Name: Learning English—Resume and Cover Letter | How to: Resume and Cover Letter | Can vs Can’t in English
Uploaded: 2020-03-20T10:12:36.000Z
Duration: 15 min 7 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Gerund

You found a job that you’re dying to get.

Past simple

When’s the last time you took a look at your resume?

The strength of these two materials will determine whether or not you get an interview.

In this video, I’m going to interview two employers

who have done a lot of hiring and we’ll figure out the best possible way for you to present yourself

For my non-native English students out there, we’ll also have an English lesson at the end of this video

on the word ‘can’t’, and how it’s sometimes pronounced like ‘can’, and how that’s confusing.

This actually happens in one of the interviews and we’ll study that as an example.

You might be surprised to hear that the content of your resume comes second to readability.

The format is actually more important than what you say, because a good format:  someone will read that.

A bad format:  someone might not even read that, so it doesn’t matter what it says.

Cindy was the executive director of a non- profit in New York City.

That nonprofit got a huge grant that required greatly expanding her workforce,

and across her career, she has evaluated literally thousands of resumes.

Let’s see what she says about formatting.

what I look for in a resume or a CV is that it's super easy to read, and very clear, and not cluttered.

Matters a ton because if I can't even read it then, it's hard to figure out what I'm looking for.

I also asked a local small business owner,  Steve about this.

Steve, I know you did some hiring recently.

What about resumes, stood out for you, when you decided to put someone in the interview pile,

Probably the biggest thing then I look at is for uniformity within that resume.

So, for both of these people their first response has nothing to do with content.

They want a format that allows them to easily skim to make a quick determination about

whether or not they are interested in someone.

If they can’t do that quickly, they won’t  bother with the resume.

It automatically goes to the ‘no’ pile. We want to make sure yours is in the ‘yes’ pile.

Both Cindy and Steve went on to mention, there’s no need for color on the resume,

and don’t put your picture on it, unless that's required.

The kind of resume you'll write depends  on where you are in your career,

and there are lots of examples to find online.

Take a look at the work experience on this resume.

The position is in bold with the location  and dates below in italics.

It’s the same for both positions, and there  are bullet points beneath.

Someone can take a look at this and  quickly get the content.

Listen to what Cindy has to say about this.

When you're applying for specific roles, it is helpful to tweak your resume

and use similar language and bullets from the job description on your resume.

As long as it's accurate and true, but if the job description says that you have edited videos,

you know, that you've got specific type of software editing, or

whatever the verbs are they are using to describe what they're looking for,

if you've done those things, it is worth tweaking your resume so that it

mirrors the job description as much as you can.

That's a great point. Bring in the verbs specifically.

Yes, like, because there are some cultural things there. Because an organization might use the word

'drive' for example and it connects to the organization's culture, and you see that

through their job description, you can incorporate that into your resume and your cover letter to use

similar language to show that you, one, are perceptive, but also that you are...

Have the job description in front of you and tweak your resume for that exact job.

Is this something you can truthfully put into your resume? Do it.

Places that are big companies for entry-level or maybe even mid-level jobs where they're hiring a lot of one job,

or a lot of similar jobs, a lot of those companies use a HR software and will scan resumes,

And so that is why the matching the  resume to the job description.

I have not personally actually used any of  those kind of softwares,

I just know that they're used at some of  the bigger places.

And so that matching is also really important.

That's amazing. So the first look at your resume isn't even from a human.

In some cases it might not even be a human that does the first evaluation of your resume,

so the words you chose to put in are so important.

When I'm looking at the actual resume, I'm going to go down through and see what responsibilities you had.

And has that responsibility increased over  the years? Have you...

Have you advanced in your career through that process?

Responsibilities and growth are big points  that employers look at,

so really think about what you’ve done at your jobs.

If at all possible, find the job description of the jobs you’ve held in the past and currently hold.

That will give you a great starting point for listing the roles and responsibilities you had at the job

if you’re not sure how to describe them.

Should education come before or after your work experience? Let’s hear what Cindy has to say.

What about moving specific things to the top that is,

that would be more relevant to that  specific job, that kind of thing, like...

I mean yes, I think that's... I think that's useful, people look at resumes very, very, quickly. I think the

most important piece is that it's easy to read and easy to find. I think the further you are in professional career,

typically, you move education to the bottom, unless you are applying for roles where it requires phd,

I do think it's worth like making sure that the things that you have in your resume are relevant

to what the job is looking, but ultimately,  you just want it clean.

Again, clean. Easy to read – the most  important thing about your resume.

So you’re starting to write your resume.  What should you keep in mind?

So Cindy, what advice would you give to somebody who's just starting writing their first resume?

So I would, I actually think it's useful to get a template,

because it's helpful to figure out how you  even want to get started.

So templates are helpful. The second is to just write out all the jobs you've had

and what your key responsibilities. If you  have your job descriptions,

those are really helpful to help pull bullets from a job description that you can pull onto a resume.