction to Communication, Introduction to Interpersonal Communication, and Public Speaking prior to transferring. The three courses that I included within my business domain are Principles of Management (OL- 215), Microeconomics (ECO-201), and Macroeconomics (ECO-202). These business courses will help immensely with my KSAs as I plan on working in a small business setting.

With this term quickly coming to a close and with the position that I am in both this class as well as my other class for this term, I believe that it’s safe to assume that I will pass both with a respectable grade and thus earn myself six more credits towards earning my BA.GS. With this, I will have forty-seven remaining credits, most of which are elective courses, but I am trying to make the most out of even the elective courses I have left to set myself up for my future career as a certified residential appraiser. An additional short-term goal that I’ve had since starting here at SNHU has been to graduate by December of 2018 just to be able to start my career that much sooner. In order to pull this off, I will have to take on an additional course during two terms, so instead of taking two courses per term, I will take three courses during two terms and two courses for the rest of the terms. I am on pace to make this goal a reality, and for the other graduation requirements, I currently meet the GPA requirement with a 4.0. I will need eighteen more institutional credits, which will just come as I take more courses on top of the individual coursework of three more of my Business Administration concentration courses and my one IDS-40(0)(1)(2)(3)(4) course that I have left to complete other than the many electives that I have left to take in order to obtain the necessary credits.

This course has taught me much and reassured my choice to go after my BA.GS as opposed to getting my Bachelor’s in Business Administration. This course has truly shown me the relevance of actually obtaining your BA.GS. Both would be great for my goal of being a certified residential appraiser, but I do believe in having the well-rounded amount of knowledge that I’ll have through obtaining my BA.GS and taking the courses that come along with it will take me further as I progress through my career. There’s so much diversity when it comes to the BA.GS, as opposed to other degrees, is great in today’s business world, where companies are constantly looking for qualified individuals who are also able to be cross-trained across multiple departments, which makes the BA.GS is great.

References

Conrad, C., & Dunek, L. (2012). Cultivating Inquiry-Driven Learners: a College Education for the Twenty-First Century. Johns Hopkins University Press.

National Center for O*NET Development. 13-2021.02. O*NET OnLine. Retrieved October 8, 2017, from https://www.onetonline.org/link/summary/13-2021.02

(n.d.). Retrieved October 08, 2017, from http://www.naceweb.org/career-development/trends-and-predictions/job-outlook-2016-attributes-employers-want-to-see-on-new-college-graduates-resumes/

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (n.d.). Retrieved October 08, 2017, from https://www.bls.gov/

ORDER A PLAGIARISM-FREE PAPER HERE

We’ll write everything from scratch

---

Consider your current skill set, academic plan, and/or resume and how these align with your career goals. Use this information to respond to the following:

When was the last time you updated your resume? Discuss two to three things you might do differently to your resume that would help you in a future job search. (If you do not have a resume, discuss two sections that stand out to you from this week’s learning.)

What additional educational or technical skills might you need to qualify for jobs in your chosen industry? Do you have a plan to close any of those gaps? Explain.