Summary: Writing Resumes and Cover Letters for the LIS Profession

Summary provided by Andrea Poehling: "Writing Resumes and Cover Letters for the LIS Profession"

September 24, 2009

[Plus: Professor Louise Robbins’s “Key Principles of Writing Cover Letters and Resumes” from her 2008 presentation is at the end of this summary]

Presenters:

Brad Hughes, Director-Writing Center, UW-Madison

John Pollitz, Director of Libraries, UW-Eau Claire

Betsy Bromley, SLIS Class of 2008, Children’s Librarian-Oconomowoc Public Library

Handouts:

Sample resumes from recent SLIS graduates are available from Andrea Poehling, SLIS Student Services Coordinator, student-services@slis.wisc.edu.

Summary:

A resume is a summary of your experience, a view of you as a professional. It initiates a conversation. Your aim is to establish yourself as qualified and interesting so the search committee wants to talk with you.

It is important to understand how resumes are read; they are SKIMMED. While nobody will read every single word in your resume, it’s important that you spend a lot of time choosing meaningful words and phrases.

• Resumes and cover letters are highly conventional forms. This is not the time to be highly innovative and creative with formatting, writing style, etc. Despite this, there are only a few absolute rules.
• Organize your resume in predictable categories (Education, Experience, Honors, etc.).
• Resumes are read to compare people and readers will look for these categories.
• It should be easy to spot headings.
• Use significant white space (which makes your resume more skimmable and inviting).
• Don’t use narrow margins or tiny font size. Instead, be selective (or add another page).
• Format shouldn’t be too fancy.

Think about your readers. What do they value? Need? Want to know? And how can you get that across? Use your resume and cover letter to persuade them to hire you. Convey real enthusiasm for the institution and the job.

Employers will pay attention to the tone, structure and substance of your resume and cover letter. Be organized and articulate.

Find good models of resumes and cover letters and imitate them (but use your own experiences and your own voice). Refer to books about how to write resumes and cover letters (available at College Library’s career resource collection).

Resumes can be more than 1 page (but if you only have enough material to fill ¼ of the second page, condense it so it fits on one page). Early in your career, your resume should be 1-2 pages.

It’s fine to use a resume template in Word.

Create the resume in reverse chronological order.

It’s fine to include undergraduate experiences, especially if they are recent and relevant. As your career progresses, you will elaborate less on older experiences. Your resume will be a work in progress throughout your career.

Use action verbs on your resume. Don’t start every bullet with the same verb.

The reader’s eye will be drawn to the left of the page. Therefore, put more important things on the left (like job title, rather than dates of employment).

Panelists recommend leaving Personal Interests section out of resume. Good to include Volunteer Activities.

It’s not necessary to include a list of references on your resume, or even a statement that references will be provided. People assume you have references. You should have a separate list of references ready to go in case the employer asks for it.

Make your cover letter about them, not you. Think in terms of “Here’s what you need and here’s what I can do for you” not “This is what I want to do and this is why I’m interested in the job and this is what I can learn from the job.”

Use your own voice in the cover letter. Don’t pretend to be somebody you’re not; that could lead to a bad match between you and the employer.

The cover letter should project confidence without stepping over the line to arrogance or entitlement.

In your letter, assume it’s going to go well. Instead of using the conditional tense, “If I were to be granted an interview…” be more direct, “I look forward to discussing the specific contributions I could make to *name of library.”

Use your cover letter to elaborate on points in your resume, not to repeat your resume.

Tailor the letter to each position and address specific items in the position description. It’s fine to copy and paste but BE CAREFUL that you don’t include the wrong job title or institution in your cover letter when doing so.

PROOFREAD your materials. Typos and spelling errors convey that a) you’re not attentive to detail and b) you didn’t care enough about this position to double-check your work.

Send your materials as PDF attachments; this will maintain the formatting. Title your file with your last name (e.g., “Smith-resume”, not just “resume.” The employer will probably get many files titled just “resume.”)

Key Principles of Writing Cover Letters and Resumes

Louise S. Robbins, 2008

1. It’s okay to write a more generic resume (assuming you are looking for generally the same kind of job with it each time). [one person says she wrote different resumes for public and school library jobs—that makes sense]
2. Use your cover letter to address important points in the position description (e.g., Burkhardt)
3. Emphasize the ways in which what you have on your resume address qualifications. Don’t make any assumptions about what the reader knows.
4. Forget using any “Objective” –what’s your objective—to get a job!
5. Proof read and have someone else proof read. If the employer has 150 applications to go through, your mistakes or failure to follow directions may be all that’s needed to get yours thrown out.
6. Don’t try to be cute by using some kind of fancy formatting or graphics. Keep plenty of white space and use type variations carefully—
7. If you have more than a page worth of work and educational experience, allow your resume to spill over onto more than one page. But don’t exaggerate.
8. Account for those “vacant” years. You may have to be creative about this, but better to tell the story the way you want it heard than the way a reader might imagine it. Bad things—and good things— happen to good people; illness, raising a family, and backpacking across Asia can all be turned to advantage—even bouncing back and changing from a life of slackerhood is a good story. Some of us are late bloomers.
9. At your stage, put your education up front, as it is the first and most basic criterion for the jobs you are applying for.
10. Practica are listed under work experience.