Resumes Writing or Job Application

 Resume and letters of application are essential types of writing for

college/university students and for anyone changing position.
 Analyzing your Goals and your Audience:
Before writing a resume and job application, you must understand both your goals
and your audience and your audience for these critical documents.
 Understanding Your Goals: your resume and application have two goals; to get an
interview and to indicate the skill you will bring to the company. The letter and
resume open the way to an interview and if you can present your strengths and
experiences convincingly in these key document, the employers will ask you for
an interview. To be convincing you must explain in writing what you can do for
reader; you must show how your strengths meet the firm’s needs.
 Understanding your Audience: the audience for your resume and letter could be
any of a number of people in an organization, from the personnel manager to
divisional manager. The audience could be just one person or a committee.
Whoever they are, they will approach the letter with a limited amount of time and
with expectations about writing skill and professional presentation.
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 The Reader’s Time: Employers read letters and resumes very quickly. A
manager might have one hundred resumes and letters to review. If the
manager spend an hour on each one, it will take 21/2 weeks to read them
all. Managers do not that kind of time. It is much more likely that, an initial
reading, the manager will spend 30 seconds to 3 minutes on each
application, quickly sorting the applications into “yes” and “no” piles.
 Skill Expectations: Managers look for data that show how the applicant
will satisfy the company’s need. The data according to two researchers,
should include “the college graduates previous achievements, special
aptitude/skills; and work related learning contributions, and
achievements”.
 Professional Expectations: Managers read to discover your ability to
write clearly, to handle detail,, and to act professionally. Clean, neat
documents written in clear, correct English demonstrate all three of these.
Bad grammar, unclear sentences, spelling mistakes and poor quality paper
will probably offend a manager.
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 Planning the Resume and Letter:
To plan your resume and cover letter, you need to asses your field,
your own strength and the needs of your prospective employers.
 Asses your Field: You should spend some time in discovering what
workers and professionals actually do in your field of interest.
You may make the list that answers the following questions:
 What are the basic activities in this field ?
 What skills do I need to perform them?
 What are the basic working conditions, salary ranges and long-
range outlooks for the areas in which I am interested?
To find this information talk to professionals, visit your college
placements and use your library. To meet professionals, you can
ask to interview them about their field. You can also attend career
conferences.
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 Asses your Strengths: After you have analyzed the field, you need to
analyze yourself. Review all your work experience--- part time, internship
and full-time– your college courses and your extracurricular activities to
determine what might fill specific needs in your field. Here are some
questions to help you analyze yourself:
 What work experience have you had that relates to your field? What
were your job responsibilities? What projects you were involved in?
what machinery or evaluation procedures did you work with?
 What special aptitudes and skills do you have?
 What special projects have you completed in your major field?
 What honors and awards have you received? Have you any special
achievement college/university achievements?
 Are you willing to relocate?
 Can you communicate in a second language? Many of firms do
business internationally?
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 Asses the Needs of Employers: After knowing
what skills to emphasize, you can promote them
much more effectively if you are aware of the
market. You cannot use the “you” approach to its
full potential unless you know how your skill might
benefit each prospective employer. In addition, if
you can show that you have taken trouble to
investigate a company, you distinguish yourself from
your competition. You can find out about firms
company literatures, professional journals and from
professionals.
Writing the Resume:
Since resume contains all relevant information, you should write it before the letter. Your letter can then
highlight or expand on this information. If you have the resume, you will find it easier to adapt the
letter to the needs of a specific employer.
Your resume is one page document that summarizes your skill, experiences, qualifications for a
position in your field. To be a strong applicant, you must write your resume with great care, selecting
the most pertinent information and a readable format. You can present your resume in one of two
formats: traditional and functional.
 The Traditional Resume:
The traditional resume has the following sections.
 Career Objective.
 Personal Data.
 Educational History.
 Work History.
 Objective: the career objective states the type of position you are seeking--- usually
an entry-level position. If you wish to add anything more, name a position you would like to have in
four or five years. To word the objectively, ask the professionals in your job areas. Avoid clichés such
as “Energetic accountant whishes to employ fine-tuned skills in challenging position with determined,
aggressive growth company.” The following are well-written basic objectives.
Entry-level managerial position in large retail chain.
System analyst with opportunity for advancement.
Position in research and development in microchip electronics
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 Personal Data: the personal data consist of name, address, place to
contact for credentials, willingness to relocate, hobbies and interests.
The first four are essential in a resume but the last two are optional. List
your current address and phone number. Tell employers how to acquire
credentials and letters of reference.
 Education. The education section includes pertinent information about your
degree. List your college or university, major, minor, concentration,
years attended and grade point average(if good). If you attended more
than one school, present them in reverse chronological order, the most
recent at the top. You can also list relevant courses (many employers like to
see technical writing in the list), honors and awards, extra-curricular
activities and description of practicum's, coops, internships and special
“professional encounters”, such as extended field trips.
 Work Experience. The work experience section includes the position you
have held that are relevant to your field of interest. List your jobs in
chronological order--- the most first. In some cases you might alter the
arrangement based on the importance of the experience.
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 Each entry should have four items: job title, job
description, name of company, dates of
employment. However job description is the most
important part of the entry. Here you describe what
your duties have been, the projects you have
worked on, and the machines and processes you
have used. Write the job description in the past
tense using words such as managed, directed, or
developed. Arrange the items of description in
order of importance.
Functional Resume:
 Functional resume is arranged by skills and strengths. This kind of resume presents the applicant to
the employer in the same way that the employers looks at the applicant: Are the relevant skills
present? This in particular, allows students whose work experience is not relevant to their job area
to stress skills learned in classes. The functional resume has these sections:
 Objective
 Personal data
 Education
 List of employers with dates and addresses.
 Skills.
In the functional resume, the following sections are handled just as handled in traditional
resume.
 Objective--- tell your immediate occupational goal.
 Personal data--- include your name, address and the address of your placement service.
 Education--- list your university, major, date of graduation, minor, G.P.A.
The work and skill sections are different; the work section is shorter and skills can be presented
in a capabilities list or in categories.
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 Work Section: for the work section, give the job title, company and dates for each position you have held.
You do not , however have to present a job description.
 Capabilities List: another effective method of presenting your skill is to list all your capabilities and then
follow them with a list of experiences. The capabilities are skills that will help you perform the position
named in your objective. In the following example, the writer shows clearly in a skill list that he can handle
the demand of writing manual.
 Capabilities:

