Quintessential Resumes and Cover Letters Tips Blog

To sharpen your resume’s focus, you can add a section called something like “Summary of Qualifications,” “Profile,” or the like. Such a section, in a reader-friendly bulleted format can contribute to powerful resume opener that draws the reader in; it can be part of the top third of resume that showcases your best selling points, catches the prospective employer’s attention, and immediately demonstrates your value as a candidate.

A synthesis of the ideas of two leading resume experts, Susan Britton Whitcomb, author of Resume Magic, one of the best books on the market for resumes, and Deb Wile Dib of Advantage Resumes, reveals that a Summary/Profile section can contain:

• Title/functional area/level of your current position and/or position you seek.
• Number of years of experience (which, for age-discrimination reasons, should not exceed 15-20; “15+” is a good guideline for mature workers)
• Industry you’re in or seeking to be in.
• Core competencies/areas of expertise/strengths/specialization for that field.
• Highlights of representative accomplishments, especially used to demonstrate skills and competencies you’ve used throughout your career.
• Top business, leadership, craft-related skills, both “hard skills” and “soft skills” (such as communication, interpersonal, teamwork); however, be aware that many hiring decision-makers believe soft skills can be substantiated only in person or by references, so be sure to provide strong substantiation of these skills in your resume.
• “Value-added” information: Skills/accomplishments/experience that
• add to your value because they are not necessarily expected of someone with your background (e.g., operations manager with deep knowledge of IT).
• Any advanced degrees, certifications, or licenses that are integral to the type of job you seek.
• Language and international business skills, if relevant.
• Technical/computer skills, instead of burying them at the bottom of your resume (Exception: IT professionals, who should place IT skills in a separate section).
• Personality /management style: Open a little window into your personality with your Summary/Profile (e.g., mention sense of humor)
• Possibly affiliations if integral to the job, otherwise in a separate section.
• Any extremely prestigious colleges, employers, or clients.
• Quantification whenever possible, using numbers for, e.g., revenue generated, size of accounts, typical budgets, money saved, etc.
• Positive quotes, testimonials from supervisors, clients, taken from memos, letters, performance evaluations.
• Awards you’ve earned, such as Employee of the Month and President’s Club, can also be listed in the Summary/Profile section to give them more up-front attention than if they were listed in their own section.
• Keywords/buzzwords from ads or job postings you’re responding to.

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What are the most important things to remember about writing an effective resume? They can be encapsulated in a six-letter acronym, FAKTSA, in which the letters stand for:

• Focus
• Appearance
• Keywords
• Transferrable Skills
• Accomplishments

Focus: A sharp focus is an extremely important resume element. Given that employers screen resumes for between 2.5 and 20 seconds, a resume should show the employer at a glance what you want to do and what you’re good at. In a study by the former Career Masters Institute (now Career Management Alliance), employers wanted resumes to show a clear match between the applicant and a particular job’s requirements. A “general” resume that is not focused on a specific job’s requirements was seen as not competitive. In a more recent study by CareerBuilder.com, 71 percent of hiring managers preferred a resume customized for the open position.

One way to sharpen focus is through verbiage at the top of your resume that instantly catches the reader’s eye and identifies the area(s) in which you can make a contribution.

This verbiage can take one of several — or a combination — of forms:

1. Objective statement: Described in more detail below.
2. A “headline,” usually simply the title of the position you’re applying for, which can be adjusted for every job you apply for.
3. A branding statement, a punchy “ad-like” statement that tells immediately what you can bring to an employer.

The headline and branding statement are often used in combination. Example:

If you go with an Objective statement, it should be labelled as such and use language telling how you’ll benefit the employer. Something like:

Objective: To contribute strong _ skills and experience to your firm in a __ capacity.

You can read more about resume objectives in our article Should You Use a Career Objective on Your Resume?

Watch for additional information on resume enhancers in upcoming blog entries.

Get a FREE resume evaluation from Quintessential Resumes and Cover Letters, powered by About Jobs Resume Writing Service. Or order a resume, cover letter, or other career-marketing document.

