If Interested, Please Send a Resume and Cover Letter…

Ah, the dreaded resume. Isn’t it frustrating that standing between you and the job of your dreams is a ridiculous sheet of paper that barely even hints at your abilities?

I mean how much can that one or two pages really tell your future employers about you anyway? If you could just talk to them instead, you know they’d be falling all over themselves to hire you. But how do you get to that point and past the resume requirement?

And then there’s the cover letter. What’s that all about? Why do you even need one? They know why you’re sending your resume: you want them to give you a job. Why beat around the bush?

These are the types of questions I’m asked every year by college students taking one of my writing classes. After putting in so many years at the university, and perhaps after putting in the same or more amount of time in the professional sector, the last thing they want to do is waste their time trying to convince someone they should be given a job. After all, they know things, they’re getting their degree, and they’re eager to get started in life. Perhaps you share this view. I wouldn’t blame you if you did.

But the unfortunate truth is resumes and cover letters are required. Organizations use them as a quick and convenient way to weed out potential employees from those that don’t even come close to meeting the basic qualifications. We can’t blame them for not wanting to waste time and money in finding out—by individually interviewing anyone who applies—who best to work there.

This guide is designed to help you make the right choices in designing and creating the best resumes and cover letters possible so that your potential as the right candidate explodes off the page, and you make it to the “call back” pile and stay out of the trash.

What makes this information different from so many others? Simply put, I tell you not only the “how’s” but also the “why’s.” There are a lot of really good books out there to help you design your resume, but unfortunately I’ve found that too many of them focus only on the design. Yes, the formatting of the resume is important: people are attracted to what they visually find pleasing. But then people go beyond that, especially in a resume, and begin to seek substance. So what you say matters—perhaps more so—than how the resume looks. Especially when so many resumes are scanned into a database, looks have less and less to do with your getting hired.

Something else that sets this guide apart from the others is the humble author. I don’t admit to being the end-all authority on the topic of this book, but I do consider myself an authority on many of the things that go into a successful resume, namely the researched concepts behind what works and what doesn’t. I can also safely say that I’ve taught hundreds of college students the same—though much more limited in scope—concepts you find in this book, and have seen them succeed in finding employment when those concepts have been put to the test.

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What’s a Resume? What’s a Cover Letter?

Simply put, a resume is a device to separate the qualified from the unqualified. It’s an inventory of your skills, and a VERY summarized history of your relevant work and education experience.

And the cover letter is your introduction. It is your chance to quickly explain why you want to work for this employer, and what you have to offer them. It allows you to highlight specific examples of your abilities.

If you agree with the above definitions, you’re looking at resumes and cover letters from the employer’s point of view. How depressing. No wonder people get so intimidated by them. Even I used to get nervous before, during and after making my resumes and cover letters.

But now let’s redefine these documents from the perspective of someone trying to get a job—that is, us.
 
The resume and cover letter are your ins (more about this next). Once we understand what the employer wants, they are your chances to deliver.

What are they for?

The mistake that most of my students make is thinking that the purpose of the resume and cover letter is to get them a job. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case. The resume and cover letter are to get them interviews, and then the interview—combined with their already stellar qualifications—will get them the job. But here’s the rub: getting that interview is crucial.

So for us, the resume and cover letter act like a foot in the door used by a traveling salesman. It gives us the “in” I mention above.

But for the employer, they are ways to measure you against the job. Or should I say, what you’ve said about yourself against what they’ve specified for the job.

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Keywords and the Job Ad

And this perhaps is the biggest secret to resumes and cover letters: we are told ahead of time what should be on them to score the interview. It’s all included in the job ad you respond to. Every responsibility, every duty, every job title, every piece of technology—every thing you need to put on paper is given to you in the ad.

To understand how and why, we need to understand how the job ad is assembled, and how resumes and cover letters are reviewed.

Unlike conventional thinking would dictate, the advertisement of a particular job, and subsequent review of resumes sent in application for that job, is not handled by the potential supervisor for that job. Instead the process happens like this: the potential supervisor creates a rough draft of the job ad. The rough draft is then revised by someone in human resources and then the ad is posted in its various sites. Once resumes and cover letters begin to arrive in response, those application packets are reviewed.

