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Part One
Overview
After watching the video lesson on cover letters, begin the writing process for your cover letter by creating a cover letter OUTLINE. (Creating an actual cover letter and submitting it is a later assignment, only make your outline for now).
Assignment Details
Follow the cover letter OUTLINE example posted in the cover letter module. Use this outline to organize your skills and background into main points and sub-points for the reader. Also develop a topic sentence that mirrors your main arguments. Watch the cover letter video lesson for information on how to approach creating a cover letter outline.
Due Dates
Submit your OUTLINE document to this assignment page before the deadline. There are 50 points possible for the OUTLINE submission.
thats the caption of the video
Hi class. This lesson is probably one of the most useful of the semester for you, and that is about0:01
how to create an effective resumé. I want to start by just talking about the role0:07
of the resumé in the job search. You really want to think about it like a marketing tool for you. It shows0:12
your communication skills, your attention to detail. Those are the kind of things employers are looking0:17
for within that document, in addition to wanting a record of the skills you have and0:22
the jobs that you’ve held and things like that. The goal of the resident is really to get0:28
you an interview. How well you do in the interview then determines whether or not you get the job. So having a0:33
great resume doesn’t mean it gets you the job, but it gives you your foot in the door so that you can actually talk to someone0:38
and excel in the interview. So that makes it a really important first step. The hardest part, I think,0:43
is sitting down to get it all on paper for the first time. Playing with formatting0:48
and small changes in wording are easier after that, but forcing yourself to take some time0:53
to sit down and remember all the things you’ve done, put together dates and titles and things like that, you know, it can be0:58
a bit of a heavy lift, but it’s definitely worth it. And in this lesson, what I’m1:03
going to cover is two elements of effective readymade design. Breaking it down into1:08
what I want to know about page layout and how to lay things out on the document. And then what1:13
do you need to know about putting the wording together to really make it persuasive for the reader? So that’s what1:19
we’re going to look at in this lesson. And I think it’ll be useful to you, even if you already have a version of1:24
a resume using. I can guarantee where I’m going to go over something today1:29
that will make what you have even better. The resume versus the cover1:34
letter, let’s take a look at that. So save a narrative style for the1:39
cover letter and let the cover letter provide more context about why you’re just in1:44
the company, more of a narrative about what you’ve done in the past and who you are and what you’re looking for a job right now.1:49
The resume should be more of a hard document where you don’t use first person1:55
“I” statements and it’s just more of a hard document2:00
with bullets and things like that rather than paragraph or narration. But2:06
the cover letter is where that narration style could come in, so reference that that lesson for how to make2:11
use of that. Let’s start with the idea of effective page layout for2:16
the resume, and I want to start with possible content categories that you2:21
could pull from. Think about which of these might apply for you. Education. Everyone will likely have2:26
that. So you’re gonna want to list your degree that you’re seeking here at UMKC for sure.2:31
Internships, employment history, relevant experience, other experience, honors and awards,2:36
volunteer experience, any kind of professional memberships, study abroad, technical skills, computer2:41
software, certifications, licenses, languages. And you could break down language skills into2:47
fluent, proficient and functional. So fluent to me would mean you truly are2:52
a speaker of that language. You can go in and speak with someone fluently2:57
in that language. Proficient to me means that you might be able to handle a phone call or,3:02
you know, a part of a conversation. And then functional to me means you3:08
might be able to navigate a city and read street signs and things like that. So that might be that might give you some language3:13
to talk about, that might give you a way to talk about the languages3:18
that you use and what your level is in that language. Leadership experience,3:23
and there could be more too. one of the documents I’ve posted for you is a career guide3:29
and it’s published by the university. And it is a really nice document. It has3:34
a lot of really good tips in it. And it discusses several other possible3:39
content categories that you could list as well. So look through that page in that career guide.3:44
I think you’ll be able to look through and see which of these might apply to you that you want to pull onto your resume.3:49
When it comes to the layout, though, we want to ask ourselves, does our resumé pass what I like to call a quick3:56
glance test? Which means that, should your resume happened to land in a pile and only get a 104:01
second look, would it make it into the keep pile? If someone was making a keep pile and a toss4:06
