Archive for the ‘Resume Writing’ Category
 Customizing your resume and cover letter for each job opportunity can be tedious, particularly if you are applying for dozens of positions a day. You can make things easier for yourself by creating templates.
Making a Resume Template:
1. Start out by getting all your experience down on paper. Don’t worry about page count or specialization, simply include everything you would ever want to list for a position.
2. The next step is to edit the resume, so it is easy to customize. If you are going with a functional resume, this is easy. To customize it for a specific position, you can simply remove the skills you don’t need to highlight until you get it down to one page.
For a chronological resume, you can’t simply delete irrelevant experience without creating gaps in your timeline. Instead, format your job descriptions into bullet points instead of paragraphs, and put those points in order of importance. Then if a job doesn’t fit your needs, you can de-emphasize it by trimming their descriptions to just one or two bullet points.
If you are listing your skills, group them. For example:
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 For certain positions, such as web design, graphic art, writing, and other artistic endeavors, you may be requested to submit samples of your past work before you are hired. Whatever the format, it’s important to put your best foot forward. Look at it from the employer’sperspective; what do they want to see from you?
Choose samples that are most applicable to the position. The idea is to give them the sense that you can do the job, because you’ve already done it before! For example, if you are applying for a position designing product labels, be sure to include many product label designs in your submission. But what if you don’t have any product labels? Consider what other connections you have to the products. It’s a dog food company? Great, you have drawings of animals to submit.
Show your range. This is especially important if you are applying for a position where you will have a wide array of responsibilities, but it’s a good idea even if the position calls primarily for one specific task. For example, if you are a writer applying for a position where you will be writing press releases, the vast majority of your samples should be press releases, but you can also showcase your ability to write articles, commercial scripts, and product copy. The company may recognize the value of your many talents – you can help out the rest of the marketing team! – and it can put you ahead of the pack.
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 There is currently a big controversy raging about whether or not to include a cover letter when you send in your application for a job. Some recruiters and HR people claim they never look at cover letters. Others say they use a cover letter’s content and overall professionalism to decide which resumes will rise toward the top of the pile.
Since there is no hard and fast rule, it’s up to you to decide how best to stay in the running for a job: with a cover letter that may not be wanted, or without a cover letter that may be what the recruiter or HR person is looking for. Of course, when a cover letter is requested, you have no choice.
When you choose to send a cover letter, you should include it in the body of your email message. You could theoretically attach it to your email as a separate file, or integrate your cover letter material into the first part of your resume. However, most recruiters and HR people say it’s confusing to add a cover letter to your resume and it’s likely to be ignored if a cover letter arrives in a separate file by itself.
However you send it, there are several ways to craft an effective cover letter.
First, start with just a brief statement that you’re fully qualified for the job. Close the letter by expressing your interest in pursuing this job opportunity. As a final step, be sure to polish the cover letter until it’s short, sweet, and direct. In between, you can put three types of cover letter “meat”:
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When writing your resume, your goal is to present your skill set and accomplishments in the best light to potential employers. One of the best ways to do this is by honing your job descriptions using powerful action verbs. By reading this part of your resume, recruiters should be able to get a firm grasp on the work you’ve done and are capable of doing for them. By choosing the right verbs, you can help them to visualize you at work!
As a first step, go through your resume and look at the verbs you have now. Don’t have any? Consider turning short phrases like “Web design” into statements like “Designed over 20 websites using HTML, Flash, and PHP.” Are the verbs you do have descriptive? If not, use a thesaurus or brainstorm to find better word choices. Instead of “Gave reports to the marketing team,” try “Analyzed consumer data and presented findings to the marketing team.”
Don’t overload your resume with action verbs. Instead, use them to highlight your biggest achievements and most valuable skills. Below is a list of some top action verbs that can help you start! Looking it over may even help you to remember other responsibilities that you have not already listed.
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 Job-hunting is similar in many ways to selling. Since you’re the product, your resume can be thought of as the sales literature. And like all good sales literature, it has to do more than describe the product. It has to entice people into wanting to buy.
When you look at your resume through the lens of successful sales literature, you can begin to see ways to make it more persuasive. Chief among these ways is to fill it with benefits. Here are some suggestions to help you adjust your resume to be more enticing:
Benefits For The Company
Before you can be hired, your resume must pass through some early examiners. Of course, they’re likely to dump the ones with smudges, misspellings, and weak content. But they’re also likely to forward the resumes that contain benefits for the company. Such benefits might include:
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