Teena Rose of Resume to Referral offers these final ideas for writing a strategic follow-up letter:

4. Address new information that wasn’t originally brought up; e.g., you may have recently learned the company plans to expand marketing efforts in France. If you speak French, noting that in your follow-up letter would definitely be a smart move.
5. Sometimes small gestures open a door to bigger rewards, such as a second interview. Receiving follow-up correspondence from a jobseeker can keep the line of communication open between the hiring company and the jobseeker.
6. Spell out transferable skills not brought up in the interview. If you sat through the entire interview and left with a less than favorable feeling about the outcome, then detailing how your current skill set is relevant to the open position can build a bridge between your current, or most recent, position and your target position.

Don’t overlook any opportunity you have to increase your chances for employment. The hiring process is much like a dance. Fail to dance (and dance properly) to woo the judges, and your chances of winning diminish. It’s always best to stray from what the bulk of jobseekers are doing, so that you draw attention to yourself whenever the opportunity arises.

Get a FREE resume evaluation from Quintessential Resumes and Cover Letters, powered by About Jobs Resume Writing Service. Or order a resume, cover letter, or other career-marketing document.

Teena Rose of Resume to Referral offered these insights about the rationale for sending a post-interview strategic follow-up letter:

Keep in mind that few jobseekers actually send a thank-you or follow-up letter. Therefore, when it actually occurs, it can sway a hiring manager’s decision in your direction. Remember, it’s all about who looks the best in the eyes of the employer. Here are just a few reasons for sending a great follow-up letter, along with suggestions on what to include in it:

1. Thank the interviewer for his or her time. Everyone likes to be recognized and thanked, even if the “tree fails to bear fruit.” Send a follow-up letter even on those occasions when the interview didn’t go as well as expected.
2. Refresh the interviewer’s memory concerning a particular topic you talked about in the interview. It helps to relate to the interviewer; and by bringing up a previously discussed topic, you can draw the interviewer’s attention on to you — even if only for a minute.
3. Forum to reinforce knowledge, skills, and abilities brought up in the interview.

Don’t be afraid to restate what makes you a prime candidate for the position. It doesn’t hurt to mention it, because maybe the interviewer missed something relevant about your skill set.

Get a FREE resume evaluation from Quintessential Resumes and Cover Letters, powered by About Jobs Resume Writing Service. Or order a resume, cover letter, or other career-marketing document.

In an article by Teena Rose of Resume to Referral the power of a post-interview follow-up letter is revealed.

A follow-up letter seems like a last-ditch effort on the part of a jobseeker, am I right? Ah, but wait! The act of sending this kind of letter can actually sway a company in your direction. Companies don’t always make hiring decisions when expected. Sending your follow-up letter a few days or a couple weeks after the interview can actually reflect your ambition and dedication to the employer. In some cases, it will reflect you as a more viable, dedicated, and persistent option to employers. List new and unique content, and avoid regurgitating exact details contained in your original cover letter or those spoken in the interview whenever possible. Instead, keep it fresh by expanding in directions that put new angles or views on your work history.

Get a FREE resume evaluation from Quintessential Resumes and Cover Letters, powered by About Jobs Resume Writing Service. Or order a resume, cover letter, or other career-marketing document.

Several years back, we researched how recruiters interact with cover letters and came to this conclusion: “According to experts in the world of recruiters/headhunters/executive-search firms, cover letters to these professionals don’t get much attention, at least not on the initial screening of your job-search materials.”

A more recent blog entry by Harry Urschel suggests it’s still the case that recruiters rarely read cover letters:

If it’s being sent to a recruiter, or you are applying to an online system, you can be virtually guaranteed that a cover letter would not be even looked at, much less read. The volume of resumes that go through a normal recruiting process makes it all but impossible for cover letters to be considered in addition to resumes.

Here we would add that if an online system provides a place to submit a cover letter via upload or pasting into a text block, it can’t hurt to submit one. Also review the recruiter’s Web site carefully or speak to someone at the firm to determine whether the recruiting firm wants you to submit a cover letter and what information they want to see in the letter. Recruiters who want cover letters are the exception, but they do exist.

Urschel correctly notes that hiring managers who hire directly for positions (as opposed to recruiters) are much more likely to read to a cover letter:

A hiring manager, however, may be another story. In most companies, the hiring managers don’t usually get many resumes to sort through themselves. … Also, since the hiring manager naturally has the greatest interest in knowing more about the applicants they are somewhat more likely to read a cover letter if one is available. … As a candidate, your chances of getting an interview rise dramatically if you can present your information directly to a hiring manager. If you do, be sure to include a cover letter along with your resume for them to gain a better understanding of how you can be of value to them in the role.