pile, would your resumé make it into the keep pile? Even these days, if it’s a digital4:12
toss pile/ keep pile, the same principles apply. So here are some some mindsets to be4:17
in to make sure we get into the keep pile. We want to list the most relevant persuasive information4:22
first. So that’s the first thing the eye sees. We want to use headers, bullet4:28
sentence fragments, more of an outline format for the resume. Again, so that it’s not paragraphs and4:33
narration. It’s more like an outline. Any type of formatting you use,4:38
like the use of bolding fonts, bullets, italics, be consistent with your use of that4:43
like you would in an outline so that it’s visually parallel throughout. So let4:48
me show it on the screen now an example of what I mean when I say that. Here is a sample student4:53
resumé that I posted for you all that you can take a more detailed look at in canvas.4:58
But I’m just talking through some of the the important parts here. First of all, at the top we want to have the5:05
name really big. You want your name to really jump off the page. So your name should probably be 20-5:10
22 point font. Below that, you want to have your contact information, probably street address,5:15
email address, phone number. You could even include like your LinkedIn profile there or5:21
other digital portfolios5:26
you might have or something like that. You can see that on this example, this person5:31
has picked out the content categories education, study abroad, experience activities and certifications.5:36
Now within this under their education section, this sample student resumé is a5:43
really good example of how to format your degree that you’re seeking here at UMKC.5:48
So we’ve got the full name of the university spelled out, it is punctuated with a dash.5:53
University of Missouri- Kansas City, Bloch School of Management. The student was also doing something5:58
with the Honors College., so we added that. Bachelor of Business Administration- Entrepreneurship6:03
Emphasis, comma, Economics Minor. So that just shows you how could you incorporate a minor?6:09
Then you’d have your GPA. And the rule of thumb there is that if the GPA is 3.0 or above6:14
you would list it, if not, you just go ahead and leave it off. But I also gave you an example6:20
here of what it would look like if you included other schools you’d also attended. So we’ve got an entry6:25
here for someone who earned an associate’s degree at community college and then also an entry6:30
here for someone who attended another university but didn’t actually earn a degree there.6:35
You might be able to say something like completed 30 credit hours or6:41
completed coursework toward an engineering degree or something like that, just so that the6:46
reader can sort of see what you did there. We only list the name of the degree if you’ve actually6:51
completed or on your way to completing it. You can see we’ve listed the dates off to the side6:56
that those things were completed. If you’re in the process of doing that, you probably are now,7:01
then you would just put expected May 2019. So you can put7:06
the word “expected” ind front of the date if it’s a degree that is in progress. Moving along here,7:12
under the study abroad section, to show what that could look like. Experience,7:17
this just is listing out the person’s jobs. You can see here I gave you an example7:22
of a job where the a job they had done at multiple locations. So they’d been a server7:28
at multiple restaurants and for space, we just sort of combined that listing.7:33
And that’s good. You can also see there’s a job where they worked at,7:38
they were in a job, but they had multiple, They were in a certain7:44
job, they were in a certain company and had multiple jobs at that company. You can see that progression.7:50
We always want to see the most current job on something like that first. So the most relevant7:56
thing comes first. Under activities, this is an example of a student who’s a student8:01
athlete. Suggest some some wording there for how you might handle it if you’re involved in athletics at8:06
UMKC. But then we could put something like Harvesters or volunteer work under activities.8:11
We added some certifications. But you could play with any kind of, you know,8:16
section headings that you wanted to here, as long as you’re following this format. So what I want8:21
to point out to you is that this format is very consistent. When you look8:26
at the entries here, the first line of the entry is8:32
bolded. The next line is italics. Any kind of content8:37
category is all upper case, right? And then we’re really consistent with that throughout the document.8:42
So whatever type of formatting you choose to use, be consistent with your pattern.8:48
And that is the key to getting this document to look visually parallel.8:54
Over here on this other column is where we’ve put locations and dates. There are9:02
different ways you can handle that. This is just one example. I’ve got some other9:07
examples highlighted in the9:12
there are some other examples available to you in that career guide booklet. So9:17
look through that digital version of that that I posted and you can find some additional examples. But you’ll notice9:23
that all these examples that you’re being shown all have some poor things in common that9:28
