How to Write a Great Resume and Cover Letter

This video provides essential tips for crafting effective resumes and cover letters, emphasizing the importance of using action verbs and quantifying achievements. It also highlights the significance of networking in the job search process.

What makes a great resume and a great cover letter? It's important to know that these are marketing documents. The average employer now takes only about 7 seconds to review them. They're not reading these resumes; they're skimming them. So, they need to know right off the bat how you add value. Here's a great example of a recent alum's resume. It's one page, although two pages would be fine. This person has their contact information and lists their education, although it's possible to put the education at the bottom. You need to ask yourself, is it my education that's more marketable, or is it my experience? This is also a good resume because, rather than just a mini job description in the experience section, this former student is using what we call accomplishment statements to describe his experience. There are basically three criteria: 1. You want to begin with a nice, strong action verb. In our resume writing handout, we have a list of 100-plus action verbs. 2. As you write each of your sentences or phrases, you want to say to yourself, "So what? Big deal. So I did that. How did I make a difference? Did I increase anything, decrease, modify, or change?" It's important to pull out accomplishments and results. 3. The third criterion would be to quantify information. Here's another strong example of a resume. What I like about what the student did is in the experience section, she has strong action verbs, strong results, and strong numbers. She was able to quantify her results and accomplishments. In terms of cover letters, it's important, again, to know that this is another marketing document. It should be one page and highly customized. Basically, a cover letter is answering two questions: Why you for that specific position at that specific organization? It's certainly important to have a strong resume and a cover letter, but it's important to remember that the number one job search strategy is networking. You don't want to have an entirely reactive job search, just reacting to jobs that are posted on Internet job boards, for example. The problem is you don't know them, they don't know you, and your odds of being called in are probably slim. So, I highly encourage you to implement networking, to conduct a series of informational meetings. This way, they're meeting you first, and then your resume comes along as more of a placeholder, and it doesn't weigh as much.