14.4: Résumés and Cover Letters
- Page ID
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What you’ll learn to do: Produce a résumé and a cover letter
A résumé and a cover letter are two essential documents to the job hunt. While neither one will necessarily get that job, you won’t even make it to the interview with out them. These documents are important marketing materials for the product—you.
learning outcomes
- Discuss the purpose and contents of a résumé
- Identify characteristics of an effective résumé
- Create a résumé customized for a specific job opening
- Identify characteristics of an effective cover letter
The Purpose of Résumés
A résumé is your first introduction to a potential employer. It is a written picture of who you are—it’s a marketing tool, a selling tool, and a promotion of you as an ideal candidate for any job you may be interested in.
The word résumé comes from the French word résumé, which means “a summary.” Leonardo da Vinci is credited with writing one of the first known résumés, although it was more of a letter that outlined his credentials for a potential employer, Ludovico Sforza. The résumé got da Vinci the job, though, and Sforza became a longtime patron of da Vinci and later commissioned him to paint The Last Supper. You can see the letter and read the translation at Leonardo da Vinci’s Handwritten Resume (1482)
Résumés and cover letters work together to represent you in the brightest light to prospective employers. With a well-composed résumé and cover letter, you stand out—which may get you an interview and then a good shot at landing a job.
In this section we discuss résumés and cover letters as key components of your career development tool kit. We explore some of the many ways you can design and develop them for the greatest impact in your job search.
Your Résumé: Purpose and Contents
Your résumé is an inventory of your education, work experience, job-related skills, accomplishments, volunteer history, internships, residencies, and/or more. It’s a professional autobiography in outline form to give the person who reads it a quick, general idea of who you are. With a better idea of who your are, prospective employers can see how well you might contribute to their workplace.
As a college student or recent graduate, though, you may be unsure about what to put in your résumé, especially if you don’t have much employment history. Still, employers don’t expect recent grads to have significant work experience. And even with little work experience, you may still have a host of worthy accomplishments to include. It’s all in how you present yourself.
You don’t need to be new to the employment world to struggle with what to put in a resume. This is an important advertising tool that takes time a skill to demonstrate how your past experiences and education fit a new position. Remember the soft skills discussed earlier. They work in any resume. From there you demonstrate your successes.
The following video is an animated look at why résumés are so important. You can read a transcript of the video here.
Elements of Your Successful Résumé
Perhaps the hardest part of writing a résumé is figuring out what format to use to organize and present your information in the most effective way. There is no correct format, per se, but most résumés follow one of the four formats below. Which format appeals to you the most?
- Reverse chronological résumé: A reverse chronological résumé (sometimes also simply called a chronological résumé) lists your job experiences in reverse chronological order—that is, starting with the most recent job and working backward toward your first job. It includes starting and ending dates. Also included is a brief description of the work duties you performed for each job, and highlights of your formal education. The reverse chronological résumé may be the most common and perhaps the most conservative résumé format. It is most suitable for demonstrating a solid work history, and growth and development in your skills. It may not suit you if you are light on skills in the area you are applying to, or if you’ve changed employers frequently, or if you are looking for your first job.
- Functional résumé: A functional résumé is organized around your talents, skills, and abilities (more so than work duties and job titles, as with the reverse chronological résumé). It emphasizes specific professional capabilities, like what you have done or what you can do. Specific dates may be included but are not as important. So if you are a new graduate entering your field with little or no actual work experience, the functional résumé may be a good format for you. It can also be useful when you are seeking work in a field that differs from what you have done in the past. It’s also well suited for people in unconventional careers.
- Hybrid résumé: The hybrid résumé is a format reflecting both the functional and chronological approaches. It’s also called a combination résumé. It highlights relevant skills, but it still provides information about your work experience. With a hybrid résumé, you may list your job skills as most prominent and then follow with a chronological (or reverse chronological) list of employers. This résumé format is most effective when your specific skills and job experience need to be emphasized.
- Video, infographic, and Web-site résumé: Other formats you may wish to consider are the video résumé, the infographic résumé, or even a Web-site résumé. These formats may be most suitable for people in multimedia and creative careers. Certainly with the expansive use of technology today, a job seeker might at least try to create a media-enhanced résumé. But the paper-based, traditional résumé is by far the most commonly used—in fact, some human resource departments may not permit submission of any format other than paper based.
An important note about formatting is that, initially, employers may spend only a few seconds reviewing each résumé—especially if there is a big stack of them or they seem tedious to read. That’s why it’s important to choose your format carefully so it will stand out and make the first cut.