how they’re set up, and that is that there’s a nice bold name9:33
and contact information at the top. When you get into the categories that people chosen9:38
and how they’ve laid it out on the page, it’s visually parallel. That whatever formatting they’ve chosen,9:43
it’s plain, it’s simple, it’s clear and easy to see, and then it’s really parallel on the page.9:49
What’s going on with that style that I just showed you? The reason that’s strategic9:59
is the image I have on the screen now. When we read in English, we read from10:05
left to right and from top to bottom. So that makes the top section and that10:10
and that left column of the page the most important parts of the page. That’s where10:16
the eye is going to go first. When we think about that quote, the quick glance test,10:21
these parts of the document are really important for that. That bottom corner10:27
area is less important. So we don’t need to put as much as important things there.10:32
Let me switch back to the document we’re just looking at. You can see that the important information follows10:37
that pattern of being at the top and along that side, right? Their name, their contact information10:42
is at the top. The most important things you want the person to see right away at the top. For graduating college student,10:47
that’s probably going to be your education. But then down that side column is where we’ve got the10:53
name of organizations that you’ve worked for, the titles that you’ve had, your bullets, that information10:58
that you want someone to see first. Things like dates and locations, that can be off in that11:03
far right column, that’s more forgotten and not as easily seen by the eye because that11:08
information is not as persuasive, it’s not as important. So just be strategic11:13
about how you lat this document out. I will say a lot of templates that you find11:18
on the Internet, through Microsoft, do not follow these basic11:24
rules of thumb. I just went through about how we want to have his page set up so that someone can look11:29
at it well and get the information they need to quickly, so it’ll pass that quick glance test. A lot11:34
of those templates don’t follow this. So I strongly, strongly urge you not to use templates.11:39
Instead open a fresh word document, look at the example I have here, at some11:45
of the ones that I posted on canvas, and try to figure out, what do you like about those? What do you want to borrow?11:50
And really go in and create your layout from scratch in11:56
a blank Word document rather than a template. Digital applicant tracking12:01
systems, you have to upload your resume to company system. They oftentimes don’t read those templates12:07
very well anyway. Another reason to just build this from scratch and using something like this is an12:12
example. A few other style guidelines to mentioned to you.12:17
One page is usually best. You can have two full pages for your resumé12:22
if you have had at least five years of professional experience and I know you UMKC, sometimes we12:28
get students who have had that. So if that’s true for you, then you can push to two full pages. But12:33
it is crucial that you have two full pages. We don’t want to have a page and a part or page and a12:38
quarter, page in two thirds. If you’re going to go to two then you have to have enough for two12:43
full pages. It’s probably smart to use 10 to 11 point font even12:48
though for a normal document I’ve been advising you to use 12 point font, for12:53
something like a resume a 10 to 11 will let you get more on the page. It also lets12:58
the document look a little bit crisper. If we go bigger than eleven point font, the resumé starts to13:03
look a little bit cartoonish and that’s just not what you want. So 10 to 11 is a good place to be.13:08
It’s ok to make your margin smaller. Top to bottom, right to left. Those margins13:14
could go as low as three quarters of an inch or whatever. So click and drag those margins if you need to give13:19
yourself a little bit more room so that you can fit that last line or two on there to make it all work.13:24
I just gave a little spiel about not using templates, but it13:30
just to reiterate that they are hard to edit. They’re not really set up… You want your resume to be a living13:36
document that you can go in and change this and customize it and work with it. And13:41
those templates, you find out, don’t let you do that. And they don’t preserve formatting while you try to upload something13:46
to a digital tracking system for a company’s application system.13:51
It just doesn’t go well. So strong advice to avoid templates.13:57
You only want to use the body of the documents, not the head or the footer, because those14:02
the header in the foot are usually not read by digital application system. So anything that’s important14:07
needs to be in the body of the document, because that’s what the computer system will read when it scans it.14:12
Keep verb tense and use of periods consistent. Most of your document will probably be14:17
in past tense because every job you’ve done, even a current job you’ve done every day,14:22
past today. So to me, it makes sense to put that cleanly all in in past tense.14:28
But just check yourself that you’re not using some odd tense, that you’re probably opting for that kind of “-ed”14:33
ending rather than an “-es” ending or something else.14:38
