Results tagged “resumes” from Quintessential Resumes and Cover Letters Tips Blog

Don’t repeat your resume. Instead, use your cover letter to give context to the achievements and job functions listed in your resume. Frame your accomplishments with  the journalism questions — who, what, when, where, why and how — and do it succinctly. Use paragraphs to tell the story (the context) and bullets for achievements (results). You can write about each experience with the formula: situation, action and results.

This tip brought to you by OptimalResume.com, a cutting-edge technology firm specializing in flexible, online solutions for resumes, cover letters, interview preparation, portfolios, skills assessments, video resumes, and professional website creation, along with options for recruiters and employers to find, screen and interview candidates online. OptimalResume.com will debut its latest software, Optimal 2.0, in July 2009.

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The same rules that govern cover letters don't apply to their e-mailed counterparts. With e-mail cover letters, the goal is to write so the reader can see the entire letter when he or she first opens the email, which means your message must be shorter than a printed letter. Give a brief (few sentences) introduction of yourself and why you're writing. Follow with 3-5 relevant accomplishments or qualifications in bullet-point format.

This tip brought to you by OptimalResume.com, a cutting-edge technology firm specializing in flexible, online solutions for resumes, cover letters, interview preparation, portfolios, skills assessments, video resumes, and professional website creation, along with options for recruiters and employers to find, screen and interview candidates online. OptimalResume.com will debut its latest software, Optimal 2.0, in July 2009.

Need help with your resume, cover letter, or other career-marketing document? Order today from Quintessential Resumes and Cover Letters, powered by About Jobs Resume Writing Service.

Make use of your contacts. If someone referred you to an organization or a specific person, be sure to use your contact’s name early on in your cover letter, even in the first sentence. Something as simple ask, “John Smith at XYZ Co. referred me to you,” can help the reader make the connection.

This tip brought to you by OptimalResume.com, a cutting-edge technology firm specializing in flexible, online solutions for resumes, cover letters, interview preparation, portfolios, skills assessments, video resumes, and professional website creation, along with options for recruiters and employers to find, screen and interview candidates online. OptimalResume.com will debut its latest software, Optimal 2.0, in July 2009.

Need help with your resume, cover letter, or other career-marketing document? Order today from Quintessential Resumes and Cover Letters, powered by About Jobs Resume Writing Service.

Connect the dots for your reader in your cover letter. Show the reader how elements of your past experience have led you to apply for the job opening. When you’re finished, the cover letter should explain how your past experiences have made you qualified for and interested in the current position. Don’t feel obligated to include every experience; select the ones most relevant to the position.

This tip brought to you by OptimalResume.com, a cutting-edge technology firm specializing in flexible, online solutions for resumes, cover letters, interview preparation, portfolios, skills assessments, video resumes, and professional website creation, along with options for recruiters and employers to find, screen and interview candidates online. OptimalResume.com will debut its latest software, Optimal 2.0, in July 2009.

Need help with your resume, cover letter, or other career-marketing document? Order today from Quintessential Resumes and Cover Letters, powered by About Jobs Resume Writing Service.

This posting is a guest entry from the Career Doctor, Randall S. Hansen, PhD:

Ashley writes:

Dr. Hansen, I have gotten several different opinions on my resume, with some saying it’s good, and others saying I should have a functional resume. I have been to my college’s career services and other professors. So I am not really sure which is best for me. Should a new college grad have a functional resume? Should my resume be limited to one page? Please let me know what you think.

The Career Doctor responds:

Several things jump at me when I look at your resume. All job-seekers should remember that a resume is a strategic marketing document that must have two key elements: design and content.

First, let’s discuss design. Every design aspect must be consistent on your resume — same style of headings, same margins… a coherent and appealing look. One of my pet peeves deals with margins… I hate unusually narrow margins. There’s a rule of “thumb” with resumes — margins must be big enough for my (big) thumbs to hold on to it and not cover any content.

Resumes must also be designed with some flair, and job-seekers often accomplish this style through varying typography, font size, and font selection. Your name and major headings should be larger, perhaps in a different font. And be sure to include as much contact information as possible.

Second, let’s talk content. I would recommend you — and all job-seekers — use one of the “hotter” elements in resume writing — the “Qualifications Summary,” also sometimes referred to as “Professional Profile.” This section is what I like to refer to as the executive summary of your resume — it may change depending on what type of job you are seeking — but it should be the key 3-5 accomplishments that make you better than anyone else for the job you are seeking.

And as you write about your experience, remember to focus on accomplishments, keywords, and action verbs. Whenever possible, quantify your accomplishments.

