Saturday, March 14, 2020
How Executives Can Write a Great Cover Letter -
How Executives Can Write a Great titelseite Letter -A great titelseite letter can make the difference in getting a potential employer or recruiter to pay attention to your job application and resume. At the executive level, when you are competing with others who likely also have impressive work histories and plentiful accomplishments, a titelseite letter needs to intrigue a potential employer so that theyll want to spend more time reading your resume and learning about why you are the right rolle for the open executive position.What makes an executive deckblatt letter successful and gets the attention of a hiring manager? It needs to be boldand it needs to be interesting. An executive deckblatt letter needs to get to the point, and it needs to speak to the needs of the person reading it. Remember, yours is far from the only deckblatt letter that a manager, recruiter, or human resources professional will be reading in a day. You want to stand outand stand out in the right way.And if y oure wondering, Why do I even still need a cover letter at the executive level? you can find my answer to that in this article.You can also just trust meas a professional executive resume writer and human resources professionalthat you absolutely do need an executive cover letter for your job search. Keep reading here to get started now with the tips that will help you write a great cover letter.Using a Cover Letter Template Yes or No?How important is it to have a cover letter template to help you write an effective cover letter? Its elend. In fact, using a cover letter template is going to backfireand is not going to help you write a great executive cover letter. Just dont do it. It might seem like the easy, simple solution and a way to get all the ingestaltation in it that you need, but what it will really do is stunt your ability to express your personal brand and signal to a potential employer that you prefer to take the easy way out. Trust me, they can tell when someone has us ed a template to write an executive cover letter or an executive resume.Now, this is not to say that you cant use a sample cover letter, or even a template, as a guide for writing yours. Just make sure that you are using it only to get ideas and help you with formattingand not using it as a fill-in-the-blanks form letter.A great executive cover letter is your ownafter all, it is your career story you are trying to tell and your personal brand you are trying to convey. You want the employer to hire YOUnot the random writer on the Internet who cobbled together a template.So how can you write a compelling executive cover letter on your own? Here are some of my top cover letter writing tips.Tips For Writing a Successful Executive Cover LetterTailor it to the job.The belastung thing you want to do is send out the exact same cover letter and resume to several different employers. Each of themeven if it is for the same job titleis looking for something slightly different in a new employee. Every company has its own goals, its own challenges, and its own values. You want the cover letter you write to convey why you are a good fit for that specific company and its unique characteristics.When youre applying to different positions or titles, you are going to want to highlight the skills that match for that particular job and its required skills.Make it Different From Your Executive ResumeIn your cover letter, highlight the most important work experience and achievements that make you a good fit for the job and the company, and do so in a compelling way that isnt just a repeat of what the hiring manager or recruiter is going to read in your resume.Use your cover letter to tell your career story, and be very clear about why you should be the person they hire. Discuss the things that might not be immediately evident from your resumewhy you fit well with their company culture, which challenges you have overcome that are similar to challenges now facing the company, etc. As a n executive, you would be a leader in the organizationand it is important that you convey a bit of your personal brand so that they can tell why you would be a smart hire and a good fit for a leadership position at the company.Your cover letter is also your opportunity to hook their interest and make them want to read your resume. If they read it, then look at your resume and just see the same information, except in bullet-point format, you will have yperit themand your opportunity for an interview and the job. A successful cover letter gets a potential employer interested in you and what you have to offer.Proofread. Proofread. Proofread.Another way to lose the interest of a hiring manager or recruiter? Typos and grammatical errors. No matter how talented a writer you are, or how careful you think youve been, you simply cannot afford to skip proofreading your cover letter. Even if you have looked it over but not found any errors, take the time to send it to a trusted friend (or prof essional editor) to look it over for you. After youve read and reread the same words and phrases so many times, your eyes and brain can play tricks on you. Plus, although you know what youre trying to say, someone else may notice a word thats being slightly misused, and be able to suggest a better word choice or better way to say something to make your accomplishments clearer.Errors in an executive cover letterespecially typosdemonstrate a lack of attention to detail, and also indicate that you didnt care enough about the position to closely read your cover letter before sending it in. Why would a potential employer want to pay you to take on an executive position at their company if they thought you didnt care about the job?Give Three Reasons They Should Hire YouAs you read through the job description, read about the company, and go over your own skills and accomplishments in preparation for writing your cover letter you should be taking notes about where your work history and achi evements align with the companys needs. Having this