Quintessential Resumes and Cover Letters Tips Blog

Remember — less is MORE, cautions Jimmy Sweeney in his article for Quint Careers, the 7 Elements of a Highly Effective Cover Letter.

The best cover letters have plenty of white space. Clear, focused, short and sweet gets the interview every time.

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Do you need more than one version of your resume? Most likely, yes. You may need more than one organizational format for your resume. See table below for the most common organizational formats.

We include functional and chrono-functional formats because they do have their uses, but we should note that purely functional resumes are the least common, least preferred by employers, detested by recruiters… and most Internet job boards do not accept this resume format.

Chrono-functional/hybrid/combination resumes can suit a variety of job-seeker needs, such as a diverse job history that doesn’t add up to a clear-cut career path and situations where the job-seeker has work experience that is related but not an exact link to the desired position. Job-seekers who have large employment gaps or many short employment stints prefer this format because it downplays employment history. This type of resume has been known to work for mature workers, career changers, and job-seekers with academic deficiencies or limited experience.

While the chrono-functional/hybrid/combination resume is more acceptable to employers than the purely functional format, some employers are unaccustomed to functional formats of any kind, finding them confusing, annoying, and a red flag that something is wrong in your background. At the very least, they will probably scrutinize a chrono-functional resume more closely to check for details and find the flaws that inspired the candidate to use this format. Some employers insist on knowing exactly what you did in each job. Recruiters/headhunters particularly disdain functional formats, so this approach should never be used if you are primarily targeting recruiters with your job search. Employers in conservative fields are not fans of functional formats, nor are international employers. Functional formats, even chrono-functional, also are not acceptable on many online job boards. In summary, the chrono-functional resume has very limited uses but can be a viable marketing tool if well done.

See our articles What Resume Format is Best for You? and Should You Consider a Functional Format for Your Resume?

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Ensure that you’re not wasting your time, or more importantly, the employer’s time, suggests Teena Rose in her article for Quint Careers, Optimizing Your Cold-Contact Cover Letter.

If you’re a software engineer and the company you’re targeting outsources its entire system needs, then you’re wasting time vying for employment with that company. Know your viability factor before adding any company to your target list. Make a courtesy phone call, if necessary. If you place a call, ask for a contact name too. Why not kill two birds with one stone?

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“Don’t make the mistake on your resume or in your cover letter of claiming soft-skills competency without substantiation,” cautions Peggy Klaus in her article for Quint Careers, Are You Up To Snuff When It Comes To Soft Skills? “Providing solid examples that demonstrate your soft skills in a resume or cover letter is far more effective than making empty promises, such as: I possess solid leadership, people, and communication skills. Show me! This is especially important, given that many hiring managers — as associate publisher of Quintessential Careers Katharine Hansen points out in Top 30 Executive Resume Pet Peeves of Hiring Decision-Makers — don’t like to see a laundry list of soft skills on a resume,” Klaus writes.

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Adding a Postscript — a PS — to your cover letter — especially one that’s handwritten — is a great way to grab the employer’s attention.

Ideally, your postscript should encapsulate your Unique Selling Proposition — the one quality that you feel will inspire employers to hire you above all other candidates. See examples of cover-letter postscripts.

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“A great interview-generating executive resume is all about differentiating yourself from others competing for the same jobs,” writes executive resume and branding expert Meg Guiseppi in her article for Quint Careers, Five Top Trends for Executive Resumes. “With constantly changing trends in strategic resume writing, new ways to accomplish this differentiation are always coming forward. If you take advantage of the latest trends before they mainstream, you are much more likely to stand out, make a positive connection, and stimulate the attention you deserve.” Read the trends here.

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Hiring decision-makers surveyed for the book, Top Notch Executive Resumes identified this as one of their Top 30 Executive Resume Pet Peeves: Resume has spelling errors, typos and grammatical flaws.

Hiring decision-makers cited this peeve more than any other. It may surprise some that misspellings and typos pervade even executive-level resumes, but they do. A job-seeker-submitted sample considered for the executive resume book, for example, contained the common error of spelling “manager” as “manger.” You’ll note that this misspelling won’t be picked up by spell-check functions because “manger” is a correctly spelled word. So is “posses,” the plural of posse, which I often see on resumes when the job-seeker intends “possess.”

“I once received a resume where the applicant misspelled the name of the University from which he received his MBA,” said Jeff Weaver, regional manager for a global information services company.

“Poor spelling and grammar … is particularly worrying,” said Pete Follows, senior consultant, for SaccoMann, Leeds, UK. “If a candidate is not giving due care and attention to a document to improve their own personal circumstances, what care would they take with documents with less personal significance?”

