The question: Do you need a resume for McDonald's? It is a completely fair question many people ask before applying for a position in one of the world's most famous fast-food restaurants. McDonald's offers a wide range of employment opportunities for job seekers so let me share the answer with you immediately:
If you want to apply for a specific position a McDonald's, you typically go into your local McDonald's and apply in person by filling out a job application. A resume is typically not part of the job application process and is not required. That being said, I completely recommend you take your resume with you and ensure it's included in your job application. So, the answer is: no, a resume is typically not required but I highly recommend you include it in your job application.
The idea to go above and beyond to include your resume with your McDonald's job application? I'M LOVING IT!
Not only do I recommend having a resume but I recommend you put the work in to ensure you tailor your resume accordingly to increase your hiring chances. Some of you may push back and state that it's “just a fast food restaurant” or “I don't need a resume to make minimum wage” and those perspectives make sense. But McDonald's is goin to hire the candidates that demonstrate the ability to work hard, and having the forethought to take your resume with you and include it in the job application demonstrates just that.
Benefits of Having a Good Resume
If you didn't know, a good resume highlights your educational qualifications, experience, and skills. It showcases your relevant abilities or skills for the job. Not only does a good resume grabs employers' or recruiters' attention, but it also increases your chances for actually getting the job (especially at McDonald's).
Besides, you need a resume to showcase your achievements. If you don't know how to write a professional resume, you can hire a resume writing service. But the down side of having a professional write your resume to apply at McDonald's where it is not a hard requirement does not really make sense. Therefore, I recommend using professional, reliable, and affordable resume template templates. If that's the route you want to take, feel free to look at my resume template bundle here. I believe it's affordable and will allow you to create your McDonald's resume in a few hours.
Resume templates allow you to quickly edit the information. Templates come in various designs, meaning you can choose the right one for a particular job position. That way, you can customize it to meet your specific circumstances. Besides, resume templates allow you to create your resume quickly.
How to Make a Good Resume
A resume is an excellent opportunity for you to tell employers about your education, skills, and experience. You can convince an employer that you belong in that particular job. My thought is that you may be wondering how to make a good resume. I recommend focusing on the following elements.
Contact Information
It includes your name, mailing address, and contact number. You can also include your email address if you have one.
Career Objective
Make sure you include your career objective. And yes, it is good to dream big even if it's on a resume for a job at McDonald's! But keep it brief. I recommend including a concise statement and focus on the type of work you want to seek. Make sure you tailor your career objective to your realistic career goals.
Summary of Qualifications
It is an essential resume section that provides an overview of your qualifications concisely. Make sure the summary aligns with your career objective. Focus on including your interpersonal, supervisory, communication, and organization skills.
But what if you are just entering the workplace and have no work experience? That's ok! Remember, you are applying at McDonald's; not NASA. You can still include areas and experiences in your life that you believe make you qualified for the job. Whether that is being part of an organization, volunteering experiences, or leadership experiences in other areas of life.
Education
I recommend listing your school, city, and state. Move to a separate line to list your degree, major, and graduation date. You can also list your professional certifications. Again, if you use a resume template it should make customizing your resume easy.
If you have minimal education or no education at all, that's ok! Just make it clear on the resume.
Work Experience
If you are in the fortunate circumstance to have various work experience, that is fantastic so ensure you actually include it. A good resume presents your work experience in reverse chronological order. (Make sure your most recent job is the first job listed on the resume.) Begin with your most recent or current job and work backward.
I will list out each component to include for your resume bullet points, but I wrote a very specific article on this to help you craft perfect resume bullet points. Go read it first and then come back. Focus on the following elements for each work experience:
- Title of position
- Company name and location
- Date of employment (for example, June 2, 2012 – December 13, 2020)
- Describe your duties with a focus on specific skills
- Describe your contributions and accomplishments
- Use action verbs to describe job responsibilities
Other Tips
- Use a font size of 10 to 14 points
- Use action verbs to express your experience
- Do not exaggerate your achievements (This is extremely important. Do not blow things out of proportion or it can come off as disingenuous.)
- Avoid including personal information, such as age, gender, etc.
- Stay concise and avoid jargons and abbreviations
- And yes, I'll state it again: Use a resume template
What should I put on my resume for McDonald's?
If you have gotten this far and have decided you want to include your resume to apply at McDonald's, I'm proud of you. But, what should you put on your resume? If you did not know, and you can see this directly on their site, McDonald's offers a wide range of job opportunities/positions. These include lice cook, server, barista, bartender, waiter, waitress, cashier, manager, accountant, driver, etc. Just like in any other industry I recommend you tailor your resume according to the job requirements.
The thing that helps the most with this is an overview of your experience. If you get one thing right on your resume, it needs to be your bullet points articulating your work experience. Did you skip over the article about crafting perfect bullet points I told you previously to go read? I'll give you another chance to stop, and go read it now!
You are applying at McDonald's so to get the job your most important goal is to make yourself stand out from the crowd in the most positive way.
For instance, if you want to apply for an accountant position, make sure you include skills. These include inventory tracking, cash flow, income statement preparation, reviewing financial transactions, etc.
Applying for a cook position? You list out your salt application skills to those delicious fries to people know you are a a big deal and can whip up a mean Big Mac.
McDonald's focuses on a fast-paced team environment. It means they require employees with excellent communication and collaboration skills. For example, you need to have solid communication if you are planning to work at the drive through window. So, if you have good communication skills, don't forget to include them in your resume.
Conclusion
This article may seem like overkill and is probably more than what you were thinking you'd get when asking the question if you needed a resume for McDonald's. Hopefully I offered you some advice and provided you with a few helpful tips on how to secure a position at McDonald's.
