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Beat the Crowd with Winning Resume Cover LettersArticle Category : Resume Presentation Far too many people underestimate the importance of resume cover letters. In a sense, a well written cover letter works like an agent on your behalf. It tosses a sales pitch for you to the employer, explaining why you should be at the top of the list for interview calls. Taking the time to write a cover letter tells the employer you are willing to go above and beyond; not just simply slap a resume in an envelope and mail it. Not All Resume Cover Letters Are Created Equal No two resume cover letters should ever be the same; each one should be uniquely tailored to the job for which you are applying. A generic cover letter is insulting to an employer and will quickly find its way into the trashcan. When writing cover letters keep the following tips in mind: Address resume cover letters to an actual entity, not just a generic “To Whom it May Concern” or “Personnel Director.” If you are not sure who to address, find out and then make sure you spell their name correctly. Do not just assume. State who referred you or how you found out about the job opening. “Linda McCain mentioned that you might be hiring a new computer programmer soon.” or “I learned about your opening for a Sales Associate from your posting in the San Francisco Sun and would like to discuss a few ways I can contribute to your team.” Resume cover letters should discuss how you can help the employer, not about why you need the job. The employer has posted a job opening because they need that position filled and they need the best candidate to fill it. Convince them why you are that person. Make Yourself Stand Out from the Crowd Demonstrate you know something about who the employer is and what they do. If you don’t know anything about the company, find out what products or services the company offers, their competitors; any recent or upcoming changes. Employers will be impressed with your knowledge, especially if their company services a specialty niche that isn’t well known. Do not discuss salary requirements in resume cover letters. If the job posting requests that you respond with salary information, simply state in your cover letter “I would be pleased to discuss my salary history in an interview.” Then quickly move on to what you can offer them in terms of your talent and skills. Give an exact date when you will follow-up to discuss an interview. Don’t depend on the employer to follow-up with you. Keep it Short and to the Point Do not say ‘enclosed please find my resume.’ This wastes valuable space in resume cover letters you can devote to highlighting why you are perfect for the job. State what you need to, but don’t draw it out. Keep resume cover letters to one page, preferably about four short paragraphs. Neatness Counts Proofread your resume cover letters and then ask someone else to proofread as well. Don’t eliminate yourself from the candidates called for an interview because of a simple typo or misspelled word. Don’t rely on your computer’s spell check. It does not always catch everything. Make sure your letter is neat. If at all possible, spend a little extra and print it on nice, professional paper. Make sure there are no wrinkles, folds or smudges. Following a few simple rules can help your resume cover letters stand out from all the rest and get you in the door for an interview and on your way to that great new job! Roger Clark (BSc) has over 25 years experience in career development & recruitment at a senior level through top management positions he has held with major international companies. You can visit his “Top Career Resumes” website or News Blog for a wealth of top quality information relating to the employment market. http://www.top-career-resumes.com http://www.top-career-resumes.com/resume-cover-letters
Article Category : Resume Presentation You are looking for a job and you are out to land the job of a lifetime. It can happen! Before you consider want ads, job websites, or making inquiries of companies you are interested in, you will need a resume. Your resume writing can either make or break a job opportunity. The first thing your resume must be is functional. It is to give the employer the most information possible in one page. Resumes that are longer than one page are often put aside. Employers just don’t have the time to read every page. At best many just scan your resume and count on your cover letter and maybe an interview to glean anything else about you before you are considered for hire. In order for your resume to be functional you group your skills into different sections and your titles at the bottom. This is the format people who are changing careers typically use. They don’t want to draw attention to gaps in employment or their lack of direct experience. The chronological resume is well organized listing of skills, education, and employment in order from the most current experience backward or reverse order. The categories of your resume should be concise and relevant to the position for which you are applying. If you are fresh out of college and unemployed put your education first, directly below the letterhead. You will list your school, your degree, your major and your graduation date. If space allows you can list your relevant course work, related academic awards, and/or your grade point average. Other categories include relevant work experience, volunteer experiences and other skills such as computer skills, any publications you may have written or contributed to, and language skills as they might apply to the position. Finally, you will list your references or make the statement “References will be furnished upon request. Let me give you important advice about references. Do not list someone as a reference unless you have obtained his or her consent to do so. You will want the person you ask for a reference to be a former boss, teacher, long time friend who is familiar with your abilities, and possibly your clergyman. The appearance of your resume is very important. The font you use should be clear and easy to read. The suggested font for a resume is a Sans Serif font like Arial or Verdana. These fonts come out more clearly in faxes. The format of your resume should be simple and plain. It should showcase your accomplishments. The prospective employer should be able to scan the page and get a good grasp on whether or not you would be good for the position. Another important consideration for your resume is the type of paper you use. The most acceptable colors are white, cream, off white, and gray. They are easiest to read and the font will stand out nicely. You should use the same type of paper for your resume, your cover letter, and your envelope. Many stationery stores have sets of paper and envelopes for your resume. Go in and consult with a sales person to find out what they have to offer. You could always put it on a disk and bring the disk to a printer and have it professionally done. When describing you’re skills, your education, or your