How To Find a Job: Resumes and Cover Letters

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How To Find a Job Resumes and Cover Letters From Alison Doyle, your Guide to Job Searching Welcome to the How to Speed Up Your Job Search class! This week, we'll move from the career planning process to writing effective and compelling resumes and cover letters. Your resume is usually the first impression an employer will have of you - it needs to market your relevant skills, knowledge, and accomplishments. Employers usually only spend 30 seconds or so reviewing each resume, therefore, that first impression needs to be the one that counts. Even if you are not looking for a job right now - have a resume and a cover letter ready to go, so, if you see a position that's interesting you'll be able to send it out right away. Resume and Cover Letter Guide The first step is to start with a plain, simple resume you can edit into the various formats you'll need. Use a simple font like Courier or Times New Roman. Avoid columns and tabs and other spacing adjustments. Also avoid bold, italics, script, graphics, borders and underlining. Use asterisks rather than bullets, they will scan better. While preparing keywords (nouns and phrases that highlight technical and professional skills) make sure you select keywords that adequately reflect your expertise and experience. Sample Resumes Your resume is one of the most important job search tools you have. Getting your resume ready used to be relatively simple - write it, design it, format it, print it on good quality bond paper and send it off to prospective employers. The tremendous growth of internet recruiting has changed the process. Now job seekers need to be prepared to design a resume, send it via email or as an attachment to an email, post it to an employer web site or a resume database and create a hypertext resume for the web. Not sure what your resume should look like? Review our samples. Top 10 Resume Tips Review these top resume tips for choosing a resume format, selecting a resume font, customizing your resume, using resume keywords, explaining employment gaps, and more tips for writing interview winning resumes. Cover Letters Next, you'll need to prepare a cover letter. Write a custom cover letter for each employer. State why you are writing and indicate where you learned of the position and the title of the position you are applying for. Explain the reasons for your interest in the organization and express your enthusiasm for the job. Identify your most relevant skills and experiences and refer to the qualifications for the position and illustrate how your abilities relate to the position you are applying for. Cutting Edge Cover Letters What it takes for your resume and cover letter to make an impact when the employer has received hundreds of resumes for the position you have applied for. Top 10 Cover Letter Tips When you need to write a cover letter, it's sometimes the small things that make a big difference. Review these cover letter tips and techniques for writing top notch cover letters to send with your resume, including cover letter format and presentation, choosing a type of cover letter, writing custom cover letters, and cover letter examples and templates. This email is written by: Alison Doyle Job Searching Guide Email Me | My Blog | My Forum   Missing a lesson? Click here. About U. is our collection of free online courses designed to help you learn a new skill, solve a problem, get something done, or just learn more about your world. Sign up now, and we will email you lessons on a daily or weekly basis. You are receiving this email because you subscribed to the About.com 'How To Find a Job' email. If you wish to unsubscribe, please click here. About respects your privacy: Our Privacy Policy Contact Information: 249 West 17th Street New York, NY, 10011 © 2010 About.com   Advertisement