How to Write a Great Resume and Cover Letter

Today, the average employer only spends 7 seconds skimming your cover letter and resume. How can you quickly and effectively market yourself? In this video, Linda Spencer, assistant director of the Office of Career Services, offers cover letter and resume writing tips to sell yourself and get your foot in the door.

For more information, visit http://www.extension.harvard.edu/resources/career-academic-resource-center

What makes a great resume and a great
cover letter?

What's important to know is that these are
marketing documents.

It's also important to know that the
average employer now takes up only

about seven seconds, so they're not

reading these resumes, they're skimming
these resumes.

So they need to know right off the bat how
you add value.

So 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.

They are then listing 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.

Basically, three criteria.

You want to begin with a nice strong
action verb and on our,

in our resume writing handout, we have a
list of 100 plus action verbs.

Then, 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?

So if it's possible to pull out
accomplishments and results.

And the third criteria 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,

she has strong results, but she also has
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, relevant.

Should be one page and should be a highly
customized document.

And basically, cover letters are answering
two questions.

Why you for that specific position at that
specific organization?

So 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.

And 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, your odds of being called in are
probably slim.

So I highly encourage you to implement

networking, to conduct the series of
informational meetings.

So in fact, they're meeting you first and
then your resume comes along.

And it's more of a placeholder and then it
doesn't weight as much.