As for resume length, the current rule is a resume is as long as it needs to be based on your experience, and college grads with lots of experience can have two-page resumes.

Get more information on resumes and resume-writing in this section of Quintessential Careers: Resume and CV Resources for Job-Seekers.

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College students with minimal experience to list on resumes and cover letters can brainstorm using our College Experience Worksheet for Resume Development.

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Inundated by resumes from job-seekers, employers have increasingly relied on digitizing resumes, placing those resumes in keyword-searchable databases, and using software to search those databases for specific keywords that relate to job vacancies. Most Fortune 1000 companies, in fact, and many smaller companies now use these technologies. In addition, many employers search the databases of third-party job-posting and resume-posting boards on the Internet. Based on figures from the early 2000s, it is safe to estimate that well over 80 percent of resumes are searched for job-specific keywords.

The bottom line is that if you apply for a job with a company that searches databases for keywords, and your resume doesn’t have the keywords the company seeks for the person who fills that job, you are pretty much dead in the water.

To some extent, job-seekers have no way of knowing what the words are that employers are looking for when they search resume databases. But job-seekers have information and a number of tools at their disposal that can help them make educated guesses as to which keywords the employer is looking for. See a detailed discussion of resume keywords and how to identify them in our article, Tapping the Power of Keywords to Enhance Your Resume’s Effectiveness and use our Keywords Worksheet to help identify keywords for use in your resume.

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“The most effective technique career changers can use in their resumes and cover letters is TRANSFERABLE SKILLS, TRANSFERABLE SKILLS, TRANSFERABLE SKILLS,” writes regular contributor Maureen Crawford Hentz. “I … gave a workshop specifically on this topic for career changers at the National Environmental Careers Conference. I was shocked at the number of competent, successful individuals who kept referring to themselves as ‘totally unqualified for a job in the environment.’ These were adults with four to 12 years of experience as managers, editors, and engineers.” Read Hentz’s full article, Career Changers’ Most Powerful Resume and Cover-Letter Tool: Transferable Skills, on how you can use transferable skills to portray yourself as qualified for a new career.

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You may wish to present a Qualifications Summary or Profile section on your resume. In addition to Profile and Qualifications Summary, these resume-topping sections go by numerous names: Career Summary, Summary, Executive Summary, Professional Profile, Qualifications, Strengths, Skills, Key Skills, Skills Summary, Summary of Qualifications, Background Summary, Professional Summary, Highlights of Qualifications. All of these headings are acceptable, but our favorite is Professional Profile.

Twenty-five years ago, a Profile or Summary section was somewhat unusual on a resume. Career experts trace the use of summaries or profiles to include information about candidates’ qualities beyond their credentials to the publication of the late Yana Parker’s The Damn Good Resume Guide in 1983. For the last 20-plus years, resume writers have routinely included these sections; however, the age of electronic submissions has now caused the pendulum to swing the other way.

On one hand, electronic submission means that hiring decision-makers are inundated and overwhelmed with resumes and have less time than ever before to peruse each document. That means that many of them do not read Profile or Summary sections.

On the other hand, the age of electronic submissions has increased the importance of keywords so that candidates can be found in database searches. Even some of the hiring decision-makers who don’t read Profiles and Summaries advise including them as a way to ensure sufficient keywords in the resume.

A vocal contingent of decision-makers, especially among recruiters, strongly advocate for a Summary section — but one that is quite succinct — a short paragraph or single bullet point. They want to see in a nutshell who you are and what you can contribute.

For a detailed discussion of these sections, including guidelines for crafting them and samples, see Chapter 3 of our e-book, The Quintessential Guide to Words to Get Hired By: Your Professional Profile: Bullet Points that Describe Your Strengths in a Nutshell.

And use our Resume Professional Profile/Qualifications Summary Worksheet to help you develop bullet points for this very important resume section.

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“Distinguish yourself from the vast majority of resumes and online profiles that do not appeal to any target audience, contain insipid or non-existent messages of value, and rely on the ‘throw-it-against-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks’ mentality” said Susan Guarneri, the “Career Assessment Goddess,” in the Q&A interview she did with Quint Careers. Even a standardized online application can stand out from the crowd through the content you choose to input. For example, the content can:

• demonstrate an understanding of your target audience’s needs and culture through online company research and inquiries with individuals in the profession and industry,
• showcase value-added results, links to a web portfolio and other online “proof” of success, and a unique personal brand that permeates your past track record, and
• gain positive traction with the employer through auxiliary means of connection (such as employee referrals and social networking).

