| By Clinton R. Lanier,
on 04-04-2008 21:57
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Views : 727  |
Favoured : 98 |
Can’t I Make Just One?So now that we’ve looked at how resumes are looked at, and we’ve discussed a little bit about how they should be written, let’s take care of another issue that my students often ask about. Many of my students wonder if they can just make one, standard resume and cover letter, and then send those off to their different potential employers. I cringe when they ask me this.
Consider the previous discussion on keywords and how your resume and cover letter will be read. If you understand that someone is simply going to be scanning it for certain words that match keywords in their job ad, you should realize that resumes and cover letters must be written individually for each ad you respond to. After all, not every position is going to be the same: each will have different responsibilities and different duties, and these will require different skills and knowledge sets. So, each employer will be looking for different things. Some might want you to know how to use spreadsheet software as part of your job, another might want you to know how to plan and create a budget. In either case, they are only going to looking for the specific thing they list and little else. And those these examples are similar, they are not the same thing.So the short answer is “no,” you shouldn’t create one resume and cover letter in the hopes of sending these to every ad you respond to. However, with that said you can build a general resume and cover letter, and change that to meet what’s called for by each employer. If you create the skeletons, in other words, you can change the skin as needed. For technical, professional and business communication help in the Las Cruces, NM area, visit Lanier Infomedia.
Last update: 27-03-2009 13:35
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