There’s more to a successful career than just landing a job. After you’ve secured a position, you’ll need to prove to your employer that you are worth their time and effort. With that in mind, let’s take a look at how to write a winning resume or cover letter.
Make It Stand Out
Let’s be honest, there are a lot of boring resumes floating around the internet. If you’re reading this, I assume you’re looking for a new challenge and aren’t particularly invested in what’s traditionally been done before. To stand out, your resume needs to be memorable. But how? By incorporating unique formatting tricks and standout pieces of content.
Include a personal anecdote about how your resume will advance your career. For example, if you’re applying for a job in marketing, your resume could mention a previously held role in sales or advertising and how that helped you understand the clients’ needs. Or, if you’re applying for a position in human resources, your resume could highlight a previous role in helping individuals with a disability. Pro-actively incorporating relevant skills and experiences into your resume is a great way to ensure that it will “pop” when read by a potential employer. If you want to write a winning resume or cover letter, don’t just copy and paste from the internet. Instead, take the time to develop content that is customized for a specific job opening.
Maintain A Professional Appearance
Your resume should always be written in a professional manner. After all, you’re trying to land a job with a prominent company and you wouldn’t want to give the impression that you’re not taken seriously. To maintain a professional appearance, stick to the universally accepted formatting conventions, including abbreviations, capitalizations, and sentence structure. If you’re lucky enough to have a career section on your resume, use appropriate keywords and phrases to optimize your resume for maximum exposure. Include a short professional summary section at the end of your resume to help potential employers learn more about you.
To write a winning resume or cover letter, you must have a clear idea of what you’re trying to accomplish. Start by taking the time to review other successful resumes or cover letters and identify the key elements that helped them land a job. From there, you can craft your own resume to incorporate those same elements and in the process, become an expert in your chosen field.