Are you looking to apply for your dream job, but want to guarantee your résumé and cover letter stands out? Or maybe you are just trying to make sure your résumé is showcasing the very best of you as succinctly as possible? Well, here at the Center for Career Readiness and Life Skills, we have our trusty Résumé and Cover Letter Guide, which is sure to help you portray yourself as best as you can!
First, navigate over to career.uconn.edu, then to the drop down “How do I…” and click on the bullet that says, “Write a résumé, CV, or Cover letter”. From there, the first featured resource will be the Résumé and Cover Letter Guide. Inside the guide there are a few bullets to help you get on track with your résumé, which are summarized below:
- There are different life stages of a résumé, and no two résumés will ever look the same, so how do you know where to begin in crafting yours uniquely? Here you can delve into the life stages of résumés and the types that exist, as well as develop an understanding of your audience and making your document appeal to them.
- A typical reader only spends about 10-15 seconds skimming a résumé. Therefore, it is important to make sure your résumé looks polished, presentable, and emphasizes the most relevant content in a way that best grabs your audiences’ attention. Here you will learn the most professional and attention-grabbing ways to maximize your seconds over another candidate’s.
Demonstrating Career Readiness
- Your résumé should show the reader why you are the best fit for their opportunity. This includes demonstrating your level of career readiness as well as the transferable skills you possess. This section will explain the eight career competencies to focus on in the wording of your résumé, as well as useful transferrable skills that most employers are looking for.
- Bullet point statements serve as personal sales pitches or impact statements that help a reader understand how your individual skills and experiences relate to the opportunity they are looking to fill. In this section, you will learn how to develop the best bullets to succinctly demonstrate to employers that you possess the essential career competencies they are looking for.
- Action verbs are the part of a bullet point statement that demonstrate your transferable skills and career readiness aptitude to the reader. This section teaches you how to effectively demonstrate your competencies and skill sets through carefully chosen action verbs in order to set you apart from other applicants.
- Here you can choose a template that best fits how you’d like to organize the information on your résumé and enter your own content.
- This section will help you understand and apply the Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) to your résumé. ATS are software programs used by companies to expedite the recruiting process. They serve many functions but are primarily used to scan applicant résumés to highlight the most qualified candidates based on relevant key words, skills, experience, location, and more. The way you write and format your résumé can have a big impact on how successful your résumé will be at passing through.
- A cover letter is a document that serves as an introduction to your résumé and provides the reader with additional context about your skills and qualifications when considering your application. This section holds all the tips and tricks regarding organizing and content choice to have the best cover letter possible.
- Contains sample résumés organized by content area and career interests, as well as a cheat sheet for résumés for undergraduate majors and corresponding degrees.
Make sure to explore the career.uconn.edu website – we have webpages dedicated to a plethora of topics surrounding career exploration and development. Additionally, to download the entire guide as a PDF, click here. Finally, make sure drop by the Center for Career Readiness and Life Skills on the second floor of Wilbur Cross to pick up a printed copy if you’d like one!