Get a FREE resume evaluation from Quintessential Resumes and Cover Letters, powered by About Jobs Resume Writing Service. Or order a resume, cover letter, or other career-marketing document.

Accomplishments are the heart and soul, the meat and potatoes, of any resume. Prospective employers want evidence that the results you’ve attained for other employers can translate to the same results for your next workplace.

If you haven’t been tracking and recording your accomplishments all along, you may find it difficult to brainstorm them when you update your resume.

Our Accomplishments Worksheet will help significantly, but for accomplishment prompts broken down into 13 different professions, check out Wendy Enelow’s article, Showcasing Your Achievements To Make Your Resume Shine. The article is written for resume writers, but it’s just as helpful for job-seekers.

Get a FREE resume evaluation from Quintessential Resumes and Cover Letters, powered by About Jobs Resume Writing Service. Or order a resume, cover letter, or other career-marketing document.

New graduates and continuing students can approach a competitive job market with enthusiasm and confidence when equipped with job-search tools that translate academic achievement into marketable job skills highly applicable to a wide range of professions. A resume of this kind successfully uses powerful career-marketing language, industry keywords, and professional formatting to look, sound, and perform just like a resume.

Career marketing professionals advise college students to conduct a thorough inventory and evaluation of academic accomplishments and work with campus career development counselors or professional resume writers to translate academic achievement, internships, and club or volunteer activities into compelling language that effectively frames skills and educational background and highlights achievement.

Get a FREE resume evaluation from Quintessential Resumes and Cover Letters, powered by About Jobs Resume Writing Service. Or order a resume, cover letter, or other career-marketing document.

Okay, so you have painstakingly prepared a powerful, attention-getting resume that fully highlights your accomplishments and frames your skills using the keywords and language of the target industry. Don’t make the mistake of sending it out into the world undressed—that is, without the appropriate outerwear — the cover letter!

Few applicants give much thought to their cover letters, even though they have put blood, sweat, and tears into their resumes. The job of the cover letter is to identify the job you want to do, and to sell yourself as the ideal person to do it. Industry professionals agree that at the very least, your cover letter should hook your reader, promote your viability as a candidate, and generate enough interest to inspire reading beyond the letter and on into the resume for more information.

It is also EXTREMELY important to know to whom your resume package should be directed, so you can send it addressed specifically to that individual’s attention, with his or her name spelled correctly, and followed by their title. Don’t make the mistake of addressing your cover letter “To whom it may concern” or a generalized “Dear Human Resources Director.” With that approach, it may as well be addressed to “Dear Circular File” as the odds will be against it getting into the right hands from the outset. Taking the time to learn the correct recipient’s name identifies you as someone who goes the extra distance to sure-up the details - a definite plus for any job candidate. >

Get a FREE resume evaluation from Quintessential Resumes and Cover Letters, powered by About Jobs Resume Writing Service. Or order a resume, cover letter, or other career-marketing document.

The first step toward preparing a powerful resume, is to fully consider the market you are targeting to determine the job skills necessary to work and excel in it. There is little point in developing a resume that highlights specialty cake-making expertise to appeal to an audience of steel workers. An ill-targeted execution is destined for hardship and likely failure from the outset. So step one of the mission is to define your focus. Begin by determining what your career goals really are, get to know the current hiring and performance trends in that market, research the qualifications typical for that type of job, and get ready to get to work tailoring your execution to fit the chosen profession. With a bit of mental elbow grease here, square pegs can be reshaped to fit round holes by highlighting skills that can be considered as transferable. Focusing on strengths, such as communication, organization, interpersonal skills, management capabilities, and leadership — to name a few — can be applied with great success to almost any job title, but you must be the one to connect the dots for your reader in persuasive, discipline-specific language. The Internet is a goldmine for conducting this type of career-related research.

Get a FREE resume evaluation from Quintessential Resumes and Cover Letters, powered by About Jobs Resume Writing Service. Or order a resume, cover letter, or other career-marketing document.