Cover Letter Tips Email
People tell me all of the time, "but HR likes bullets". That may be, but you can"t bullet everything on your resume. Use it sparingly and if you do use it, decide if you are going to write complete sentences (using periods at the end) or not and then BE CONSISTENT.See my article about objective statements. They are outdated. It"s better to write a professional summary or a qualifications summary. This makes it less self-centered and more concentrated on what you can do for the employer.
It"s OK if it"s one page naturally, but if you have a long work history give yourself permission to use more than one page. Of course, if it"s only a matter of a few lines too long, try to fit it onto one page. Use your judgement of whether it looks better on one or spread out onto two pages. We won"t even go into the topic of federal resumes. If you"re writing a federal resume, it"s a whole different story...
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Have your friend read through it and if they have no clue what your acronyms are, you should write them out. Remember that not every human resources manager is going to know specific acronyms and they are going to be your first audience.
This is a huge pet-peeve of mine. Take it out and start with the verb, every time. It will be more concise and it creates an active voice, instead of passive. Of course your were responsible for it, you"re putting it down in your job description.
If there is something really fantastic you did, don"t wait until the end of the page or the second page of your resume to talk about it. Put it on the first page, at the top.This is especially true for recent college graduates. I have seen them list all of their part time jobs and then at the very bottom of the page, they will put a tiny little section about education. If you are a recent grad, put your education above your employment section and don"t be afraid to list some of the individual courses you took or projects you worked on.
It"s OK to have a generic resume but as soon as you decide to submit it for a particular job, you"ve got to target it to that job. That means sitting down with the job announcement and making sure everything on the announcement is somewhere in the text of your resume. So, if the employer is looking for someone with excellent customer service skills, you need to mention how and when you utilized excellent customer service skills.
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