Quintessential Resumes and Cover Letters Tips
Providing daily suggestions for making your resume, cover letter, and other career-marketing communications as effective as they can be.
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Don't Write Your Resume in the Third Person
Hiring decision-makers surveyed for the book, Top Notch Executive Resumes identified this as one of their Top 30 Executive Resume Pet Peeves: Resume is written in third-person. Survey respondents were surprisingly vocal in their irritation over this resume affectation. Although the pronoun “I” is generally not used in resume, it is the understood — but unwritten — subject of a resume’s bullet points. Note that “I” is the unwritten subject of this... |
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Demonstrate Enthusiasm and Passion in Your Cover Letter
In your cover letter, choose words that show enthusiasm and passion for the position you seek … (big, big secret!), suggests Jimmy Sweeney in his article for Quint Careers, the 7 Elements of a Highly Effective Cover Letter. Then, carry this passion into the interview with you. |
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Worksheet Can Help You Customize Resume for Targeted Position
In additional to a possible range of organizational and delivery formats for your resume, you will probably want to customize each resume you send — at least to some extent — to the job you’re applying for. Use our Cover Letter and Resume Customization Worksheet to help you customize. |
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Quick Guidelines on Cover-Letter Components
Here’s a quick rundown of what your cover letter should entail, says the Career Doctor, Randall S. Hansen, PhD. First, the length. Always err on the side of being brief, so no more than one page, and really about four paragraphs total. If it’s an email cover letter, it should be even shorter. Second, the content. The first paragraph must engage the reader. Make it dynamic. Make it weave the reader into the rest of the letter. Don’t waste it with some boring formulaic sentence. The... |
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Summertime, Sluggish Economy Provide Strong Motivation for an Updated Resume
As a member of a community of resume writers, career coaches, and other career experts called the Career Collective, I am posting this entry on the summertime topic “Heating Up Your Job Search,” along with links to other members’ responses at the end of this entry. Please follow our hashtag on Twitter: #careercollective. While job-seekers may resist crafting a new resume because they suspect employers aren’t hiring during the summer — especially in a recession... |
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Give Relevant Examples in Resume and Cover Letter
Make sure your examples in your resume and cover letter “are relevant to the position for which you are applying, advises Peggy Klaus in her article for Quint Careers, Are You Up To Snuff When It Comes To Soft Skills? For instance, what would be more relevant to a non-profit charitable organization — that you raised a substantial amount of money for a do-good cause, motivating hundreds in your company to participate, or that you sold more widgets in China than any other division? As... |
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Research the Company to Create Better Job-Search Documents
It seems cliched or redundant to mention researching the company before forwarding your documents, but it’s amazing on how many job-seekers fail to do just that. It’s pivotal that you take a “quality, not quantity” approach to your job search, declares Teena Rose in her article for Quint Careers, Optimizing Your Cold-Contact Cover Letter. Focusing your efforts on targeting, researching, and applying to a small and specific, targeted list of employers will generate... |
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Format Your Resume for the Reader
Formatting your executive resume for the reader is one of the trends executive resume and branding expert Meg Guiseppi writes about in her article for Quint Careers, Five Top Trends for Executive Resumes. Guiseppi notes that more and more hiring decision-makers at the executive level are reviewing resumes on Blackberry-type devices when they are on the go. Brief, concise, brand-focused statements of value surrounded by enough white space to make them stand out will have the greatest impact.... |
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Defining the Cold-Contact Cover Letter
A cover letter sent to a company that may not have publicly advertised positions is called a cold-contact letter, explains Teena Rose in her article for Quint Careers, Optimizing Your Cold-Contact Cover Letter. You’re contacting the employer to introduce yourself with the hope that it may spark an interest and result in a warm lead (also known as an interview). For obvious reasons, a cold-contact letter will generate the fewest leads, so paying special attention to the content and adding... |
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Include a Personal-Branding/Leadership Statement on Resume
Including a leadership/personal brand statement is one of the trends executive resume and branding expert Meg Guiseppi writes about in her article for Quint Careers, Five Top Trends for Executive Resumes. Guiseppi advises: Begin to build a vibrant message highlighting your vitality, pivotal leadership strengths, and unique value proposition by answering questions like this: What jazzes you about your work each and every day? What are you most passionate about getting to and accomplishing at... |