information written down will make it much easier to write a cover letter, and it will also be easier to choose those aspects of your careerand your personal traitsthat you want to highlight in a cover letter.Pick the top three from this list, and build your cover letter around them. I dont mean that in your cover letter you should say Here are three reasons you should hire me 1 , 2 , 3 but rather that these are the points you need to work into your letter. Perhaps you know their abverkauf have been dropping and you have a strong sales backgroundyour sales numbers from the last five years might be a point you lead off with.Hiring managers and recruiters dont have a lot of time to read between the lines to try to figure out why they should hire you. You need to be clear and concise. Starting from three solid points is a great way to effectively get your message across in a professional cover letter.Start Strong and End StrongEvery. Single. Word. Matters. in an executive cover letter. Because you are trying to make a strong point in the space of just one page, you need to make sure that every sentence is strong and is in the letter for a reason. When you start a cover letter with a line such as I am writing today to ask you to consider my attached resume for a position in your C-suite, then you are just wasting valuable wordsand their valuable time.Instead, I recommend starting your cover letter with a sentence that not only grabs their attention but provides a reason they should hire you right off the bat.Something like As the CEO of a local company, I helped to expand the geschftlicher umgang by 200% over three years. I would like to help do the same for your business.Here you have an achievementwith numbers to back it upand you are letting the hiring manager know you already have executive experience. Trust me, you have their attention now, much more than if you were to start off with just a cookie-cutter i ntroductory line that says nothing about your qualifications or their needs.How you end a cover letter is also important. You want to leave them wanting more so that they read your resume but, just as with the opening sentence, neither do you want to simply use a boring I look forward to hearing from you.You do want to thank them for taking the time to read your letter and your resume, but dont just leave it at that. ASK for the interview. Include an actual call to action. For example, you can close your cover letter by sayingThank you for your time. I would appreciate the opportunity to interview for this position and further discuss how I can be of help to your company. I can be reached at 555-JOBS.And one last thing never start a cover letter with Dear Hiring Manager or something similarly general. Take the time to find a real persons name to address it to before you begin writing a cover letter.Other Cover Letter ResourcesIf youre looking for inspiration and more cover letter w riting tips, you can find cover letter samples at Great Resumes Fast here https//www.greatresumesfast.com/blog/25-cover-letter-examples-and-samples-for-2014/We also have quite a few articles about writing effective cover letters in the Great Resumes Fast blog archives. Ive included links to a few of those below, but you can also use the blogs search function to find even more cover letter tips.?5 Step Guide To Writing Cover Letters For Executives?Grab Attention With A Compelling Cover Letter?5 Tips For Injecting Culture Fit Into Your Resume and Cover Letter?How To Write A Cover Letter Recruiters Will Read?3 Secrets To Interview-Winning Cover LettersIf youd like help writing your executive cover letter or executive resume, our team at Great Resumes Fast would love to work with you to help you achieve your career goals. Get in touch with us here.Are you tired of your resume being rejected by applicant tracking systems? I know how frustrating it is to submit your resume and receive no response. I hate seeing qualified people never break through the screening process. It shouldnt be that way. Thats why I created this guide and I encourage you to download the FREE PDF so you can start seeing better resume response rates
Tuesday, March 10, 2020
7 Reasons Jobscan is More Effective than Word Cloud Tools for Resumes
7 Reasons Jobscan is More Effective than Word wolke Tools for ResumesPosted on April 5, 2018October 23, 2018 by Jon Shields Whenever you upload your resume through an online job application, youre at the mercy of an applicant tracking system, or ATS. These systems are used by most hiring companies to manage and filter applicants like you, and many of behauptung systems rely on keystimmt matching to reject or highlight candidates via their ranking and search algorithms.Because of this, word wolke generators like Wordle and TagCrowd have become popular tools for career coaches and job binnenseekers trying to gain a job search advantage. Pasting a job description into a word wolke tool shows which words appear most frequently in the listing and, in theory, tells the job seeker which words are most important to include in their resume.Word clouds can absolutely help job seekers in this way, but they can also further complicate the resume tailoring process. With a word cloud tool, job see kers need to sort through a lot of noise and make major judgment calls on what is and isnt important for their resume.Jobscan has brought powerful tech and efficiency to the resume keyword matching process. Here are 7 ways Jobscan beats word clouds when it comes to your resume optimization.1. Jobscan compares the job description to your resumeGenerating a word cloud for a job description is only one small part of the equation. From there, you have to go back and forth between the word cloud and your resume trying to figure out which words are important, which are underrepresented, and which are missing entirely.Jobscan analyzes the job description alongside your resume to generate an easy to read comparison that will allow you to spend more time optimizing your resume and less time connecting the dots.I used to tell people to do a comparison