Career Marketing Documents: Resumes & Cover Letters

Your resume and cover letter are key marketing pieces which must be highly targeted and tailored to hiring managers’ needs. Yet, I have observed that whenever people are faced with a career crisis, they rush to have their resume and cover letters written as a first step – and strategize about their job search afterward. This is like putting the proverbial “cart before the horse.”

To have effective resumes and cover letters written, you really need to understand your career direction so that these documents reflect who you are and the types of positions you’re qualified for. That said, it is a better strategy if your resume is developed as a result of insights you would gain from career coaching.

Otherwise, two things may happen: (1) you may waste valuable time and money having documents written that may neither fit potential employers needs – nor reflect your strongest skill sets and key strengths; (2) you may run the risk of attracting a repeat incidence of your current crisis, if you haven’t taken the time to figure out how you got there in the first place. I strongly recommend that before you have any resumes or cover letters written -- or re-written -- do some serious soul-searching and identify the “non-negotiables” for your next job, to assure that your next move will be the right fit for you.

So, instead of writing stand-alone resumes and cover letters for you, we would write them together once we do the following: (a) pinpoint your key success factors; (b) identify the types of positions you will be targeting and in which industries; (c) figure out the things that matter most to you in a new job; (d) sketch out a preliminary, viable job search campaign.

If you still feel stuck, stalled or confused, you may benefit from having a Career Action Planning (CAP) Session with me: together, we can figure out what’s working, what needs attention and what the next steps might be to accomplish your next move, before you have another resume written.