experience. Use action words. Instead of starting a sentence with a noun use a strong verb. When you need to put in numbers use percentages, and dollar amounts. List the number of people you supervised as well. Keep the length of your resume to one page. As has been stated employers do not have the luxury of spending a lot of time on the resumes they receive. Some companies can get a great number of resumes and most of the time they scan the resumes. Include only the most relevant information. You can fill in information in a cover letter or an interview. An important piece of your resume is the job objective. Are you going for a teaching position? Your resume should reflect your teacher training, your scores on specialty tests. If you were applying for a job in a department store you would list your babysitting experience. It’s all relative. While the cover letter is not a resume, it does give you the opportunity to expand somewhat on the information you put forth in the resume. Here again use strong action words and strong descriptions. Be sure all information in the resume and the cover letter is as accurate as it can be. There are numerous resources available for you such as pre-employment counselors, the career office at your college, and a number of books on resume writing and how to get a job. Search online, the sources on the Internet are almost limitless. If necessary go to the human resources department of a business that is similar to the one you are interested in. About the Author
Article Category : Resume Presentation, Work Place This year we are experiencing the most dynamic and rapidly changing economy in all of history except for next year, and the year after, and the rest of our working lives. The days of being able to get a college education, then get a good job for life, which will give you financial security and retirement are gone forever. There will be more changes in your current field in the next year than there has ever been before. The only thing we know for sure about the future is that it will be different from the past. And not only is change inevitable, the rate of change is accelerating. And these changes will affect every part of your life. The future will bring more competition in your field than ever before. More and more people and companies will be struggling to take advantage of the same economic opportunities and customers. And your competition is both ruthless and determined. It is both national and international. Your competitors want your business, and they will do anything and everything to get it. This new economy will open up more opportunities in your field than every before, but they will be in different areas. Possibilities are opening up at this very minute for you to sell your product or service to different customers in different forms, in different places, and in different ways. People who focus on the opportunities of the future, rather than getting bogged down by the problems of the past, will be the people who enjoy the rewards of tomorrow. Government and university studies have concluded that a college graduate with a non-professional degree will have an average of ten to twelve different jobs or careers during his or her working lifetime. The majority of the people working today will be out of their fields and doing something else within two years. Anyone who does not adjust rapidly to greater change, greater competition, and opportunities of the future, will be swept aside by those who do. To master today’s job market it is important that you first understand how we got to where we are by taking a look back at history. At the end of World War II America and American industry dominated the world. Not only did we have abundant natural resources, but we had advanced technology. Meanwhile, the rest of the industrialized world was largely ravaged by war. For these reasons, anything that American factories produced found a ready market, both nationally and internationally. The economy took off. After a few years of this robust, expanding economy with opportunities and jobs for all, Americans began to accept this as their birth right. Read the rest of this article »
Article Category : Resume Presentation A resume is normally the first contact point between an employer and a job seeker. It serves the purpose of providing a summary of why a candidate is suitable for a job (cover-letter) and his relevant qualifications/experience. In this article, advice about creating effective cover letters will be provided and followed by the rest of the resume. An Effective Cover Letter: An effective cover letter is a 1-page introduction of your resume that has the ultimate goal of helping the job seeker get the first interview from a job advertisement. This is easier said than done as HR Managers have to go through quite a number of job applications. If your cover letter is rather formulaic and your only concern is that the printing is smudge-free, then here are more useful tips: Basics: Be careful to direct your resume to the right person. If you address the wrong person in your cover letter, you may not get a response. Along the same lines, quote the correct reference number that is highlighted in job advertisement and ensure that you have applied for the correct position that corresponds to your expertise. Read the rest of this article »
Article Category : Resume Presentation It is becoming more common for people to be asked what their favourite hobby or pastime is on a job application form. It is therefore advisable to include a section on your interests and any hobby that you are actively engaged in on your CV or Resume too. This helps to differentiate your application from all others that have similar experience and qualifications as you do. A hobby can be used as a great ice-breaker at interviews too and you may find yourself discussing your skydiving exploits more than your previous job. Obviously the more unusual the hobby the better as it is likely to make an impact on anyone reading your CV and be a point of interest that helps the reader remember your application over another. It is important, wherever possible, to list hobbies or interests that clearly demonstrate relevant skills and accomplishments that are appropriate for the job your resume is being considered for. Obviously, if you are applying to be a cook for a company you would want to list cooking as one of your hobbies. This may seem an obvious point but you could also highlight other areas of the same hobby such as researching recipes or jam making for example.It is advisable to be selective about the number of hobbies you list. If it seems that your time is taken up with a myriad of different activities a potential employer may reject your application for fear that you may never be available for overtime work if necessary. Another possible impact of your choice of hobby may be if it involves a lot of travel or long hours. The potential employer may feel that your hobby would have an adverse effect on your ability to hold down a long term position and may think you are just trying to fit in work around your hobby and not the other way round. Read the rest of this article »