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A current trend in resumes is to use a branding statement, sometimes in combination with a headline.

A “headline” atop your resume usually identifies the position or type of job you seek.

A branding statement is a punchy “ad-like” statement that tells immediately what you can bring to an employer. A branding statement defines who you are, your promise of value, and why you should be sought out. Your branding statement should encapsulate your reputation, showcase what sets you apart from others, and describe the added value you bring to a situation. Think of it as a sales pitch. Integrate these elements into the brief synopsis that is your branding statement:

• What makes you different?
• What qualities or characteristics make you distinctive?
• What have you accomplished?
• What is your most noteworthy personal trait?
• What benefits (problems solved) do you offer?

See a good discussion of branding statements and headlines, with samples, starting in this section of our e-book, The Quintessential Guide to Words to Get Hired By.

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With regard to resumes and cover letters, Peggy Klaus says she often tells professionals: “When approaching any business communication situation, start out by tuning in to your listeners’ favorite radio station, what I call WIFT-FM, or What’s In It For Them? This helps you to identify the potential needs, objectives, and goals of your audience,” Klaus writes in her article for Quint Careers, Are You Up To Snuff When It Comes To Soft Skills? “In other words, why should they be listening to you in the first place?”

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Keywords are crucial in resumes, but use keywords in your cover letters, too. Many employers don’t scan cover letters or include them in resume databases, but some do. And keywords in cover letters can be important for attracting the “human scanner.” If you’re answering an ad, tying specific words in your cover letter as closely as possible to the actual wording of the ad you’re responding to can be a huge plus. In his book, Don’t Send a Resume, Jeffrey Fox calls the best letters written in response to want ads “Boomerang letters” because they “fly the want ad words — the copy — back to the writer of the ad.” In employing what Fox calls “a compelling sales technique,” he advises letter writers to: “Flatter the person who wrote the ad with your response letter. Echo the author’s words and intent. Your letter should be a mirror of the ad.” Fox notes that when the recipient reads such a letter, the thought process will be: “This person seems to fit the description. This person gets it.” Learn more about keywords .

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Hiring decision-makers surveyed for the book, Top Notch Executive Resumes identified this as one of their Top 30 Executive Resume Pet Peeves: Resume has spelling errors, typos and grammatical flaws.

Hiring decision-makers cited this peeve more than any other. It may surprise some that misspellings and typos pervade even executive-level resumes, but they do. A job-seeker-submitted sample considered for the executive resume book, for example, contained the common error of spelling “manager” as “manger.” You’ll note that this misspelling won’t be picked up by spell-check functions because “manger” is a correctly spelled word. So is “posses,” the plural of posse, which I often see on resumes when the job-seeker intends “possess.”

“I once received a resume where the applicant misspelled the name of the University from which he received his MBA,” said Jeff Weaver, regional manager for a global information services company.

“Poor spelling and grammar … is particularly worrying,” said Pete Follows, senior consultant, for SaccoMann, Leeds, UK. “If a candidate is not giving due care and attention to a document to improve their own personal circumstances, what care would they take with documents with less personal significance?”

A few tips on avoiding typos, misspellings, and grammatical errors:

• Use spell-check functions but remember that they aren’t enough.
• Proofread. Then put the resume down overnight and proof it again in the morning with fresh eyes.
• Try proofing from the bottom up. Reading your resume in a different order will enable you to catch errors that you may have glossed over before because your brain was accustomed to reading your verbiage in the expected order.
• Ask a friend or family member to proof, preferably one who is a meticulous speller and grammarian.
• Be careful about company and software names, which are frequently misspelled and can damage your credibility.
• Consider hiring a professional resume writer.

See all 30 peeves: executive resume peeves 1-10 in Part 1, executive resume peeves 11-20 in Part 2 and executive resume peeves 21-30 in Part 3.

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A resume should be a statement of the skills a job-seeker would bring to a new job, as well as an outline of accomplishments in past positions, said human resources manager John Logan in the Q&A interview he did with Quint Careers.

Because the resume is often the only data an employer receives from a candidate, the bullet points must provide context for past work; providing details like number of people supervised, size of project budget, estimated cost savings in dollars (or other appropriate specifics) helps an employer place each candidate in the context of the organization. “I find that most resumes do not provide enough details for me to understand the scope of the candidate’s experience, but are merely a restatement of a job description, which is not helpful to me as an employer,” Logan said.

Need help with your resume, cover letter, or other career-marketing document? Order today from Quintessential Resumes and Cover Letters, powered by About Jobs Resume Writing Service.