Resume & Cover Letter Tips

This short guide contains 60 resume and cover letter tips. The tips span across the entire job search process, from the start of the job search to the customized cover letter. This book also includes general resume/CV writing advice and specific recommendations about resume wording, organization, and formatting. The tips apply to the CV as well.

Excerpts:

12. You should have three different versions of your resume: the fancy version (formatted for printing), the copy-and-paste text version (formatted for pasting into website text-boxes), and the complete version (including the salary histories, the phone numbers, and the exact addresses for every position on your resume because some website applications require all of this information)

13. If an online application requires that you re-type your entire resume over again into their website, then you must do this if you want to be considered for the position, without skipping any pieces - otherwise, it acts as a filter to disqualify the applicants who didn’t want it bad enough

26. More power verbs - advised, assessed, assisted, budgeted, contracted, created, devised, decreased, expanded, fixed, increased, inspected, learned, maintained, managed, met, named, negotiated, participated, planned, promoted, received, reduced, staffed, started, streamlined, taught, tracked, transformed, worked

51. Acronyms - do not assume that the reader knows what the letters stand for, so the first time you mention an organization, write it completely out, with the acronym in parentheses, for example, “US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)” - and then you can use the acronym alone

54. Customization - use the exact same wording in the cover letter that is in the job post - never send a stock cover letter