It is OK, though, to put current jobs that you’ve done in present tense if you want to.14:44
So a current job, you’re currently doing, you can have that part of the document and present tense, but I think14:49
it’s also OK to have it in past tense, since you’ve done that every day past today. As14:54
I mentioned before, GPA of 3.0 or above, you can list, if it’s lower14:59
only lists GPA if you’re specifically asked to. Otherwise you can leave it off. Remove high school15:05
items once you reach the college level. And I know that’s kind of heartbreaking for people who are really involved15:10
in high school, but it is important to just15:15
once you’re at the university level, employees really just want to see what have you done in that world.15:21
There are a few things that are timeless, things like volunteer activities or something that really pertains15:26
to your major. If you’re studying to be a ballerina with the Kansas City Ballet15:31
and you danced in the Wichita Youth Ballet, that probably makes sense to list, right?15:37
But if it was just a matter of being on a sports team or student government,15:42
those are the kind of things we have to let go of for high school. Save your15:47
document with a file name that will be clear to the reader. So probably your first and last15:52
name, comma resumé will make sense to someone. You know, recruiters or companies are15:57
look at this kind of stuff all day long and they don’t want to have to deal with trying to hunt down some randomly16:03
titled document. You know, they get sent a lot of things throughout the day that probably say “Resume Version 2″16:09
So make sure that you save your document with your first and last name.16:14
Let’s move on to how to create effective wording. So now we’re looking at resuming16:20
into the jobs themselves and saying how do we create strong, experienced descriptions16:26
as we’re talking about our jobs and what we’ve done? So here are the rules of thumb for this.16:31
We want our experience descriptions to be outcome oriented and quantifiable.16:36
So in terms of being outcome oriented, we want to try to answer the question, what did you do?16:42
Excuse me. What did you do? And what was the outcome? And try to quantify16:48
where you can, whenever you can give something in terms of how much, how many, what percent?16:53
So it could be if you manage other people at a restaurant, managed a team of six people. Call that16:58
out. How many people did you manage? If you worked in sales, maybe the square footage of the sales17:04
floor you worked on if it was a really big retail environment or the amount of dollars in sales17:09
you would do in a week or a day or a month, whatever, whatever number is gonna be impressive there.17:14
If there are any tracking that you had that you were able to increase in percentage17:20
or this or that. Just ask yourself, as you’re trying to explain to someone what you’re doing, wherever you17:25
can quantify and bring numbers in, that helps them understand how many, how much, how big it was. It really17:30
brings it to life. You want the reader to be able to picture you doing it. One way to do that17:35
is to make sure that we start every bullet point with an action verb. So17:40
I’ve got some examples on the screen here. Things like increased, provided, manage, oversaw,17:46
developed, implemented, decreased, structured, started, maintained. Those are all action verbs. So17:51
every bullet that you have will be set up the right way if the first word17:56
in your bullet is that action verb. That’ll make sure that the phrasing you’re using is set up to be quantifiable18:01
and action oriented and all that stuff. So start with the action verb. And there is actually a full18:07
page list of resumé action verbs in that career guide that I posted for you.18:12
So dig into that, find that action verb list and that’s really going to help you.18:17
That action verb list will also help you pull out what was professional about what18:23
you’ve done. So, say you had a job at a fast food place or something like that.18:28
We probably don’t want to talk about things like “had to clean the bathrooms”18:34
or, you know, things like that. But there are things that that might relate to the professional18:39
world that you could discuss. And that’s the kind of stuff you want to go for. So maybe you had to18:45
keep track of inventory or you managed other people. You kept the schedule or you were entrusted to be the key18:51
holder or you had other special duties or you implemented some type of a sales18:56
or customer relations type of19:01
method. Those are the kind of things that, you know, even all that was happening in the context19:06
of like a fast food job or another type of kind of student job. That’s OK. Those19:12
are transferable skills. Those are professional things that could translate into a professional job.19:17
So the action verb list, I think, will help you get at that kind of stuff. You’re gonna look at the action verb list and go,19:22
oh, well, you know, when I was in that job, I actually did implement this or that or I did maintain19:27
X, Y, Z. So it’ll help trigger you as to what were the kind of things you did so that you could put that into words.19:33
Another resource I want to pull out here is an article that I posted for you19:40
by the director of H.R. for Google. Everybody wants to work at Google,19:45
