Unit 3: Bolstering Your Resume and Cover Letter
In the final unit of this course, you will polish your resume and cover letter. Even if you do not consider yourself technically skilled, you still can create an attractive resume by employing some freely available online resources. You will examine ways to enhance your resume and cover letter and learn about techniques to make your application to each job as competitive as possible. You will harness effective action verbs, keywords, and positioning (a formatting strategy for promoting your professional identity) to strengthen the language and organization of your resume. You also will learn how to edit and review your resume and cover letter to ensure its quality. Finally, you will learn how to tailor your application materials toward a specific job and identify the pitfalls to avoid when finalizing your resume and cover letter.
Completing this unit should take you approximately 1 hour.
3.1: Polishing Your Resume and Cover Letter
This introduction to Chapter 4 gives an overview of how to market yourself broadly, a process of which a well-crafted resume and cover letter are just two parts. This reading gives a preview of the process of putting your resume out there and approaching the next steps of the job search.
Many times you will need to make adjustments to your resume to account for gaps in you employment and jobs where you were employed for only a short time. This reading will show you how to cover your bases when this happens.
Read this article and take 20 minutes to apply these tips to your own resume and cover letter when you have finished.
Resume writing is both an art and a skill. One small mistake in your resume can sometimes eliminate you from consideration for a position. Here is an article that will outline ten common mistakes to avoid on your resume.
Read this article and follow its advice the next time you prepare a resume. What other suggestions have you heard for writing better resumes?
Post any other tips you have learned elsewhere on Saylor's discussion forums, along with a note asking for feedback from the community. Make sure to include the activity prompt/instructions, as well as you own comments, so your contribution can be as helpful as possible to other students.
While there, you should reply to your classmates' posts as well, especially on those topics that you feel you have already mastered.
Note: You will need to create an account at discourse.saylor.org to participate in the forum. Signing up is free and only takes a moment.
3.2: Targeting Your Job Search and Resume
Read sections 3.1 and 3.2 to understand how to identify and target specific industries and jobs in your job search. When deciding to apply for a job, its best to identify the industry, the position, and the geographic location in which you want to work. When you have finished reading section 3.1, you can click the Next Section arrow at the top right to continue on to section 3.2.
3.3: Going Online with Your Resume
It’s pretty simple, really: every single day, more and more of the world is coming online. As that trend continues, the internet is becoming our de facto first choice of where to go to find things, whether that means the closest deli to our apartment, a quality used car, or someone to fill the position that just opened up at our company. If you want to make sure that companies can find you quickly and easily, it is vital that you create a social media presence for yourself and have your resume accessible online. But what does “digital resume” mean, exactly?
This reading explains how to utilize the different social media sites to promote yourself online and post your resume or CV. After you have finished reading, take 20 minutes to create a free LinkedIn account and update your profile there according to your most current resume.
In today's job search and recruitment market, employers are increasingly relying on LinkedIn to search for qualified job applicants. If you want to be noticed by job recruiters, it is critical that you have your profile and resume on LinkedIn. This article is a brief overview of why your resume and profile should be on LinkedIn, and what type of information you should include