Saturday, December 1, 2012

A Reflection on Cover Letters and Resumes



This experience of writing cover letters and resumes was probably one of my greatest lessons of this class.  This sort of writing is completely different from anything else I have ever written before.  I think the most difficult things for me to learn were the lessons of what is important and how to write something that is concise.

            The resume is such an interesting piece to write because it is summing up someone’s lifetime of accomplishments into one page of paper.  Obviously, there is more to a person than what is in their resume, but the resume forces the writer to think about what is most important about them in the professional world.  They need to prioritize what they have done and what their possible employer absolutely needs to know.  It also forces them to quantify everything they have done.  An ambiguous statement means nothing, but supplying actual deeds and facts will give the applicant a better chance at employment.

            I think the hardest thing to do in writing a resume and a cover letter is the concise nature that these items require.  Both documents really must be only a page long, but they must also contain so much.  The writer is forced to really consider his words carefully.  Every word needs to be necessary and needs to contribute to something.  No sentence should be able to be removed without its removal making the work less.

            These two things have made me think about writing so much more.  It really forced me to think about every word choice I made.  I also had to organize all the accomplishments of my college career.

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