Interviewing and resume review is in full swing now. This is the first time I’ve been on this side of the table. It is hard to review the applications and remember how much care and hope I put in to each application I send off when I am job hunting. Rejection is hard to get, but it is hard to give, too. What I have been surprised by, though, is that it is fairly easy to tell who has put thought into their application and who hasn’t.
The first things I look at are (I assume) pretty standard, but in a field like quality assurance, a well edited resume demonstrates an important skill.
1. Proofread. Please. I mean really, this is a QA position. If you don’t take the time to catch issues in something as personally important as a resume and cover letter, how thorough will you be when it is late and you are tired and you’ve been testing for 3 days?
2. Research. If you don’t know if you are writing to a woman or a man, do not guess. Go search online. Is there a linked in profile, a company profile, any search results mentioning the person? You should probably be going through some of that anyway. If you really can’t figure it out, you can call the company and ask who to whom you should address the letter.
3. Know what position you are applying for. Yes, that’s right. Don’t try to pass off a generic cover letter. When you only have a few paragraphs, irrelevant experience, broad goals and interests, and a detached tone are not really impressive. Those are one thing though, but people who apply but forget to change the job title, copy and paste from the job posting with out adding any context to it, or seem to not know what the job entails are just a waste of everyone’s time.
4. Double check your attachments. Actually, triple check. I got a resumes with the wrong cover letter attached, missing attachments, or including corrupted or hard to read files. It is also a good idea to think about what you name your attachments.
5. If you are interested, act interested. You took the time to respond to the job posting, but you should appear interested in the job. I love questions, but when the cover letter is more a list of questions about what the position can do for you, it makes me wonder what exactly you are excited about.
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