As potential employers do that first review, they are looking to see the evidence that you match, at least, all the minimum specifications in their ad or job listing. (If you do not match 100% of the minimums, and list it in the resume, then do not apply.)
practice question
Adam took a class in college with Professor Hallen. They spent three long weeks creating the perfect résumé. She was clear that college students did not have much work experience so their résumé should be one page only. She told the entire class that the first section should be education, again, because they were college students, not experienced. Now that Adam has seven years of experience and wants to see what other jobs are out there, should his résumé be about a page and a half to two pages?
- It depends. If this is a functional resume, one page. If this is a hybrid resume, then two pages.
- No. It's at 15 years that the resume goes over a page, and then does not waste space, so goes directly to two pages.
- No. Number of years of work really does not have that much to do with resume length.
- Answer
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No. Number of years of work really does not have that much to do with resume length.
Writing Effective Résumés
For many people, the process of writing a résumé is daunting. After all, you are taking a lot of information and condensing it into a very concise form that needs to be both eye-catching and easy to read. Don’t be scared off, though! Developing a good résumé can be fun, rewarding, and easier than you think if you follow a few basic guidelines. In the following video, a résumé-writing expert describes some keys to success. (Refer to Module 2: Writing in Business for learning about word processing software used for document creation. This is a good example of Microsoft Word.)
To get started you will create your baseline or generic resume. This is the hardest part where you gather your best experiences together. Later, we will learn how we modify this resume to even better match each position we apply to. The order of the following sections may change, depending upon where you are in your career and your match to the new position. In example, if you are a lifeguard and are applying to be the lifeguard supervisor, you would list that work experience early in the resume. If you are a lifeguard while you finish your college degree in Accounting, then you would list your education before your work experience. This is one of many reasons to modify a resume for each position applied to.
The purpose of a resume is not to get a job, but to get to the next level in the screening process.
The following activity will introduce you to the components of a resume, what you should and shouldn’t include, and show a few good and bad examples of resumes.
practice question
All résumés share certain elements in common, whether they are chronological, functional or hybrid. Which of the following are the best match to expected sections in all résumés.
- Contact information, Education, Past Employers
- Contact information, Education, References
- Skills, Contact information, Work Experiences
- Answer
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Contact information, Education, Past Employers
Digging In Deeper
There are a few sections of a résumé that merit deeper discussion, as they should be the main content of the document:
- Work experience
- Volunteer experience
- Education and training
Work Experience
Depending on the résumé format you choose, you may list your most recent job first; include the title of the position, employer’s name, location, employment dates (beginning, ending)
Work experience is on all resumes, even if you feel the work is not directly connected. Even the first time entrant to the job market has some experience. Perhaps you have been a baby sitter or lawn mower. Those hard skills of diaper changing or emptying grass bags may not be something for the new job, but your reliability and customer service will be.
Work experience offers sufficient detail that the reader could check your background if needed. Do remember this document is marketing you, so while one would never, never ever lie, it is ok to list the best job matches but it does not need to be all job matches. If you have been in the work force for 20 years, that first job that you held for two years as a cashier may not be relevant to this District Manager job that you are now applying to.
There are times where location establishes the veracity of your background. In other times, the location may not be relevant. Say you have worked for one company for 10 years and been transferred to three cities. The employers name is likely sufficient.
Dates can be another touchy subject. Perhaps there has been an awkward time where you went through several jobs in quick succession and you would prefer not focusing on all those early departures. You could consider another resume format, or while still listing the jobs in order, remove the dates or perhaps only list the year, rather than month and year. If there are big gaps such as incarceration or leaving for family issues, another format may be better suited to your needs than a chronological format.
Work experience is frequently listed near the top of the resume page, or perhaps just below the Education section.
Volunteer experience
Assuming that you are not applying to a non-profit organization, use volunteer jobs in a limited fashion. They can support those new to the paid workplace to show skills learned there. They may support the concept of a well-rounded, socially connected employee. With volunteer experiences there is the risk of triggering some unknown (implicit) bias of the employer quickly scanning documents. If you are listing your volunteer work to demonstrate leadership and organizational expertise (as the organization’s former president), it will be up to you to choose between a label of Bacon City volunteer association or Bacon City Gay and Lesbian Team.
No one wants to work for a company that would intentionally discriminate and you should not. But then, if the resume reader has an unknown bias, it could accidentally block you from an innocuous detail in this area. Be sensitive to the things readers might read-in before they meet you.
If your only work experience is volunteering, list it high in the resume. If it is a supplement to work experience, list it toward the bottom of the resume.
Education and Training
Formal and informal experiences matter; include academic degrees, professional development, certificates, internships, etc.
