Assistance with Cover Letters

Cover letter acts as a marketing source to your resume. It summaries your strengths and willingness to join the company you are applying for. One should avoid using same information of that in cv.

Even if not asked, cover letter should be submitted along your CV thus taking full advantage of the opportunity.

View below some guidelines to help you be logical and engaging in proper structure of the cover letter.

Tips:

• • Mention the name of the person instead of stating Dear Sir/Madam.
  • Have your letter proof read by someone and have a proper spell check.
  • Use simple language and make the letter easy to be read.
  • Adjust the letter to be different each time matching the job criteria
  • Avoid using “I” in beginning of the letter.
  • Provide evidence of your accomplishments.
  • Provide Attractive and interesting information.
  • Avoid adding information that already exists in your CV.
  • The tone in the letter should be professional, simple language that is clear and understandable.

Content:

• • Should be one page letter.
  • Format should set out like a business letter.
  • Add Date, Name to whom the letter is addressed to, Designation, Company Name, Subject (example: Applying for Secretary Job).
  • Start with your introduction and if you are responding to an advert, mention where you saw it. This will highlight the recruiter why he/she should read the letter and also it will help them to know the advertisement agency that is mostly viewed.
  • Explain your willingness in the job you are applying for and the company.
  • Amend the letter to match the job descriptions.
  • Give some information about your search that you conducted about the company by going through their website, or job fair, or talking to their staff in a fair or event).
  • Give awareness about why this position suits you and try to give example from past experiences (Why you?).
  • In the end, mention your desire to join the organization and have a statement ‘looking forward to hear from you’, followed by ‘Yours sincerely, your name and contact information’.
  • Sign the letter if it’s a print out.

External Resources:

TARGETjobs: Cover letter essentials (http://tinyurl.com/oh7xrqc)

Prospects: Cover Letters (http://www.prospects.ac.uk/covering_letters.htm)

A curriculum vitae (CV)is a concise summary of your skills, achievements and interests inside and outside your academic work. Employers may initially spend a very short time studying your CV (perhaps just 10-20 seconds), so it must be engaging, conveying the most relevant points about you in a clear, accessible way. The primary challenge is to make it easy for the recruiter to find exactly what they are looking for. Focus on their core requirements and adjust or adapt your CV for each specific application.

Top tips:

Be concise:

• • Keep it to one or two full pages (only academic CVs can be longer).
  • Use bullet points to package information succinctly.
  • Avoid too much context, excessive detail or unfocused material that will dilute the impact of your most relevant messages.

Remember the purpose:

Your CV is to get you the interview or meeting, NOT the job itself – highlight what you have achieved so that the reader wants to learn more by meeting you.

Target your CV:

• • Target your CV to each position applied for – it should not be a list of everything that you have done.

Be evidence based:

• • Provide evidence of your contribution and impact.
  • Focus on “actions taken” rather than “responsibilities” to showcase your skills.
  • Use numbers, percentages and values to quantify your impact and give a sense of scale to your actions.
  • Avoid unsupported assertions or opinions.

Be clear:

• • A well laid out CV is inviting to read and easy to scan quickly.
  • Use simple language – avoid jargon, acronyms and technical details which may not be understood or provide too much detail.
  • Avoid writing in paragraphs – space is limited and prose makes it slower to find key points.
  • CVs are (mostly) a record of what you have done, so completed tasks and activities are written in the past tense.

How to create your focused, relevant CV:

• • List for yourself all of your experience, achievements and key dates, including educational achievement, work experience, prizes, awards, involvement in societies, sports and clubs and your other interests and skills (e.g. languages; IT skills). Note down the key skills and attributes which led to these achievements.
  • From your list, select your most relevant  examples that demonstrate the skills and competencies required for the role. Remember, valuable transferable skills are developed and demonstrated in a broad range of activities that you may have undertaken.
  • Select the format of CV – for most student applications, the traditional reverse chronological format is recommended.  If you are unsure about which CV type is appropriate, please ask one of our Careers Advisers.

Consider the headings that are most relevant for your experience, and in which order to present them: EDUCATION will normally be at the top (especially for recent graduates entering the jobs market for the first time), followed by WORK EXPERIENCE (rather than “Employment”) – or consider using “RELEVANT EXPERIENCE” if you are including voluntary or unpaid work.