 Gather, select and write information in a clear effective manner.

 Analyze writing projects and make decisions about content, format, organization and style.
 Set performance objective to clarify the purpose of a technical manual and each of its part.
 Create understandable, step by step instructions for specific readers to perform specific task.
 Collaborate with subject matter experts in an effective way.
 Develop plan sheets and flow charts to gather information.
 Design and lay out written material for manual, brochures and flyers.
Above list contains all aspects of job.
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 The Experience Section: This section then lists all the relevant projects that
the author has worked on or completed at different jobs.
 Sample Experience Section:
 Experience:
 Wrote and designed a technical operation manual operation.
 Composed an educational brochures on food preservation for
consumer.
 Developed a promotional brochures for a career conference.
 Gathered information and wrote an article for news and art section of
weekly newspaper.
 Skills Category: to arrange skills in categories, present all your abilities
and experience after a relevant topic heading. For instance you might have
subheads for management, research evaluation and team membership.
Write a paragraph about how you obtained these skills and what level of
expertise you have.
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 Formatting the resume:
To make the resume readable, use highlight strategies, heads, bold-face,
underlining, margins and white spaces. Essentially follow an outline format. Use
these guidelines:
 Indicate the main divisions at the left margins. Usually bold-face heads announce
the major sections of resume, followed by colons.
 Bold-face important words such as job titles or names of majors. Use underlines
sparingly.
 Single space entries; double space above and below; the resulting white space
makes the document easier to read.
 Treat items in each section the same way. All the job titles, for example, should be in
the same relative space.
 Print resume on good quality paper; use black ink on white paper. Shades of
Brown, beige and off-white are often used. Avoid brightly colored paper and
copies poorly, resulting in blotchy copies.
 Make your resume easy to read by controlling the margins and type size.
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 Writing letters of Application:
Your letter of application should be written with care. In this letter,
you apply for job, explain your qualification and ask for an
interview. You also prove whether or not you can write clearly.
Many employers are affected not just by what you say but also by
how you say it. To make good impression follow these guidelines:
 Type the letter on 8 ½- by 11 inch paper.
 Use black ink.
 Use one of the recognized letter formats.
 Sign your name in black or blue ink.
 Proofread the letter carefully. Grammar and spelling mistakes are
irritating at best and cause instant rejection at worst.
 Mail the letter promptly, folded twice, in a business envelop.