Translating research into a resume

manpreet Best Answer 2 years ago

I am a pure mathematics undergraduate at an American school interested in pursuing internships in quantitative finance. The past few summers I have worked at various universities doing NSF-sponsored Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) programs, where I worked on pure mathematics research problems. I am struggling to explain what I did in these programs on my resume. Almost all of the work was theoretical (i.e. pen and paper) and highly technical.

Should I phrase my experience and responsibilities in layman's terms so that HR can process my resume efficiently? Or should I state exactly what I proved?

Even if I were told to phrase it in every-day language, I would struggle. The most recent project, for example, was on a regularity problem. How do I phrase my theoretical results without making my resume inaccessible?

manpreet 2 years ago

Frame the research experience around what employers like to hear as well as any accomplishments that you may have. If you worked in a team, frame it as "Worked in a team of X students on a novel mathematics research paper", "Presented Mathematics research to audience of X faculty members", "Published mathematics research in industry journal" or similar. Unless what you proved is specific to the job (i.e. a large advancement on the Netflix problem, and you want to work for Netflix in the department that develops the algorithms for showing suggested movies), the hiring managers and HR will care more about the thought process and how you went about solving and presenting your solution to the problem than about what the solution or even problem itself was. They'll also want to see that you were successful and have the commensurate experiences to prove it.

Chances are the interviewer will ask you to describe your project. When that happens, focus more on the implications of the solution and general methods you used to figure out that solution rather than getting into the weeds.