Mating Rituals

Think of it like a dating site: would you contact a prospective date with a form letter, or would you take the time to mention interests listed on a prospective date’s profile, and highlight areas where the two of you are compatible?

A form letter is a big turn-off: “This person isn’t interested in me; they are just interested in a date–any date.” In the same way, a person reading a form cover letter is going to see that the applicant isn’t interested in the position; they are just interested in a job–any job.

The same kind of details need to go into your cover letter. Show that you know something about the company. Show that you paid attention to the job description, if you are applying for a specific open position. For example, if the job description mentions budgeting, you can mention your 4-years of experience creating budgets at Widget World, Inc. If you are applying to work in marketing for a tree nursery, mention the tree identification class you took from the city Parks & Recreation department last summer. Find the things you have in common and emphasize them!

Your Resume Deck

Don’t think that a custom cover letter is the end of the story. You should customize your resume as well, particularly if you are applying for jobs that are a little outside your usual field of expertise.

People who give frequent slideshow presentations often refer to their PowerPoint decks. Like a deck of cards, the slides can be shuffled and dealt to best suit the intended audience. Giving a presentation to a technical audience? Include all the slides with the nitty-gritty technical details. Giving a presentation to the executive suite? Skip the details and give them an executive summary, along with a dose of what it means for their business strategy.

In the same way, you should have a resume deck. For each position you’ve held in the past, you demonstrated a variety of skills. However, the graphic design skills you used to create advertisements at your local newspaper 10 years ago aren’t going to impress anyone at your new accounting firm. On the other hand, your project management skills and attention to detail at that same position are far more relevant.

For your resume deck, under each position held list every skill you demonstrated and project you completed. You will never send this version to a prospective employer, but it will be your starting point for each resume that you do send out. When it comes time to send a resume, keep only the items that best fit the job description.

2 Pages – Make Them Count

You generally have just 2 pages to impress a prospective employer (sometimes more, if your work experience merits a multi-page resume). Every word should help get you to an interview. If there is something on either your resume or cover letter that is not going to convince a prospective employer that you are the right candidate for the job, get rid of it! Replace items of questionable merit with something relevant and impressive.

This reminds me of a job application I sent out that emphasized my knowledge of ActionScript 3. I thought that was a good choice, because the job description asked for Flash experience, and as eveyone knows, modern Flash developers rely on ActionScript 3.

Of course, it was actually a terrible choice. If the resume and cover letter were being analyzed electronically, the system was probably looking for the keyword Flash, not ActionScript. Even if a real person reviewed it, there’s no telling if someone in HR, or even the hiring manager, is going to equate Flash with ActionScript. It would have been best to include both.

The eFinancialCareers article also mentions industry acronyms. I’m going to borrow again from web lingo: which would be better to use, Search Engine Optimization or SEO? Since there is no guessing what the guardian at the gate is looking for, I would use both. There may be cases where that is unwise–in this example, if you are applying for a position in search engine marketing, a hiring manager might raise an eyebrow that you thought an industry-standard acronym deserved spelling out. But really, if you cut some of the irrelevant clutter from your resume–I think we all have a bit of that–you should be able to squeeze it in.

The best advice, of course, is to analyze the job description and requirements carefully. Chances are, the way a keyword appears there is what a computer program–or a person–is looking for.

Ever had trouble getting past a machine (or HR) because you couldn’t convince them your skills fit the bill? Let me know in the comments.