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.

• 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. >

Experts in the resume-writing field may have style differences, but all seem to agree on the importance of a final presentation that is rich in accomplishments and action-oriented language with unique qualities and special skills promoted as “value-added” extras. It seems to be universally agreed that resume writing is about creating powerful career-marketing documents that identify you as a candidate who is in-step with leading-edge job-search trends and technologies.

The wise job hunter will use some minor sleuthing skills to decipher the advertising language of each listing, identify exactly what hard and soft skills a specific employer seeks, and utilize that information to tweak a resume and cover letter to play to the target reader. Picking up on the keywords in employment ads and job postings can truly be the key to success in the job market. Making minor adjustments in language, to otherwise identical documents, can mean the difference between getting an interview and having your resume land in the circular file—especially in an age where use of keyword-based resume screening software is becoming more common.

Oprah Winfrey rejects the very idea of luck, believing instead that moments heretofore defined as lucky are instead highly charged instances where preparation meets opportunity. This concept can certainly hold true in a competitive job market where the earliest bird may indeed catch the worm. Having a well-written, up-to-date resume at the ready for an unexpected opportunity could very well position you ahead of the competition. Being able to produce current, professional-looking career documents at not only a moment’s notice, but THE moment’s notice can speak volumes about your viability as a qualified candidate.

Submitting your documents for an objective critique can be a solid first step in your preparedness process. A resume critique provided by qualified professionals can shed light on how the current state of your resume may be hitting or missing its mark in a target industry or with recruiters and hiring managers. You may also gain valuable insight on how best to optimize your documents for electronic submission and screening.

Repeating the exact same things you wrote in your resume is one of the most common cover letter mistakes. No one wants to read the same thing twice. By the time most people have finished writing their resume, they feel that they have run out of ideas and just cut and paste to create a cover letter. Instead, the cover letter should be what sells the reader on your skills. Like the jacket-cover introduction to a good book, the cover letter should give the reader a taste of the great things to come and encourage them to read more. If you are don’t have any idea what your top skills are and how they will help the company, neither will your reader. Take the time to craft the right words and statements to make your skills shine.

A major mistake is not understanding the hiring motives of your audience. Job-seekers target their resumed to three basic audiences: executive decision-makers, resume screeners, and third-party recruiters. Each of these groups has its own hiring motives.

• Executive decision-makers are looking for candidates who will have a significant impact on bottom-line initiatives, such as time saved, income generated, revenue built, etc.
• Resume screeners are searching for candidates who directly match the lists of qualifications in the job description.
• Third-party recruiters are looking for selling points to help position you as a top candidate.

Knowing these hiring motives will help you craft your cover letter specifically to catch the attention of your particular hiring audience. By appealing directly to the reader, you are creating an immediate bond that will make you a stronger candidate.