Tim Larkin - How to Write Exceptional Resumes and Cover Letters to Forward Your Career: Professional Guidance to Support You Step By Step

How to Write Exceptional Resumes and Cover Letters to Forward Your Career
Copyright Tim Larkin 2017

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the author, except as permitted by copyright law. For permissions, go to:

www.timlarkincareers.com

The content herein is simply for educational purposes and does not take the place of professional advice. Every effort has been made to ensure that the content in this book is accurate and helpful at the time of publication. However, this is not an exhaustive treatment of the subject. No liability is assumed for losses or damages due to the information provided. You are responsible for your own choices, actions and results. You may need to consult with a professional for your specific circumstances.

ISBN (Print Edition): 978-1-54391-744-4
ISBN (eBook Edition): 978-1-54391-745-1

Welcome!

Our mission is to create exceptional resumes and cover letters designed to move your career forward. I will be working with you every step of the way providing plenty of tips, tools, walkthroughs and examples to make the process as smooth and simple as possible.

Getting the Most out of This Book

This book is divided into modules, each of which covers a discrete topic or concept. Its important to treat these sequential modules as a step by step guide so youll understand exactly how and why we are doing what we are doing.

Each module breaks down a topic, making it easy to understand with plenty of supporting information and examples. Its a simple process, and the best bet is to work through it at a comfortable pace.

Most importantly, this is your career were dealing with! The more thought and effort you put into it, the better results youll get. Please put aside some quiet time, free of distractions, to focus on this, and youll find its possible to be knocking out great job applications quite quickly.

The Job Application Process

Every job advertisement will generate any number of applications, with hundreds of them not unusual. There are a few things recruiters know theyll be faced with every time they put out an advertisement, such as applications that

• Are part of a mass mail-out.
• Have typos, incorrect name, job title and/or other errors.
• List skills and experience that arent aligned with what they are looking for.
• Contain weird formats that are hard to read.
• Are so brief, its hard to tell if they are serious.
• Are so long-winded, they become boring.
• Are so full of hot air: Im passionate, Im committed, Im great; just ask me , all without anything to back up their claims.
• Have unsubstantiated gaps in time.

Ask any recruiter about this. Some will tell you that around 70 percent of the applications they receive fall into the above categories, which makes for a long and frustrating process as they try and decipher good candidates from bad.

In short, for the people who are making decisions about whom to interview, the process can be messy. Our mission, therefore, is to cut through the mess by making our application as appealing as possible for recruiters. This is how we do it:

The Successful Applications Formula:

• Use only relevant information.
• Dont make any unsubstantiated claims or useless noise.
• Make it easy to find the relevant information.
• Create simple, clean documents that are easy to read.

Following this formula is the secret to maximising your chances of progressing your job application. Deviate from the formula at your peril!

Rookie Mistakes

Putting in an effort to avoid these basic mistakes will keep you in the game.

Paying someone to write your resume!

Paying someone to professionally write your resume just doesnt make sense. Why? Because different jobs, even if they have the same job title in the same industry, will most likely have different requirements and points of emphasis.

Lets say you are a retail salesperson applying for two roles. One is for ABC Company which is a premium, branded, expensive, high-end business. The other is for XYZ Company which carries mid-tier brands and often runs discounts. Both companies run job advertisements asking for a retail salesperson and both ask for excellent customer service.

Same job, same requirementsame resume? Not if you want to maximise your chances of landing an interview! Why? Because excellent customer service means different things to these two companies. The store environments would be different, as would be the volume of customers to be serviced, how you would be expected to interact with customers, level of product knowledge, level of professionalism and even dress and grooming would likely be different. An exceptional resume should be crafted to reflect these differences and maximise the chances of progressing your job application.

There are many potential variations between job requirements, and even though the job roles advertised might have the same title, each will be after people with specific skills and experience relevant to their situation.

If you are going to pay someone to write your resume, make sure they write one for every role youre applying for, and dont forget the same applies for the cover letter!

Get one hundred resume templates here!

Worrying about formats is a classic rookie mistake. Format is important, but tailored content is the key. The Successful Applications Formula

• Makes it easy to find the relevant information.
• Helps create simple, clean documents that are easy to read.

This means taking it easy with using multiple font sizes, underlining, bolding and using colours, borders, tables, graphics etc. When overdone, these elements add noise and potentially make accessing information harder. KISS works well here: Keep It Simple, Stupid!

Well work together to produce great content and lay it out in a simple format that is effective. You are more than welcome to personalise by changing the format, but just remember to KISS!

Google Resume Formats then go to Images, and there you gothere are more formats than you know what to do with them.

Forgetting to proofread before sending out documents!

If theres a bugbear that drives all recruiters crazy, its simple typos and other errors. Sure, you should run a spell check, but read through your documents yourself, at least twice, and have someone else read them before sending them out.

Whats the big deal? Receiving documents with errors smells of unprofessionalism. It gives the impression that the applicant is not trying hard enough, like getting this job is not that important. Worse are the applicants claiming to have strong attention to detail and then having errors in their documents!

By the way, attention to detail is a desirable attribute for just about every job out there. Just because it is not specifically identified in the job advertisement, it doesnt mean its not desired. Its just common senseerrors really put recruiters off. Please triple-check everything!

It goes without saying.

But well say it anyway: sending out a single resume for multiple roles is highly inefficient. The first rookie mistake talks about the differences that can apply even when the job title is the same. The current point is for the rookies that send out applications en masse to different companies, across different job titles. Of course, this is not the way to go, but just to add flavour in case youre in any doubt: recruiters pick up on this big time. How? Because the content of the application doesnt line up with what theyre asking for. It reads and feels like a generic application, because it is a generic application.