Thread on how to modify CV and cover letter to get an interview call. Here is the thread
After about six months of unemployment last December 2020, I joined a small social research organisation in Bangalore. This month I finished my probationary period. I now feel comfortable writing about my job search process. What worked and what didn't.
Disclaimer: I am not a recruiter so take whatever you are about to read with a pound of salt.
Here we go:
Every morning I would check LinkedIn jobs, HN Who Is hiring, Naukri, IIM Jobs, etc. And apply to jobs. I applied to over 1000 jobs, without any focus or direction. I was hopeless and needed a job- fast. But nothing worked.
Don't carpet bomb applications on every position. Didn’t work for me.
Okay now let’s get to reworking my application packet.
First thing - Resume. Mine was bad. Too much design, wrongly formatted, long paragraphs on, job responsibilities, didn't have any action words ( more on them later), grammatical and punctuation mistakes etc. Moreover, I haven't yet figured out how to use LinkedIn and my LinkedIn profile still sucks. Although, I did use LinkedIn for job search.
On the advice of a college senior’s advice, I made some changes to the resume and cover letter and got three offers in a matter of 20 days and started my current position the next month. Here is the advice I got :
Write your resume in word, google doc or something similar and then convert it to PDF (you can google how to do it). A machine is more likely to read your resume than a human, make it easy for the machines. Even in companies that use human readers, screening gets outsourced where human readers use keywords to find candidate fit.
Fancy designs impress humans but screw up the machine that, in most cases, will see your resume first. Basic design with Times New Roman fonts, font size 12 & 10, and single spacing is good enough.
Next up is the language in the bullet points.
Quantify your work in bullet points as much as possible.
Accomplished [X] as measured by [Y] by doing [Z].
For more examples of this formula, check this article. I took the same formula from here:
Things to quantify :
Range: Quantify all of the responsibility you handled at your position,
example: "Responsible for supervising and training XYZ" becomes "Supervised [mention range - e.g. (7-12)] [members/ colleague/ juniors] each year who have all since gone on to [some exact great thing]"
Frequency: how frequently you do the work?
Mention the numbers of times you do X in your work.
Scale: Think about all the things you do that ultimately save your company money, whether it’s streamlining a procedure, saving time, or negotiating discounts with vendors. Multiply those actions by how frequently you do them, and pop them into your resume bullets.
Or, if you are more of a people-person and less of a figures-person, consider adding how many people you interact with or serve. Even soft skills come to life with a few numbers thrown in.
When writing your work experience use proper action words instead of random words that come to your mind. Here is a link that lists all of them.
Caveat: Do not lie on your resume. Hiring managers are not stupid. They will know, and you will never hear from them again.
Create 3-4 versions of your resume so that you can custom tailor it for the target industry. That way you use industry-specific words/lingo making you more likely to get a call. Make sure to use commonly used industry-specific keywords.
I pulled 6 job descriptions from each type of company and found the repeated keywords and made sure to use them in my resume and cover letter. This helps in bypassing the keyword-based filtering human resume reviewer uses, I mentioned above.
I made three cover letters & resumes and kept <company name / date/ Position Name> information blank. That way I don't have to write a cover letter every time I am applying for a position and I can just edit some small parts and send it. It Saves time and I know I didn't make any silly mistakes. Here is a good sample cover letter [PDF] to help you get started
Now you have a template for your Resume and Cover letter. You are ready to submit applications to places you think you have a good shot. ( I applied to small firms in my domain that are looking for people to join immediately).
The next step is to build an application tracker. you can use a spreadsheet like Excel or Google docs. Here you should have four things
The position name,
The Company name,
Job description ( either copy past it / or create an archive link)
Application date
The resume and cover letter format you sent while applying. In case you have mentioned something specific.
Application Status
If you get rejected, send an appreciation email (I made a template like the others) and ask for reasons they rejected you. If they don’t reply no harm done if they do reply you have a good idea on how to approach your next applications.
It took me about a week to make all the changes and then applied for 8 jobs I was sure I was qualified for, of which 6 invited me for a video call and 3 offered me a position and from that, I selected my present position.
I hope this helps.
Just a reminder: I am not a recruiter. I wrote about things that worked for me. It may not work for you.