Resumes and cover letters go hand in hand together when you are applying for a position.  The resume is a summary of your knowledge, skills, abilities and experience relevant to a particular job.  A cover letter simply introduces your resume to a prospective employer; highlighting its contents, and laying out the rational of why you are a great candidate for employment.

Ideally you should have a specifically tailored resume and cover letter for every position for which you apply.  That is because each position will have its own set of desired knowledge, skills and abilities, and an employer will want to know how fit specifically into those requirements.  In fact, your ability to speak specifically to the position requirements, as well as to the company and the industry is a key screening metric that employers use.

So what are the key elements of a resume?  Every resume should have the basic sections giving your personal and contact information, your educational history, and your work history.  The personal information section should contain your name and contact information of course.  Importantly your email address should connote professionalism and should be one that you check often.  Consider getting an email address through a professional society for instance.  That is a good way to separate your personal and professional email, and also shows that you are serious about, and engaged in your profession.  Never include your social security number.  If you do you open yourself up to countless opportunities to have your identity stolen.  By law employers are not permitted to ask personal questions such as your age, your marital status, or the number of children you have, so do not include this information in your resume.  But citizenship status may or may not be important to state explicitly.

There should be an objective statement right near the top.  This should only be one sentence long and should articulate exactly the kind and level of position you are seeking.  Along with the objective statement you can include a single sentence that summarizes your qualifications.  A good example would be, “I am a graduating physics major with a 3.8 GPA and 3-years of research experience in computational physics.  I desire a position as a computer programmer in the Computer Game Corporation code development lab.”

You of course have to include your educational background.  List your educational experiences in reverse chronological order. In this section include the name(s) of your institution(s) and degree(s), their addresses, years of graduation along with any academic honors (summa cum laude, etc.), major field of study, minor field of study.  You do not have to include you GPA unless it is a major selling point.  As you earn more and more degrees you can omit early education achievements. For instance once you earn your bachelors, where you went to high school becomes very much less relevant for employment purposes.  But paradoxically even once you earn multiple graduate degrees you should still list your undergraduate degree.

One one hand the work or research experiences that you list should only be those that are pertinent to the position for which are applying.  On the other hand, if that leaves major gaps in your professional timeline as presented on paper, then you may have to list those jobs.  Or if you are changing fields then you have to indicate what you have done in the past, since you will most certainly be asked how that experience will help you in your new chosen field.  If you are applying for a summer internship, your jobs in high school are probably not relevant.  Yes they may show responsibility, reliability and general employability, but your college course selections and grades will be far more interesting to an employer at that point.

Treat your resume as an advertisement for your knowledge, skills and abilities.  When you are describing your work experience do not sell yourself short, but definitely do not exaggerate your qualifications.  Be specific about your accomplishments and give them emphasis.  Use a lot of high impact action verbs.  Use as many industry specific terms as you can in describing your work and school experience, but don’t be cliché.  If any key words appear in the position advertisement, and you have specific knowledge, skills and abilities related to those terms, point that out as explicitly as you can.

Other sections that you might want to have on your resume include awards, honors, scholarships, fellowships; volunteer service activities, professional association memberships.  The first one indicates that you are a performer that compares well against your peers, and the last one indicates a certain seriousness about and knowledge of the particular professional field.  Do not feel compelled to fill empty space at the bottom of your resume with hobbies or other personal activities.

In general, references should not be listed on your resume.  You can say “References Provided Upon Request”, but that generally goes without saying.  If references are requested as part of the resume, give them on a separate sheet of paper with the name, job title, place of employment, relationship to you, address, phone number, fax number, and e-mail address.

The format of a resume is not concrete, and there are many acceptable designs.  But whatever the format you choose, the result should be a document that is easy to read.  The margins should be adequate (try least 1 inch all the way around).  The font should be large enough to be easy on the eyes, but not so big as to be off-putting.  Do not try the trick of filling up the space by using a larger sized font.  It is better to keep it short and less annoying to read.

Once you have a good resume, tailored for a particular position, your complementary cover letter should direct the potential employer’s attention specifically to those things on your resume and in general that make you the best candidate for the job.  This is done explicitly and implicitly.

Again, it cannot be overemphacized that your cover letter and resume should always be explicitly tailored to fit each job, each company and each industry.  Employers may look for individualized and thoughtfully written cover letters as one method of screening out applicants who are not sufficiently interested in their position or who lack the required skills.  It is regarded as a sign of laziness or naiveté to send out a cover letter that is not tailored to the specific position, company and industry.  It indicates that you have taken no time to “do your homework” by researching the industry, the company, the job description, and even the specific skill sets if you do not speak directly to the articulated job requirements.

Your letter’s first two paragraphs should indicate that you know specifically the job that you want, about that particular company, and about the overall industry.  It should say “I know you and what you want, and maybe even what you need.  I know the sector in which you compete and the challenges you face.  I know what I have to offer, and how together we can achieve your goals and my goals.”

After you have gotten the reader’s attention, aroused their interest and sparked their desire to meet you, close the letter by having a specific “ask” or “action item”.  You want at the very least an interview, ask for a specific time and place to meet, either in person or by phone.

The implicit statements in your resume and cover letter are conveyed in its artful and eloquent presentation.  Use a high quality bond paper.  Limit your cover letter to one page.  Make sure the format is easy on the eyes and highlight the most important points.  Always use correct grammar and spelling; have a friend proofread your resume and cover letter.

Remember a successful job search takes planning, preparation, research, personal salesmanship, and follow-through.  Your resume(s) and cover letter(s) should reflect that you have completed each of these steps.

For more information check out these sources:

See CollegeGraduates.com for more Quickstart Resume Templates.