How to describe 5 Spirit Box skills for a high-impact first resume
By: Aria Spears
One benefit of implementing the Spirit Box program is the real-world business experience. When you graduate, you will walk away with concrete experiences and not just ideas from books. This can be a great advantage to you as you look for a job and pursue further education. But it will only serve as an advantage if you can communicate it in an effective way to others.
Spirit Box is designed to help you obtain real-world experience in problem-solving, financial management, customer service, marketing and teamwork. Below you’ll find some tips to help you communicate your Spirit Box experience on your resume in these five key areas.
Problem-solving
Problem-solving is a skill you will need in every job and in every field. Obstacles and limitations are sure to come, and problem-solving abilities can help you overcome them.
Communicating your problem-solving experiences with Spirit Box may seem hard at first but it is definitely possible. Whenever you face a problem, you have an opportunity to problem-solve!
Think through some of the problems your Spirit Box team faced in the last school year. Here are some examples to get you started:
The contracted school vending machine vendor started selling some of the same products your team sells in the Spirit Box.
The school decided to cut some of your team’s funding.
Your sport or music practice time changed and you had to rearrange your schedule to participate in Spirit Box.
The sales reporting went down for a week and your team needed to calculate the end-of-quarter sales.
The person in charge of marketing decided they wanted to leave the Spirit Box team.
There are a variety of ways in which you might have problem-solved with your team and this is practice for problem-solving with greater challenges in the future. Communicating your problem-solving skills can go a long way in not just telling a hiring manager you have a skill, but showing them. Briefly explain the details and add numbers where you can. Check out the example below.
INSTEAD OF THIS:
Problem-solving
DO THIS:
Problem-solved with my team in response to increased market competition. Launched a new product and increased sales by 21% over three months.
Financial management
You may have a role in managing the finances for Spirit Box. This is a helpful skill in a variety of roles and industries because departments of all kinds require funds to operate. You can read more about managing Spirit Box finances here, but for now, consider some of the skills you use in financial management:
Calculating costs to start your business
Calculating costs to run your business
Calculating how much revenue you will need to make it to break-even on expenses.
Create a budget as well as establish financial goals
Track revenue coming in and expenses going out.
This is not an exhaustive list; there are many ways that you practice financial management through Spirit Box. When you write your resume, get specific about the types of skills you used throughout the process. Did you compile sales reports? Did you ever explain those sales reports to the team to help them understand how the business was doing? Did you provide information to help everyone set a financial goal for the school year? Be specific!
INSTEAD OF THIS:
Financial management
DO THIS:
Compiled all sales report data on a weekly and quarterly basis for team
Created team budget for the year
Tracked all revenue and expenses
Customer service
Without customers, there is no business. Excellent customer service is one thing that keeps customers coming back time and again. If you work in the Spirit Box team’s customer service efforts, you have invaluable experience to add to your resume. Once again, let’s consider all of the potential activities involved in customer service:
Engaging in a positive and friendly manner with a variety of people
Training others in how to help customers with great service
Listening and asking questions to ensure you understand the problem
Providing relevant solutions and information to customers to help them
Applying customer feedback to the business or products to add value
Customer service seems simple, but as you can see, there is a lot that goes into it! And you want to ensure your resume reflects the many different skills you practice, all under the customer service umbrella. Below you’ll find an example.
INSTEAD OF THIS:
Customer service
DO THIS:
Provided top-notch customer service through listening, asking questions and providing information to customers in a positive and friendly way.
Marketing
Marketing is what gets your products in front of the right people with the right message. If you work primarily in the marketing efforts on your Spirit Box team, there are likely many ways you can communicate your experiences. Marketing can take many different forms, but here are some common activities you might engage in with Spirit Box:
Graphic design for social media, advertising, etc.
Writing the copy (messages and words) for social media posts, ads, product descriptions, etc.
Creating videos or taking photos of products
Monitoring the success of different marketing efforts and campaigns
Creating a larger strategy for how all of the different marketing channels work together
There are many more ways you might contribute to your team’s marketing efforts. Remember that marketing is a very broad umbrella, and it contains a huge number of different skills. The more specific you can be about what you did, the more you will show the hiring manager your capabilities.
INSTEAD OF THIS:
Marketing
DO THIS:
Regularly directed and edited videos to display different products and grew the team following from 15 to 543 in one school year.
Designed 12 social media posts and 5 different posters for two sales campaigns in one semester. Exceeded sales goal by 12%.
Teamwork
Collaboration and teamwork might be some of the most underrated skills you can bring to a job. Getting along with others and reaching common goals do take work and effort, and if you have practiced those skills in your time in the Spirit Box program, be sure to show it on your resume!
Let’s review a few of the skills required to work well with others on a team:
Listening to others’ ideas and thoughts
Leading effective and organized meetings
Communicating your own ideas and thoughts so others can understand
Resolving conflict and disagreements between people
Collaborating with each person’s unique skills to reach group goals
Maintaining a positive attitude when challenges come
You can likely think of more skills that helped you work well with your Spirit Box team. Each person brings a different perspective, and if you’re not quite sure how you fit into the team’s collaboration, feel free to check out this article on team roles not related to your job title. For now, here is an example of showing teamwork on your resume:
INSTEAD OF THIS:
Teamwork
DO THIS:
Maintained a positive attitude and encouraged my teammates when we faced problems
Created agendas for team meetings and kept the team on track in our discussions