Resumes and Cover Letters

Spotted a job on Road Transport Jobs for which you’d like to apply? Use the following checklist to keep your resume and cover letter error-free...

DO:

• keep it short
  As a good rule of thumb, no more than 2 pages for a resume, and no more than 1 page for a cover letter. Recruiters are likely to make a decision about you at a glance, and remember – the more you write, the more room you create in which to waffle or make mistakes.

Useful link(s)
Free resume template


• stick to a simple layout
  Unless you’re going for a job in art & design, then forget fancy graphics or fonts – Helvetica, Times New Roman or Arial 9-11pt are more than enough. Put the most relevant info for the job up top. And contrary to popular belief, your contact details and address can go at the bottom of the page – recruiters scan resumes from top to bottom, left to right, so the most important info, e.g. your personal profile, should take the top slot, not your postcode!

Recruiter likes/dislikes

• 50% say the cover letter is as important as the resume
• almost a third only read a resume for 1 minute before making their decision
• the main reason for rejecting a resume is irrelevance to the job

Chiumento resume Survey 2006

• quantify your achievements and skills
  Prospective employers don’t just want to see what you did in a previous job, but what difference you made. For example, instead of writing ‘I improved absence management in my team’, tell them by how much – ‘I introduced a new shift system that reduced staff absence from nine to three days per year, the lowest in my division’. This kind of info tells the employer a) that you are a person who takes initiative, and b) what you could do for them.
• tailor your cover letter
  The cover letter is your selling tool to show recruiters that your resume is relevant FOR THEIR JOB. The best cover letters incorporate key words and skills mentioned in the job ad. But if you are stuck for time, and need to use a standard letter, one trick is to cite where you saw the ad – that’ll have them thinking what comes next really was written for them.
• be selective about the info you include
  A resume is not an autobiography. Only include the information that is most relevant to the job you’re applying for. Otherwise, the relevant info may get buried. Less really is more (and the ‘DON’T’ section tells you how to exclude jobs without leaving gaps).

DON’T:

Shy about your age?
New anti-age discrimination laws in the UK mean that employers are no longer entitled to force candidates to tell them their age. They are also not allowed now to use ‘ageist’ language in their job ads, eg ‘young’, ‘fresh’ etc. What does this mean for you? You don’t have to put your date of birth on your resume. It’s up to you.

• overdo the personal information
  Legally, in the UK, employers are not permitted to ask you about your marital status etc, so you don’t need to include this info in your resume. Nor do you have to include your interests and hobbies – it’s up to you. If you do include them, make sure they are real – we’ve all heard the stories about candidates claiming to love classical music who end up being interviewed by a Beethoven buff!
• leave unexplained gaps
  The more recent the gaps, the more attention they will attract. So the best way to show recruiters that you have more work experience that you are just not describing in detail is to include a section in your resume such as ‘previous work experience’ that outlines briefly the kind of jobs you did, or that lists them (provided there aren’t too many) by job title, company, nature of company’s business, and dates. You could also just leave the gaps, as long as you come to the interview prepared to be asked about them.

Lies, damned lies...
Then there was the doctor at the top Manchester hospital who ‘over-stated’ his experience on his resume; ‘Dr’ Kelvin Chatoor claimed to have:

• a BSc - he dropped out before completing the course
• trained as a psychiatrist in Australia – he trained as a radiologist
• been employed as a psychiatrist – he worked in A&E

The General Medical Council is considering his case…

• exaggerate
  In other words, don’t over-hype your skills or experience – describing your communication skills as ‘excellent’, for example, will result in harsher treatment of any typos they find – you’ve been warned!
• shoot yourself in the foot with silly or negative info
  Watch out for those …er… quirky email addresses, eg ‘madasahatter@hotmail.com’, as they won’t give quite the professional impression you want to convey. Also, don’t include your reasons for leaving any previous job – including them just draws attention to them, so leave it for the interview, and come with answers prepared.
• forget to spell check
  More and more job applicants are falling at the first hurdle in the job application process because of typos in their resume or cover letter – apparently, over half the employers in London say they bin applications that contain spelling or grammar mistakes, according to a government survey. And the biggest mistakes you could make? ‘they’re’ (they are) when it should be ‘their’ (belonging to them); ‘it’s’ (it is) when it should be ‘its’ (belonging to it) and the slang form ‘gonna’ when in writing it should be the formal ‘going to’.