Education is most often separated from other sections with various titles such as Training or Certifications. With education list from your highest degree down. These are college degrees. If you have a high school or G.E.D degree, list is only if you have no college experience. Once you have college experience to add to your resume the prior schooling is assumed and does not need to be listed.
Education is listed in a similar fashion to Work Experience. List the name of the school, location (yes, there is a Miami in Ohio (Miami University) and in Florida (University of Miami). If you are under 40 (that legal age for age discrimination triggers) list the graduation year for any degree. After that age, the choice is yours about listing the year. If you are still in college and expect to graduate in one year it is fine to list that year. The reader will know that you are finishing the degree by next May.
There are other relevant items of training that should be listed to improve your chances of earning an interview. Label that section as such and then follow a standard listing that is usually the name of the training or certification, provider or certifying body and date. For example, a CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) certificate means more to those applying to be paramedics than accountants and might be optionally listed or not at all listed. Yet a CPA (certified public accountant designation) will be a huge boon to those applying to some type of accounting or bookkeeping position and should be listed. Certifications are generally listed toward the bottom of a resume.
Creating a Customized Résumé
In the prior sections, we learned the purpose and sections for résumés: simply to help you get to the interview. To get there, your résumé must quickly demonstrate how you meet all the minimum skills the employer requested, and perhaps more. You can not change who you are and what experiences you have, but you can change the way the information is presented. In this section, we will demonstrate how the common building blocks of a résumé may be build and reorganized to help you look your best.
The video below is full of practical ideas. It is slanted to writing to a generic recruiter rather than a specific job ad. You may reorder and redo sections the more you know about the job.
First, let us address how to build each building block. At this point, they are offered in no particular order. We will talk about formatting later as well. This section is written for the typical chronological résumé since it is the most common. The skills learned here may be modified to match the types identified earlier in the chapter.
| Building Block Section | Example | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| You and contact information |
Max P Kimble 345 Baxter Street Columbus, TX 12345 749-234-2839 |
While most employers will call or use email, the postal address adds the air of stability. Avoid any “sillybaby@yahoo.com” type email address or KimbleandKids@home.com”. Open a new email account that is just yours and has a professional tone. Never, never ever, use one employer’s email address when applying to a new employer. An employer’s email address is only suitable when applying within the same company. The phone number you use is likely a cell. Be sure the messaging portion is updated to a professional greeting. Ensure that number is not shared or answered by anyone else who might offer a less than professional opinion. |
| Objective or Career Objective | Do not use. All this does is talk about what you want. Employers are not hiring you to make you happy, but to satisfy their own need. | |
| Skills or Career Summary |
Skills: Leadership, CPA, Type 100 wpm, Able to work in fast paced environment, Career Summary: Experiences in sales management with five years in sales and three years in sale management. All years meeting or exceeding quote. Customer satisfaction levels exceeding all peers. |
Fill this section with six to eight specific skills and abilities needed by the job your applying to. Or, use short sentences or phrases to highlight relevant successes. Here you can quickly tell a workplace story to verify your ability. Use the words and order of skills to match the ad. Focus on minimum requirements before preferred requirements. |
| Work Experience |
Sales Manager, Friedo Inc, 2007 – present
|
Notice how the job title, company and year anchors the important part. The important part is describing what you did in term of the measurable successes you had. Notice how the bullets are constructed in parallel fashion. Repeat this process for each relevant job. Use the most current positions that relate to the ad. Add non-related only to fill in a page to at least three-quarters full. This should describe you, not the job. See the ‘not’ just below. Sales Manager, Friedo Inc, 2007 – present
|
| Education |
MBA, University of Florida, 2003 BA Communication, St Charles University, 2001 |
The examples of the education are the simplest listings. If you have a GPA of 3.5 or above, list it. You worked hard and earned it. Some will list at 3.0. Below that no one will ask or will particularly care — you graduated is the point. If your experiences in college match the ad, help the hiring company see that by listing them. There is no need to list high school or G.E.D, if you are in college or have attended college. If not, then list the high school Here are more detailed options for listing education when someone is applying to an accounting position. MBA, University of Florida, 2003
BA Communication, St Charles University, 2001
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Other Sections:
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Use as needed. |
With these building blocks in mind, you may build your first résumé. With that solid foundation, you will reorder and reword to match the job requirements that you are applying to. It’s often a good idea to create a “master” résumé that contains all of your experience in qualifications, then when applying for a new position, you can make a copy of that master and trim it back to only include relevant experience—that way you won’t find yourself trying to come up with the perfect wording for each job every time you want to use it in a specific application.
practice question
Gary has been running his own small café for five years. Prior to that, he worked 15 years in high tech engineering. Gary is great at maintenance after doing three real estate “fix-and-flips” on the side, as well as all the maintenance for this old café building. Today Gary is preparing his résumé for an opening he saw on LinkedIn. The position is maintenance supervisor for the local community college. (Gary thinks the health care coverage will provide a big boost in take-home pay compared to his café income.) Which of the following lists will be the BEST way to describe his more current work experience as a café owner?