A few tips on avoiding typos, misspellings, and grammatical errors:

• Use spell-check functions but remember that they aren’t enough.
• Proofread. Then put the resume down overnight and proof it again in the morning with fresh eyes.
• Try proofing from the bottom up. Reading your resume in a different order will enable you to catch errors that you may have glossed over before because your brain was accustomed to reading your verbiage in the expected order.
• Ask a friend or family member to proof, preferably one who is a meticulous speller and grammarian.
• Be careful about company and software names, which are frequently misspelled and can damage your credibility.
• Consider hiring a professional resume writer.

See all 30 peeves: executive resume peeves 1-10 in Part 1, executive resume peeves 11-20 in Part 2 and executive resume peeves 21-30 in Part 3.

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Just a few entries ago, we reported a study on the importance of cover letters to employers, but a newer study is now out with similarly significant results:

Cover Letters Still Play Valuable Role in Hiring Decisions, Survey Suggests

MENLO PARK, CA — As the job application process increasingly moves online, some job seekers might be tempted to think a formal cover letter is no longer necessary — not so, a new survey shows. Eighty-six percent of executives polled said cover letters are valuable when evaluating job candidates. Moreover, eight out of 10 (80 percent) managers said it is common to receive electronic resumes accompanied by cover letters.

The study was conducted by an independent research firm and developed by OfficeTeam, a leading staffing service specializing in the placement of highly skilled administrative professionals. The survey is based on telephone interviews with 150 senior executives from the largest companies in the United States.

Executives were asked, “When evaluating prospective job candidates, how valuable is the cover letter that accompanies the resume?” Their responses:

Executives also were asked, “When you receive a resume electronically from a job candidate, how common is it for that resume to be accompanied by a letter of introduction or cover letter?” Their responses:

“Submitting a resume without a cover letter is like not shaking hands when meeting someone for the first time,” said Dave Willmer, executive director of OfficeTeam. “Those who aren’t including cover letters with their resumes are missing an opportunity to make a good first impression and set themselves apart from other job applicants.”

Willmer added, “A cover letter should demonstrate the applicant’s knowledge of the company, highlight applicable skills and work experience, and explain any resume anomalies, such as extended employment gaps.”

OfficeTeam offers the following seven tips to help job seekers develop strong cover letters:

1. Name names. Address your letter to the specific hiring manager rather than including a generalized introduction. If you don’t know the hiring manager’s name, call the company and ask.
2. Do your homework. Research the company online and demonstrate how your knowledge and skills fit the job and could benefit the organization.
3. Solve any mysteries. If you have any long employment gaps, explain how you filled the time. Mention professional development courses or volunteer activities that show additional efforts to keep your skills current.
4. Leave something for the resume. Limit your cover letter to one page, if printed, or a few paragraphs, if submitted in the body of an e-mail.
5. Make a plan. Demonstrate your excitement for the position and conclude by identifying next steps such as, “I’ll follow up with you next week to discuss meeting in person.”
6. Read and reread. Just as you would scrutinize your resume, take time to review your cover letter for typos and grammatical errors. Have a friend or mentor read it as an added precaution.
7. Be a savvy submitter. When applying through online job boards, always choose the option to add your cover letter to your resume. When e-mailing application materials to a hiring manager, paste your cover letter within the body of your message.

Original press release here.

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Accomplishments are the points that increase reader’s interest in your resume, stimulate a request for a job interview, and really help sell you to an employer — much more so than everyday job duties. In a study by the former Career Masters Institute (now Career Management Alliance), content elements that propel employers to immediately discard resumes include a focus on duties instead of accomplishments, while documented achievements were highly ranked among content elements that employers look for.

Don’t isolate accomplishments in a section by themselves. Everything on your resume should be accomplishments-driven, and isolating accomplishments suggests that the other things you did in your jobs were NOT accomplishments. For more about how to identify your accomplishments, see our article For Job-Hunting Success: Track and Leverage Your Accomplishments and our Accomplishments Worksheet to help you brainstorm your accomplishments.

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A particularly effective way to deploy the specifics of an ad or job posting to your advantage is to use a two-column format (also known as a “T-formation” letter) in which you quote in the left-hand column specific qualifications that come right from the employer’s want ad and in the right-hand column, your attributes that meet those qualifications. The two-column format is extremely effective when you possess all the qualifications for a job, but it can even sell you when you lack one or more qualification. The format so clearly demonstrates that you are qualified in so many areas that the employer may be willing to overlook the areas in which your exact qualifications are deficient. One of our former students describes her success in using the two-column format:

“Several months ago, you referred me to your Web site where there was a sample of a cover letter using a ‘you require/I offer’ table format. Believe it or not, I sent in my resume along with a cover letter in this format to a job that was posted on Monster.com, and I actually got an interview!! The position is with [name of company], and I can’t even imagine how many applicants they had. When I went in for the interview, the person that I met with complimented me on the cover letter and actually said that that’s what got me in the door ahead of so many others!”

You can see three sample letters in a two-column format: Sample 1, Sample 2, and Sample 3.

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