Wednesday, December 2, 2015

Be Awesome in your CV and Cover Letters

There are no shortage of posts and books written on how to write a resume or CV. However much of the advice that I find in various is safe and boring. It seems that being professional has become synonymous with bland, careful, and generic. It's the opposite of being memorable and standing out in the crowd. Remember, you've got to be memorable in the first 30 seconds.

I ran across a post on the StackOverflow blog. This is one of the great technology sites, and I would guess there are no shortage of developers or system administrators that would want to work there. I'm also guessing that they get a huge number of resumes and CVs on a regular basis from people looking for jobs.

In that crowd, where I wouldn't be surprised to find thousands of resumes submitted for each position, you would certainly need to stand out from the crowd. The advice in the post is to showcase what you're good at. Why are you awesome?

For most of us, we're not awesome. We are good, we can be strong, loyal, valued employees. Most of us won't do something that touches the world, but we can showcase the things we do very well at work. I point out that I get things done. I tell about the extras, the volunteer things I do at work that are valuable or useful to the company. I write about a project that I made a difference in, but in a way I hadn't expected.

If you had one paragraph to tell me the bets thing you did as an employee, what would it be?

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