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Strong Cover Letter Will Help Sell You
A strong cover letter doesn’t just create a good impression — it helps you sell yourself, declares Elizabeth Freedman in her article for Quint Careers, Cover Letters That Count. But selling yourself isn’t always easy. So use a technique that marketers use to sell us stuff: the convince … that … because method. When drafting your cover letter, think about the following: Whom do you want to convince? For instance, you might be writing to a hiring manager who needs... |
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Watch Excessive Wordiness, Info Overload in Resume
Hiring decision-makers surveyed for the book, Top Notch Executive Resumes identified this as one of their Top 30 Executive Resume Pet Peeves: Resume is too wordy, contains too much information. Strike a balance between a meaty, content-rich resume and a concise, readable document. Employers want both. Limit bullet points while still telling your full story. Cut out unnecessary words. If you’ve sliced out as much as you can and the resume still looks text-dense, look for ways to break... |
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In Cover Letter, Focus on What You Can Do for Employer
Focus in your cover letter on what you can do for the employer, suggests Jimmy Sweeney in his article for Quint Careers, the 7 Elements of a Highly Effective Cover Letter. How can you benefit the company specifically? Do a little research and relate this value-added simply and clearly in your letter. |
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You May Need More Than One Delivery Format for Your Resume
See table below for the most common delivery formats. One additional delivery format to consider is a Portable Document Format (PDF) resume, which offers the advantages of being completely invulnerable to viruses and totally compatible across computer systems (requires software such as Adobe Acrobat Reader, a free download, to be opened and read). A resume converted to PDF, which carries a .pdf file extension, looks virtually identical to the original document from which it was created,... |
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Cover Letter Should Show Your Fit with Employer
A cover letter specifically addresses the job you are seeking and how your unique attributes make you the ideal candidate — the ideal fit — for the job and the organization, says the Career Doctor, Randall S. Hansen, PhD. For the complete lowdown on cover letters, see our Cover Letter Tutorial. |
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Use Accomplishments to Highlight Soft Skills
In your resume and cover letter, “weave in past accomplishments that highlight your soft skills in action,” writes Peggy Klaus in her article for Quint Careers, Are You Up To Snuff When It Comes To Soft Skills? “If you are having a hard time coming up with specifics, ask yourself: What have I done that demonstrates my problem-solving and critical-thinking abilities or my ability to lead and motivate others, especially under challenging circumstances? Try to recall a time when... |
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All About the Cold-Contact Cover Letter
A cover letter sent to a company that may not have publicly advertised positions is called a cold-contact letter, explains Teena Rose in her article for Quint Careers, Optimizing Your Cold-Contact Cover Letter. You’re contacting the employer to introduce yourself with the hope that it may spark an interest and result in a warm lead (also known as an interview). For obvious reasons, a cold-contact letter will generate the fewest leads, so paying special attention to the content and adding... |
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Consider Branding Statement for Your Resume
Including a leadership/personal brand statement is one of the trends executive resume and branding expert Meg Guiseppi writes about in her article for Quint Careers, Five Top Trends for Executive Resumes. Guiseppi advises: Begin to build a vibrant message highlighting your vitality, pivotal leadership strengths, and unique value proposition by answering questions like this: What jazzes you about your work each and every day? What are you most passionate about getting to and accomplishing at... |
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Cover Letter Helps You Make that Great First Impression
As the saying goes, we get only one chance to make a first impression, explains Elizabeth Freedman in her article for Quint Careers, Cover Letters That Count. In a competitive job market where human resources departments are flooded with applicants, a first impression may be your only opportunity to make an impact. When trying to land a first job or internship, a strong, succinct cover letter is one of the best tools you can use to get noticed. And unlike other first impressions, the cover letter... |
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Beware of the Too-Long Resume
Hiring decision-makers surveyed for the book, Top Notch Executive Resumes identified this as one of their Top 30 Executive Resume Pet Peeves: Resume is too long. While there is no consensus among employers and recruiters about resume length, most feel one page is too short. Maureen Crawford Hentz, manager of talent acquisition, development and compliance at Osram Sylvania, Boston MA, particularly disdains “abbreviated or ‘teaser’ resumes” that urge the recruiter,... |