- -Oversee preparation of food for restaurant daily -Order supplies for seven-day-a-week business -Greet all customers in a friendly manner
- -Oversee preparation of 300 meals a day -Maintain 3% margin on all breakfast meals -Engage with 50 regulars by name everyday while greeting news customers enthusatically
- -Maintain 20 year old heating and cooling building system to less than 3 outages per year -Maintain restroom, kitchen and lawn plumbing systems for seven-day-a-week business -Maintain state-reviewed sanitation certification with zero return visits for all years owned
- Answer
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-Maintain 20 year old heating and cooling building system to less than 3 outages per year -Maintain restroom, kitchen and lawn plumbing systems for seven-day-a-week business -Maintain state-reviewed sanitation certification with zero return visits for all years owned
Writing Effective Cover Letters
What Is a Cover Letter?
A cover letter is a letter of introduction, usually 3–4 paragraphs in length, that you attach to your résumé. It’s a way of introducing yourself to a potential employer and explaining why you are suited for a position. Employers may look for individualized and thoughtfully written cover letters as an initial method of screening out applicants who may who lack necessary basic skills, or who may not be sufficiently interested in the position.
Often an employer will request or require that a cover letter be included in the materials an applicant submits. There are also occasions when you might submit a cover letter uninvited: for example, if you are initiating an inquiry about possible work or asking someone to send you information or provide other assistance.
With each résumé you send out, always include a cover letter specifically addressing your purposes.
This purpose is to let the receiver know how well you match their needs. It is a careful blend of the direct and persuasive letters you read about earlier in this book.
Characteristics of an Effective Cover Letter
Cover letters should accomplish the following:
- Get the attention of the prospective employer
- Set you apart from any possible competition
- Identify the position you are interested in
- Specify how you learned about the position or company
- Present highlights of your skills and accomplishments
- Reflect your genuine interest
- Please the eye and ear
The following video features Aimee Bateman, founder of Careercake.com, who explains how you can create an incredible cover letter. You can download a transcript of the video here.
practice question
Gail needed to write a really good cover letter to accompany her résumé for a Project Manager 1 listing she found. Here are the first sentences to each of Gail’s three paragraphs. From these three sentences, identify which is the BEST letter.
- I am writing to apply for the position of Project Manager 1 listed on LinkedIn last Tuesday. I installed 45 units for State University last year. If you want to meet, I am available Tuesday at 2 p.m.
- Your Project Manager 1 listing is a job made for my skills and passion of easing the transition from one IT system to the next. In response to your desire for five or more years of experience, please see the enclose reference letter describing the seven years I spent with State University's IT department detailing....Your confirmation of interview time in the coming week sets us both on the right step to helping your clients' upcoming installations.
- Thank you for Project Management 1 job listing on LinkedIn; I hope to be your next Project Manager 1. Your ad states that you wish to have a PM with five or more years experience and CAPM certification. Thank you for the opportunity to apply.
- Answer
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Your Project Manager 1 listing is a job made for my skills and passion of easing the transition from one IT system to the next. In response to your desire for five or more years of experience, please see the enclose reference letter describing the seven years I spent with State University's IT department detailing....Your confirmation of interview time in the coming week sets us both on the right step to helping your clients' upcoming installations.
Cover Letter Resources
| WEBSITE | DESCRIPTION | |
| 1 | Student Cover Letter Samples (from About Careers) | This site contains sample student/recent graduate cover letters (especially for high school students and college students and graduates seeking employment) as well as cover letter templates, writing tips, formats and templates, email cover letter examples, and examples by type of applicant |
| 2 | How to Write Cover Letters (from CollegeGrad) | This site contains resources about the reality of cover letters, using a cover letter, the worst use of the cover letter, the testimonial cover letter technique, and a cover letter checklist |
| 3 | LinkedIn Cover Letter | This site contains articles, experts, jobs, and more: get all the professional insights you need on LinkedIn |
| 4 | Cover Letters (from the Yale Office of Career Strategy) | This site includes specifications for the cover letter framework (introductory paragraph, middle paragraph, concluding paragraph), as well as format and style |