But not by the potential supervisor, instead it’s first reviewed by someone from human resources. That person from human resources proceeds to scan all of the resumes and see if they match the requirements for the job as spelled out in the advertisement. Those resumes that do match (at least a high proportion of the requirements) are put into a stack that is forwarded (along with their respective cover letters) to the potential supervisor. Finally, the potential supervisor reads the cover letters and resumes and invites the applicants who best match the requirements and experience called for in the job ad.

Our first objective is to get the resume and cover letter past human resources. This is easy, as all they’re doing is scanning the document to see if keywords match. First, let’s discuss what I mean by keywords. Below is an example of a job ad I found doing a quick search (select here for a full-readable version).

Essentially this ad is just a list of what the next person hired for the job needs to have. It is filled with certain words and phrases that are meant to stick out to anyone quickly looking it over. Such terms are called keywords. Let’s look at just the responsibilities portion, this time with the keywords highlighted (select here for a full-readable version):

It may look like all of the words have been selected, but notice that only certain phrases or terms from each bullet have been bolded. This is what’s important in that particular line, so if possible you absolutely must have these words or phrases in your resume.

In the responsibility section, these words are action words. Following each action word is the object of the sentence, or what the action was performed on. The important pieces of information are those action verbs, and secondary are the objects. These should correspond with the responsibilities and duties you list for prior jobs.

In the qualifications section, the keywords words correspond to the skills and accomplishments you acquired in your past experience and education. A good strategy would be to mix these qualifications with the action words from the responsibilities section. However, many of the items listed in the qualifications section are personal attributes (discussed a bit later), and can’t really be listed as they’re written. Instead, they must be proven in some way, usually through examples or narratives that display this attribute.

Let me show you how useful the keywords are. Below is a sample resume the correlates to the previous job ad. Notice how the same words and phrases are used throughout so that if you were to put them side by side, the resume communicates that this candidate has exactly what is being called for (select here for a full-readable version).

There are quite a few things going on in this resume. The first thing to notice is that the resume does a good job of using many of the keywords from the job ad. They are used, specifically, to describe past duties and responsibilities that match the duties and responsibilities of the job being applied for. The purpose for this is to convey to the potential employer that you have practical experience in many of the same duties the new job demands, and so they will have to spend less time and money training you.

Two types of keywords are used: action words (things you do), and subject words (things you know). Let’s talk about the action words first. Some of your responsibilities of this new job include implementing things, providing things, reviewing things, participating in things and assisting in things. These are the things you do at this new job, so we need to show the employer we’ve done these things before. Notice how we do this in the resume, by starting every sentence with one of these words. Essentially then, we make it obvious that we’ve done these things before. We can do these things at this new job.

Now we need to show that we know the same things as those things we need to know for the new job. Notice how this is done. We essentially use the same language as the language they use. In the first bullet we make sure to use the words, documentation and counseling. This is continued throughout: splicing their words into our experiences, duties and responsibilities.

An important thing to point out is that we don’t want to lie. We don’t want to say we’ve done something if we haven’t done it. But we do want to think creatively about what we have done. In Jessica’s case, for example, any of the bullets could have represented any single thing she happened to do at one of her previous jobs, but she puts that act or duty in the language used in the job ad. The job she is applying for asks that she be familiar with relevant state and federal laws. Let’s just say that during the time she worked as an employee performance evaluator one of her projects was to go through the organization’s existing guidelines to make sure they conformed to current laws.

Hence, even though it was a single project during the two years she worked there, she can honestly say that she “Ensured that performance evaluation guidelines and procedures complied with applicable state and federal labor laws.” To the person scanning her resume, Jessica already has experience in one of the job’s responsibilities.  
 
A big mistake many of my students make is thinking that they can use words or phrases that are similar to the keywords instead of actually using the keyword themselves. I can’t promise that if this occurs the resume will be bypassed, but I can promise this, the chances of a resume making it to the next phase increases exponentially if the keywords are used.

It simply has to do with cognition, and being able to pick out certain words and phrases within a larger group of words and phrases. For example, pick up a newspaper and search an article for only a few certain words. Notice how quickly you find them, ignoring the words around them at the same time. It has to do with memory-recall and word-recognition, and it is just something we naturally do. This is what occurs when your resume is being scanned by someone in human resources.

So, if the position requires MS Office, a wrong move would be to list MS Word, MS Excel, and MS Access, even though these are the bulk of what makes up MS Office. The eye is looking for the MS Office, and putting it another way does not quickly communicate what is needed.

For technical, professional and business communication help in the Las Cruces, NM area, visit Lanier Infomedia. 

Last update: 27-03-2009 13:36