DATE: Saturday, February 26, 2000

FROM: SRM Student Activities Professional Development Subcommittee

SUBJECT: Hints for Writing a Letter of Application and a Resume

Disclaimer: These hints are biased towards getting a job in the private sector, not what works with an agency or university job.

RESUME

• You only need one page. There are different ideas on this, some experts claim this is out of date. Others claim that it shows that you can be concise and focus on the important facts.
• Don’t include an objective statement. It is old fashioned. When you apply for a job, as far as your potential employer is concerned, your only objective should be "Here is how I can help you, hire me" or "Here is why you need me, hire me." Put that in the cover letter, not in your resume.
• If you don’t have a fax number, get an efax number at www.efax.com (or some other free fax service). This will allow you to get faxes through email. It's free and a fax number is a professional touch.
• Write about skills that will make your employer more money or make your boss’s job easier. Don’t just list job responsibilities at your last job.
• Use action verbs with power phrases to describe your experience and skills.
• One modern resume format is to list problem-action-result, what needed to be done, what you did, and a quantitative summary of how it turned out. This is not always an option for students.
• If you have special skills, focus on them. Make "you" shine – show what sets you apart from the other people looking for work. If you are above average, don’t have an "average" resume.
• Under education, list your school, major, and expected graduation date. I like to see a GPA here – if it is high enough to be proud of. If you have a high GPA, make sure it shows (tactfully). Don’t look average if you are not.
• Summarize your school activities. List leadership activities and describe what you learned and what skills you gained.
• Do not include personal or recreational interests. Your resume is about work. You can show that you are a well-rounded person after you show that you are a top-notch, focused worker.
• List your references on your resume - one line each for 3 people. Don’t put "available on request", if the person hiring for your dream job "requested" your baby pictures, you would provide them. Don’t make them ask for something they need.
• Keep revising your resume and by the 25^th draft or so it should be slick.
• When you save and send your resume, save it as "yournameresumedate.doc". Do not save it as "resume.doc". Everybody does that. It will get lost in someone's file directory.

Your cover letter should also be one page and show that you can write. This is your chance to show you can communicate on paper. Do your homework. Know what your recipient needs and summarize it in the opening of your cover letter. Then talk about how your skills will help meet their needs.

Your resume and cover letter should be focused towards one specific job. Use the job announcement or call the contact person for the job to find exactly what they want and the terminology used by that company. Address as much of what they are looking for as possible. Get a copy of the resume of the person doing the hiring (check the web). It will show their personal biases in resumes. Tune yours to reflect their biases.

Be concise in your cover letter and resume. Remember that the most likely time for someone to be hiring is when he or she is short-handed and understaffed. Being short-handed means everyone is doing their job plus part of someone else’s. They don’t have a lot of extra time to sift through extra verbiage. Tell them what they want/need to know.

Keep in mind that the main reasons people add staff are to make their jobs/lives easier or to make the company more money. Write about how you can do one or both of these things. People rarely do recreational or welfare hiring.

Be a whiz at your word processing program. Create your own letterhead and make your letter look professional. Learn the correct way to format. Resumes are now distributed most commonly by email. Therefore your resume cannot just look good when printed, it needs to look good on the monitor. It needs to be done correctly with correct tabs and margins. That way it looks the way you designed it no matter where it is printed. If you cheat your way through, it shows to your prospective employers.

Writing resumes is a tough job. Get a "resume buddy" and make each other work on your resumes. Reward yourself when you get it done. Be ready when opportunity knocks.

Good luck and happy (job) hunting.