right? And he had a great article that he posted to LinkedIn a while back19:50
that he called the formula for a winning resumé. And the formula that19:55
he gives in that, and it’s gonna make even more sense when you just take take a few minutes to read20:00
through that three page article, but he says in your resume you want in your experience20:05
descriptions, you want to say accomplished X as measured by Y by doing Z. If20:10
you set up your descriptions in that way, you will be automatically have that outcome oriented20:16
voice in there. So in other words, start with an active verb, numerically20:21
measure what you accomplish, provide a baseline for comparison, and then detail what you did to achieve your goals. So20:26
here’s an example. The first one is kind of not that good. “Studied financial performance of companies and made investment20:31
recommendations.” We could build that out using his formula by saying “Improved20:37
portfolio performance by 12% ($1.2M) one year by refining cost of capital20:42
calculations for information-poor markets and re-weighting portfolio based on resulting valuations.”20:47
That really has that really persuasive, outcome oriented voice that we want, and you can20:53
hear his formulas in that, right? Accomplished X as measured by Y by doing Z.20:58
Now, you may not have such fancy things to discuss in that you were managing a portfolio21:04
or that you are dealing with 1.2 million dollars, but use this as a model for whatever you were21:10
doing. So look at the job you have had and say, how can I be writing in this same21:15
style, in the same voice when I put those experience descriptions together?21:20
A few other tips on wording. Think about the snowball effect here. You might think, well, gosh,21:26
I’m not sure I really did anything that important in my role because it was more of an entry level role.21:31
But ask yourself, what was the ultimate value of your work up the line? Think about like you’re pushing a snowball21:36
to make a snowman and it gets bigger and bigger and it picks up more snow as it goes.21:41
So you may have done something down the line that was sort of simple but that built up into something21:47
more important for the company. So here’s an example. Say you were working as a21:52
as a law clerk or a paralegal at a law firm, and21:58
your job was to communicate with clients and keep client22:03
records. You might be able to tie that to import work, how your work was used22:08
up the line by saying something like22:13
“assisted clients and monitored client files helping the firm22:19
win a multi-million dollar case.” So you yourself didn’t win the multi-million dollar case,22:25
but you’re sort of describing how what you did fit into that bigger goal. Use22:30
weightier verbs than “assisted” or “worked on.” If you find yourself trying to go for22:35
“assisted” or “worked on,” stop. Go back to the action verb list. Ask yourself,22:40
what did you actually do? Try to dig down a little bit further to figure out what you actually did.22:45
Remove a little articles like “a,” “and,’” “the” and personal pronouns22:51
“I,” “me,” “my,” “our.” You don’t want those on a resume. It’s just gonna be in kind of more of a22:57
reporting voice that doesn’t require those things. And all the samples that I posted for you will give23:02
you a view of what that looks like when we take those things out and how that should sound. Avoid23:07
outdated or cliched elements like an objective statement or seeing references available23:12
upon request. If you feel absolutely determined to include an objective statement23:17
for some reason, there is a section in the textbook about how to do that and how to write a good23:23
objective statement. Please read that and follow that if you decide to go that route. But23:28
objective statement is really no longer something that is absolutely needed. If you use23:33
a skills summary, sometimes that can be a good thing to fill up a little bit more space on the page.23:38
So to have a skill summary at the bottom or maybe at the top where you’re kind of giving what’s your overview23:44
or profile of you as a candidate, that needs to have concrete summaries and documentable23:49
skills. So an example of that would be saying “5 years experience in public relations”23:54
as one of your bullets in your summary. We don’t want to just give adjectives about ourselves24:00
in that section like “excellent communication skills,” “works well with others.” Anybody can claim that kind of stuff.24:05
If you’re going to include a skills section, really dig in and say,24:11
What is my profile as a candidate and how can I put those top three or four things about myself in that skills24:16
summary rather than just descriptions about24:21
yourself that don’t really mean much like “work well of others.”24:27
It’s important to customize the resumé and use versions. We want several versions of your resume24:34
and we want you to tailor your resume to whatever job description you are applying.24:39
That is especially important in the age of these digital applicant tracking systems that when you24:46
apply to a company, it’s likely that you’ll have to upload your resume to their system. And24:51
when you do that, what happens is their system scans that document looking24:56
for keywords that they’ve input and usually the keywords they’re putting are based on the25:01