or Wordle word cloud, career coach Ruth Kunstadter told Jobscan. Jobscan is so much better because it really goes into the specifics of the ski lls that are bedrngnised in the job description and the ones that you are showing on your resume.2. Jobscan shows approved skills and keywordsA word cloud generator like TagCrowd knows to exclude filler words like the or and, but its intelligence doesnt extend to leaving out irrelevant terms or keeping key phrases intact.You can spielblttchen out some important keywords from a word cloud, but youll have to sort through dozens of irrelevant words like job, office, or daily. Furthermore, you might notice that supply is frequently used, but the word cloud tool will not point out that the more important keyword is actually a combination of words supply chain management.Jobscan uses intelligent curation, machine learning, and approval methods to exclude irrelevant filler while delivering real skills and industry-specific keywords.3. Jobscan is easier to understand than a word cloudA word cloud makes it easy to identify a handful of frequently appearing words, but due to irrelevant filler words and the way the information is visualized, it can be a struggle to figure out how prioritize any more than the top two or three words. Comparing your resume only makes it worse.TagCrowd visualizations for a real Distribution Manager resume and job description. How long does it take you to pick out the most important keywords?Jobscan removes irrelevant terms and organizes the data in a way that is easy to read and translate to your resume. It shows the top skills as well as their frequency levels compared to what is already found on your resume. You can even click on a skill to see the context in which its used in the job description.Even though Jobscan is automated, the feedback that you get is readable and accessible and usable, said Kunstadter.One section of the Jobscan Match Report for the same Distribution Manager resume and job description.4. Jobscan categorizes top skills and keywords by importanceAfter excluding irrelevant words and recognizing multi-word phrases, Jobs can places keywords into one of four categories.Job Title Match Jobscan checks to see if the job title for which youre applying is present on your resume. While this might not be the most frequently used term on the job description, it is the most important as a recruiters first round of applicants will likely be people that have done the job in the past. The exact job title is often the first keyword search a recruiter will perform in the applicant tracking system.Hard Skills (e.g. graphic design, customer service, accounting) These are most important to your daily job duties and tend to serve as search terms for recruiters using applicant tracking systems.Soft Skills (e.g. leadership, vision, flexibility) These are unlikely to be search terms and are harder to prove on your resume. Rather than stuffing your resume with these terms, find ways to show that you have them through projects and results and keep them in mind for your interview.Other Keywords These are unapproved skills t hat appear in the job description more often than expected and are worth taking note of (but probably wont make or break your resume).A word cloud would have these three categories of skills and keywords mixed together (plus all the irrelevant words), making it harder to identify top priorities.5. Jobscans matching algorithm is based off of top applicant tracking systemsA word cloud generator can be repurposed for the job search, but Jobscan was built for the express purpose of efficiently creating ATS-friendly resumes.Jobscan continually studies the top applicant tracking systems and has built and maintained its matching algorithm based on how they actually operate. This includes studying how keywords are bildschirmed in a recruiters interface and affect search results, rankings, candidate profiles, and other ATS features. Jobscan takes all of this into account when displaying your top keywords.6. Jobscan checks for more than matching wordsJobscan has analyzed applicant tracking sy stems and surveyed recruiters to come up with a long list of checks that extend beyond keyword matching. The Jobscan Match Report includes findings relating to measurable results, cliche buzzwords, education, industry knowledge, and more.Learn more about the Match Report with this short video7. Jobscan uncovers jobs for you based on your keywordsWhen you plug your desired job title into a job board like Indeed or ZipRecruiter, your results are limited to companies using the exact same titles and vernacular. Your skills and expertise could apply to a number of great jobs that youve never even considered.The bottom of the Jobscan Match Report shows jobs in your area based not on job titles, but on the skills found in either your resume or the current job description.Creative job seekers and career coaches have found a novel way to utilize word cloud tools in their job search, but cutting through the noise might be more effort than its worth. Job seekers can get the desired result, com municated clearly, with additional checks and insights with Jobscan.Try it for yourself?span data-mce-type=bookmark style=display inline-block width 0px overflow hidden line-height 0 class=mce_SELRES_start?/spanspan data-mce-type=bookmark style=display inline-block width 0px overflow hidden line-height 0 class=mce_SELRES_start?/spanspan data-mce-type=bookmark style=display inline-block width 0px overflow hidden line-height 0 class=mce_SELRES_start?/spanspan data-mce-type=bookmark style=display inline-block width 0px overflow hidden line-height 0 class=mce_SELRES_startspan data-mce-type=bookmark style=display inline-block width 0px overflow hidden line-height 0 class=mce_SELRES_start?/span?/spanA version of this article was first published on February 23, 2016. It was rewritten with updated information and republished on April 5, 2018.Facebook Commentswpdevar_comment_1 span,wpdevar_comment_1 iframewidth100% important
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)