I, and most likely many others, benefited from reading Chapter 15 as it discusses correct manners for resumes and cover letters appropriate for potential employers. Most students spend days looking at their resume trimming and editing to perfectly suit a company’s best interest. However, a good amount of students over look common mistakes mentioned in this chapter including myself. It is difficult to focus on so many minute areas, and at the same time, keep strong continuity throughout such an important document.
I was surprised to learn a lot of things concerning my resume and past cover letters that I was unaware of at the time. Chapter 15 gave me an understanding that my objective was too broad and needs to have a stronger focal point. I’m not as familiar with cover letters as I am with resumes. Therefore, I appreciated the section on effective application letters. I thought the idea of sense of arguing in the body of the cover letter is worth mentioning. However, I’m still convinced it is difficult to write a cover letter without reiterating much of the educational and past experience from one’s resume.
It was interesting to read the section on scanning resumes. I was unaware of this practice and seem to me a little more unforgiving than other traditional methods. But I think it is important to keep these types of procedures in mind when creating your own resume because it is easy to believe that more companies are adopting computer technology to organize these documents for efficiency purposes. I think there should be a balance between your resume communicating to computers and having a personal touch for individuals as well.
There are several connections between our past reading and chapter 15. Personally when I think of the audience that will be reading my resume are human resource representatives and upper management representatives. Personally, these are my primary evaluators as my resume and cover letter are addressed to these people. In my experience, these individuals were responsible for ultimately deciding my employment.
Response
When I think of the balance between writing for a computer and having a personal touch, as you say, I think of last weeks reading about primary and secondary audience. If you know there will be a computer sorting through your resume I think it would be your primary audience (or possibly gatekeeper depending on how you look at it). It's an odd thought that you first must appease a box before you can get your resume in the hands of a human but I think it should come easily. If you're qualified for the job then the resume should fulfill the computer sorting requirements automatically. So, I think this would be a situation where you would want to focus more attention on appealing to the secondary audience of the human rather than get too caught up in shoving words into the document to please the machine.
Shane
Response
I feel the same way you do in terms of how hard it is to not say things in your cover letter than you may have said it your resume. They are both about the same kind of things so it is almost impossible to not repeat previous facts. That is probably the hardest thing about writing cover letters. I also agree with what you said in regards to a person scanning resumes as well as computer type scanners. The computer type scanner only reads words it can’t interpret what you are saying like a human can. They just base how good your resume is based on a few certain words that may be more proper or catchy than others.
Bobby
Reading Response Cover letter
After reading your response to Chapter 15, I agree with your statement about writing an application letter. I find it difficult as well to write an application letter without reiterating your education or past experience. I feel if you are writing an application letter to convince your primary and secondary audience to give you an interview, you have to convince them somehow. At the same, you have to stick with one theme because then you’ll be boasting yourself too much. So where is that happy middle to please everyone?
One thing I found frustrating towards writing a resume or cover letter is everyone seems to give conflicting viewpoints on how to correctly write them. I personally thought this chapter did a tremendous job of explaining what is really necessary in a resume and cover letter.
Reading Response 2
I agree with your first comments about overlooking common mistakes. It is difficult to focus on so many areas in the document while trying to keep continuity through it. One thing I found useful while writing my cover letters was to try to find instances where I gained skills that they were directly looking for in their job applicant search.
While I agree that it seems unfair to have your resume subjected to ‘scanning’ and potentially get thrown out even though you may be perfect for the job, in this day in age I guess it is necessary because of how many applicants they get for just one job.