3.2 Resumes and Cover Letters
Learning Objectives
After reviewing this information, you will be able to
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- understand how to prepare a targeted and persuasive resume and cover letter
- understand the information required in each section of a resume and cover letter
- know how to apply the AIDA writing process to cover letters
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Introduction
A résumé is the central document of your job application because it’s what employers focus on most when judging an applicant’s suitability for doing the job they’re hiring for. Does the candidate have the right combination of core and soft skills to do that job? Did they acquire those skills with the right combination of education, employment, and other experience? Are they able to put a document together in a clear, concise, correct, organized, and reader-friendly way?
The cover letter literally covers the résumé and is thus the first thing the hiring manager sees of you. the cover letter plays a key role in convincing a hiring manager to consider your application. Besides introducing the résumé and requesting an interview, the cover letter is a sales pitch explaining how you will benefit the company you’re applying to. In the communications test that is the hiring process, it also proves that you can put coherent, persuasive sentences and paragraphs together when writing formally on the employer’s behalf. The cover letter must be flawless because, like the résumé that follows it, even one writing error could be read as a sign of the poor quality of work to come and prompt the hiring manager to save time by shredding it immediately.
The resume and cover letter work together to put your best your foot forward. These documents are the focus of the information below.
The Resume
Can you get to an interview without a resume? In most cases, the résumé is key to the hiring process. Sometimes one writing mistake—even just one little typo can fail you out of the running so you don’t proceed to the oral component (the interview). Employers demand perfection in the résumé for the following reasons:
- When the hiring manager’s task is to whittle down a pile of a hundred applications to about five for interviews, even one writing mistake in a résumé gives them the reason they’re looking for to dump the résumé in the shredder, thinning out the pile a little further.
- A perfect résumé speaks volumes about how conscientious a job applicant can be about the quality of work the applicant will do. If a résumé is poorly written, the employer can safely expect a similarly poor quality of work if the applicant became an employee.
Employer expectations are high and rising. Gone are the days where a printed résumé was all you were responsible for. Today you must also project a professional image online in whatever employers find when they Google-search you—because they almost certainly will. Even your electronically submitted résumé must be written with a consideration of the electronic filters employers use to scan applications