RESUMES AND COVER LETTERS

As a fresh graduate, you may wonder what you should include especially your working experience is limited to your vacation job or internship. Don't despair, employers are looking for "that something" in fresh graduates. Your success with resumes is determined by whether or not you are able to present the information - education, job experience and your strengths in the right perspective.

Depending on how you apply for your jobs, your resumes and cover letters should tailor to the right audience.

FOR HUMAN EYES ONLY

If you are writing in to a company in response to particular job advertisement, you need to prepare resumes & cover letters that are pleasing to the human eyes. That means you can play around with different fonts, different sizes and colors to bring about a piece of well designed work.

Use quality paper that don't get crumpled easily & don't fold your documents; find an envolope that is big enough for posting them.

FOR COMPUTER EYES ONLY

When you are applying a job online, your cover letters and resumes are meant to be read by the computers only. The computer will perform the task of searching for the key words that match the requirements from the jobs posted on the web. Therefore, you should prepare them in a way that is pleasing to the computer's eyes.

Tips: Your documents should be prepared in a plain test format without fanciful font or design or color

Some big organization store the resumes by scanning them first before storing them away. In this case, it would be good if you bring along a scanable resumes for that purpose. Scanable resumes again are for the computer's eyes. Thus it should be prepared in plain text form.

WHY THE NEED TO PREPARE JOB PORTFOLIO?

As a fresh grad, you are facing tremendous competition from other fresh graduates for the prized jobs. Thus, you really have to do every thing you can to impress the potential employer so as to increase your chance of success.

You may think that only job seekers from mainly Arts, Architecture, Engineering or Creative filed use portfolio to showcase their work to the employers. But now the trend is towards preparing a portfolio regardless the faculty you are from.

A well prepared portfolio definitely put you one up against your competition. Employers can see that you are putting in that extra effort, travel that extra mile to prepare yourself for the presentation.

WHAT TO INCLUDE

A job portfolio should include your cover letter, your resume follow by showcase of your various work - award certificate, outside courses that you've taken, community service, excerpts from internship projects, school projects or even achievement in your temp or jobs.

WHAT ABOUT WEB FOLIO?

In this internet age, if you can demonstrate to the employer that you can come up with a web portfolio, that will certainly plays to your advantage and give the employer the impression that you are net savy. Indeed, it is not too difficult to prepare one in the cyberspace. It's like creating your own home page. You can use available software like Frontpage to assist you. It is as easy to use as working on Microsoft Word or Excel.

It is a good ideal to separate your home page from the career web portfolio. In your web portfolio, create links to professional bodies or associations related to your field. This is a powerful way to let your employer know that you are serious in your career and you have established right links.

TAILOR-MAKE YOUR RESUMES

Prepare different resume and cover letters for different employers to cater for the unique needs of the job that you are going to apply. You can't simply use one cover letter for all.

Pay special attention to the spelling, punctuation, grammar and style. You document should be faultless. Proofread few times before you send them. Some employers may even go to the extend of discarding your resumes the minute they spot glaring errors in your resumes.

The way you present your writing and your final work goes to show the employer how careful or careless the writer is, the amount of effort and thoughts that go into the work. Therefore, treat writing your resumes seriously. If you need professional help, go ahead and get it. This is an investment for your career.

WHAT IS THE IDEAL LENGTH?

Everyday, the hiring manager has to go through hundreds of resumes. The advice here is keep it simple and informative. The cover letter should spell out clearly what position you are applying for or which advertisement you are responding to. A brief summary of your background to highlight your suitability is enough.

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