Cover letters, CV and Resume

A resume is a summary of your career, one to two pages in length and it showcases the jobs and responsibilities you’ve taken on, the skills you’ve developed, and what you accomplished for those companies. It should make it easy for hiring managers to see why you are a great fit for that role.

Hiring managers usually look for three key things in a resume:

• What did you do in the past?
• How long you've been doing it?
• Do you match the requirements of the role?

Your resume should show the hiring manager that you can handle it and the values you can bring to their organization.

• Name and Contact Information (Don't forget this)
• Work experiences
• Non-work experience, including professional organizations, community involvement, or side projects
• Education and certifications
• Skills that's relevant to that role

Your contact information should be at the top of your resume.

Including the following few things:

• Your full name
• Your phone number
• Your personal email address
• Your location (you can write “open to relocating” if you are applying for roles in other locations)
• You can also include your LinkedIn or personal website URL, your GitHub (for technical roles)

The key is here is to make sure the hiring manager can reach you later for an interview.

Within your work experience (Starting with your current or latest experience), include your job title, the company and its location, and when you worked there.

Add in a few bullet points explaining what you did in that job, the skills you used, the tools you used, and the results of what you did. Focus on the responsibilities that align you with the job you’re applying for .

If you have a longer career and this is starting to run over one or two pages, consider skipping the details of your oldest jobs unless they’re relevant to the job you’re applying for.

Depending on your work experience, these things may be worth including, particularly if they’ve helped you level up your skill set or better align you with that job.

If you’re a recent grad, you can add on-campus activities, such as clubs, organizations, or leadership experience.

If you’re still in school or just graduated, your education should be at the top of your resume, but for pretty much everyone else, this goes near the end.

If you took online courses or certification that's relevant to the role, definitely include it. But skip the ones that are not relevant to keep this simple.

It’s a quick list a recruiter can see if your skill set aligns with what they’re hiring for and usually this section goes at the bottom of your resume.

Don’t list things that you can’t actually do well, and skip the skills that are completely irrelevant to the job you are applying for.

Make sure that what your resume says matches up with the kind of candidate the employers are looking for.

Check the job description to see if those key words and phrases are in your resume. Check if have you listed the skills required for the job.

If you were the hiring manager for the role, what would you be looking for? Whatever you think will be most important for the recruiter, make sure it’s emphasized in your resume.

Does your resume reflect similar experience required for the role you are applying for? If not, find a way you can spin it to show that you are capable of doing the job

• Don’t just send your resume without proofreading it.

• Check to see if your contact information are updated

• Do some editing if your resume is too long.

• Formatting-wise, make sure you are using the same font for the whole resume, and the font size is readable.

You might want to send your resume and the job description of the job you are applying for to a friend or a career coach to get a second opinion.