job description they’ve posted on their website or newspaper or on LinkedIn or whatever25:06
out there on the Internet. So if you can, get a hold of that job description25:12
and make sure that you’re matching your resumé to those words,25:18
The likelihood that you will get a keyword hit and your resume will be pulled to be25:23
looked at by an actual human by the computer system is a lot higher. I want to show an example25:28
that I really like, that the director of the Career Center shared with my class a while back25:33
and I’ve always kept it in the materials because I think it is really helpful. So she was working with a student25:38
who really wanted to work at Cerner. He had this job description from Cerner. He was eager to apply for25:43
it. And they went through, they read through that job description and they underlined everything they thought25:48
was a keyword. So looking at that, it was things like training. They noticed that25:53
Cerner, the word they used for customers is clients. So that was25:59
a key word. So they just went through and figured out what were those key words26:04
and tried to underline those. Then they went to his resumé and they transferred some26:10
of that language into his resume. And now it’s important that we stay accurate and truthful and26:15
all that. But, you know, they went through and everywhere where he talked about working with customers, they converted that language26:20
to seeing clients instead. They pulled some of the phrasing from the job description in where26:25
it would make sense to do that, saying that he you know, I think like that “built rapport” was one26:30
of the words in the Cerner description and then he was able to make a case in one of the jobs of how he built rapport with26:35
clients. And they talked about collaborative methodology and he pulled26:41
that in. So, look for those buzzwords in those phrases that you think might be part26:46
of their tracking system that’s going to give you a keyword hit and try to get26:51
that into your resume. That’s going to help you get through that barrier of the digital tracking system.26:57
In the textbook chapter, there are a lot of other tips for how to kind of game27:02
that applicant tracking system. I highly suggest that you read that chapter and look27:08
through those tips because it will pay off for you. It will help you if you know what to do to get27:13
through, break through that barrier that computer system puts in place,27:18
that then that will help get your resumé in front of an actual human who will look at it.27:23
You might want to keep a master of resume to pull from where, as you do things over27:31
time, every time you have an accomplishment or you take on a new job or you’re in a certification27:36
or whatever, you add that to this master resume. And then when it’s time to apply for something,27:41
you look at that master resumé and say, what are the most compelling things that I could pull from?27:47
What are the things that are gonna be the most persuasive in this context for this application27:52
and pull those things to go on the resume you submit. But it might help you to have27:58
a master resume where you just keep a kind of a running tally of everything you’ve done and then you can pull from that.28:03
It’s a good idea to keep it traditional and conservative. The only exception for that might be28:10
the creative field, something like marketing or design, where they might28:15
want to see your marketing and design skills come through in that document.28:20
But if you’re not in those kind of visually oriented fields, everybody else really wants28:26
to have a more traditional conservative looking document like the ones I’m showing you today.28:31
That’s what recruiters expect. Those will get better results28:37
and those digital systems will read those a lot better. Even if you28:42
have a more visual version of your resume for a visual field like designer marketing, you28:47
still want to have a traditional version that you can upload into those application systems because they will not28:52
be able to follow a bunch of formatting if you put too much.28:58
OK, let’s let’s move on to the idea of references. So29:05
you also want to have a reference page, and that’s part of your assignment here as well.29:10
With references, we want to give them their own page and usually list three to six29:15
references. So three three is enough. Probably don’t want to do more than six.29:20
You want to keep the page header contact information for you consistent on both29:26
documents to unify them so that they look like twins. If you set your resume and reference page next to each other,29:31
we want those documents to look the same, like they belong together. So just copy and paste the header29:36
on the page with your name in it over, so that those look the same. Give the references name,29:42
title, organization name, phone number, email listed down the page in a column. So go29:47
down the page, not across, and always make sure to contact references before you list them.29:52
It’s not a good idea to list someone if you haven’t asked their permission to talk to them about doing29:58
that. You don’t want to get kind of a weird or a squishy reference from somebody30:03
at the wrong time. So you can use the fact that you’re
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