Article Category : Resume Presentation Students, professionals, academics and anyone who is actually planning on applying for a new job can benefit from curriculum vitae writing tips. A typical curriculum vita, which is often referred to as CV, differs slightly from a standard resume because it contains substantially more information than just your education and prior job experience. A CV should also include any other information about you that is relevant to the job that you are applying for. A CV offers so much more personal information about you and your abilities and has become a primary aspect of writing a resumes these days. Read the rest of this article »
Article Category : Resume Presentation Here are some of the questions we have been asked by our clients or potential clients in the past, together with our answers to them. We hope you find them useful, and that they help you to make an informed decision. However, it may be that you have a question we have not answered. If so, then please contact us (mailto:info@top-pro-cvs.com) to discuss it. Just give us your first name and an active email address to respond to. Finally please note that the terms Resume and CV (or Curriculum Vitae) are interchangeable for the purposes of this article. Resume is the norm in the US, Australia and elsewhere, while CV is the widely accepted document in UK. Questions: 1. Why have my resume written by somebody else? I know what I have done and where I’ve worked, so why go to a third party? 2. Surely I can just list my achievements, qualifications and experience. Isn’t that enough? 3. I have registered with an agency. They have offered to write my CV free of charge. Why should I pay for one? 4. I have seen a CD-ROM based programme for producing resumes. Why not use this? 5. My friend has just got a job with a CV he wrote himself. I can probably do the same, can’t I? 6. Why use Top Professional Resumes Limited? And the answers to those questions: Read the rest of this article »
Article Category : Resume Presentation Writing a cover letter can be like cleaning your garage — you don’t know where to start … and you just want it done. Wouldn’t it be great if you could use a few “underground” techniques to write cover letters that get more job interviews? Faster and easier than you ever thought possible? Well, pay attention. I’m going to share 3 cover letter secrets that should get you more interviews, while a lot of the guesswork out of your letter writing. To dig up these “cover letter secrets,” I interviewed career expert and author, Jimmy Sweeney (www.amazing-cover-letters.com). Read on! Read the rest of this article »
Article Category : Resume Presentation There comes a time when you see a job posting that you know you can perform the duties as they are described but you also know that you do not have any documented experience on your resume to prove it. If this is the case, you have several options. The old fashioned approach Back in the good old days, your father (or father figure) would tell you to get a job that will give you the experience necessary to qualify for the position. Read the rest of this article »
Article Category : Resume Presentation With particularly popular jobs, where many applicants may be fighting for pole position and only one job opening available, employers and their recruitment staff will often instigate a phone interview stage in order to weed out applicants who might not quite be suitable for interview. Sometimes it might be just to confirm particular qualifications or details that are not a good enough reason in and of themselves to call someone to an interview for. Many experts hold that when approaching a phone interview, or the risk of a phone interview, the wisest course of action is to treat it mentally as a face to face interview. In some respects, this advice is sound. The importance of both cannot be underestimated. Similarly, what you say on paper and how you say it matter equally to the voice on the other end of the phone as they might to the man sitting across the desk. However if you know what to look for, there are subtleties available to the resume writer that can be exploited to give you the added edge when it comes to selection for the phone interview stage. The first thing to consider when writing your resume with an eye to grabbing the phone interview is why they interview via phone in the first place. There is a big difference between someone who interviews by phone as a preference and a recruitment officer who interviews via phone out of necessity instead. If you can find out if phone interviews are the normal application practice for this particular firm then you will be in a better position to assess how to adapt your resume for that application. If they are done out of preference then you’ve got a clear green light for adapting your resume to fit. Typically, phone interviewers rely on a slightly different set of criteria for evaluating a potential employee’s performance than standard face to face interviewers do. Frequently of course, the interviewer will be experienced at both types of interview, but luckily there are certain implicit factors that tend to get more noticed via the medium of telephony than when face to face with someone. You can use knowledge of these to the advantage of your resume. Your resume for phone interview applications needs to focus more heavily on positive results and your potential value in tangible, applicable terms than it might do for standard interview applications. This is because you have less opportunity to build a personal rapport with your interviewer via phone which leads them to place greater focus on your achievements and less on your personality. One trick to consider for certain types of job applications is to include a multimedia element to your resume. Several photos are a good idea when applying for phone interview determined jobs. The interviewer needs to have a good idea of how you look – even if you don’t think you are attractive it will help make them visualise you working for their company. Equally, a CD with brief footage of you ‘in action’ such as a receptionist welcoming guests to a building, can do wonders for convincing the recruiter that you fit the job and would ‘fit in’ well. Increasingly these days, employers are looking for ‘team players’ to add to their staff. You don’t get much opportunity to show off your teamwork skills over the phone, so mentioning your ability and enjoyment of working in a team in your resume can cover this potential problem. Seeing a desire to be ‘part of their team’ will make an interviewer reach for the phone that little bit faster. Finally, another lateral approach is to include a ‘hook’ in your resume. An example would be to mention that you have read the company’s plans for the next year and have some ideas they might like to hear, but not to specify what these are. If you have the credentials to impress, they will want to speak to you.
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