Headings such as “POSITIONS OF RESPONSIBILITY” and “AWARDS” can also be used to emphasise other relevant experience.
INTERESTS or OTHER INTERESTS AND SKILLS should be included to indicate extra, diverse talents. Within this section, you might use sub-categories such as IT Skills; Languages; Music; Sports.

Using bullet points:

Aim to create powerful bullet points, with each bullet focused on a single idea. Consider applying the ‘CAR’ mnemonic.

• • Context: the organisation name, your job title and dates is often sufficient.
  • Action Words are useful for starting the bullet point, to highlight skills used – e.g. analysed, created, recommended, managed or led.
  • Results can often be linked within an individual bullet point.

The academic CV is very different from CVs used for non-academic job applications. It focuses purely on your academic achievements and experience, and there is no page limit – although you should always keep it concise and relevant.

Before you start:

First, look at the skills and competencies that the hiring department / research group requires. You can identify these from the person specification, the job advert, or your own research. Is this a research or teaching only job? Or will you be doing research, teaching and administration (typical for lectureships)? Do they highlight any particular skill areas, such as organisation or team work?

Look at what you need to do to apply. CVs are usually accompanied by cover letters, but they might also ask you to submit an application form, research and/or teaching statement.

Once you are clear what the employer wants, start to tailor your CV to the post.

Typical sections:

The following sections are typical for the academic CV:

• • Personal Information. Start the CV with your name, address, telephone number and email address.
  • Research Interests. Write bullet points or a short paragraph summarising your research.
  • Education. Include degrees, possibly titles of theses, and the names of supervisors.
  • Awards and Funding. Include undergraduate/postgraduate prizes, travel grants, doctoral scholarships, early career fellowships, and grants you have led on or are named on.
  • Research Experience. Include any post docs or fellowships and research assistant jobs. You might include more detail about your doctoral research in this section too.
  • Teaching Experience. Note any lecturing, seminar, tutorial, supervising, demonstrating, mentoring experience, and potentially non-academic teaching. Give details about the role and responsibilities – even if it was informal – such as level of students, class sizes and topics you taught.
  • Admin Experience. Highlight any conferences/seminars/reading groups you’ve organised, committees you have sat upon, and any other relevant administration experience.
  • Relevant Training. Include academic teaching training, research methods training etc.
  • Relevant research/technical/laboratory skills. You may find it useful to list these under one heading if you find yourself repeating throughout various sections.
  • Patents. Give details of the title, inventors, patent number and date granted.
  • Professional memberships. List these – e.g. the Royal Society of Chemistry or the British Association of American Studies. Include dates.
  • Publications. Give full details as you would if citing them, and use a consistent style. You may wish to highlight (e.g. bold/underline) your name.
  • Conference presentations and posters. Highlight whether paper or poster and cite similarly to your publications with full author list, title, date and location.
  • Referees. Ideally these should all be academic referees. They should be people who know you well and who are known in your field.

Top tips:

• • Make sure the CV is focused on academia. Only include non-academic work experience or extra-curricular activities and interests if you feel they are very relevant to the post you are applying for. You might include languages and IT skills if they are relevant.
  • You might include your nationality in your personal details if you think it will be an advantage – e.g. so that they know you are a European citizen and have the right to work in the UK.
  • If you have limited or no published work, consider including works in progress. Clearly label publications as ‘forthcoming’, ‘under review’ or ‘submitted’ if they are in process, but not yet in print or accepted. If you are unconcerned about giving your ideas away before they go to a publisher, you could have a separate heading for ‘Working Papers’ that you are preparing for publication but have not submitted yet. Include when and where you plan to submit them.
  • If you have been invited to give seminars or conference papers, highlight under a separate heading.
  • Translate jargon/acronyms that others might not understand, especially if applying abroad.
  • Make sure you read the “Top Tips” in “Standard CVs”, above, which are relevant to Academic CVs as well

Click Here to See Sample Template

Traditional CV:

The traditional – or ‘reverse chronological’ – CV is the most commonly used. It often lists your education, work experience and additional activities – with your most recent achievements first.

The sections of the traditional CV will normally be as follows:

• • Personal information – such as contact details
  • Education
  • Work experience*
  • Positions of responsibility*
  • Additional skills
  • Interests
  • Referees – though you can just write “Available on request”.

* with the starred sections being the core of your CV.

This format makes it easy for employers to spot relevant information fast and gives a complete picture of a candidate in a clear and structured way.

Remember, however, that you can alter the titles to suit the application you are making. For example, you could use the heading “Teaching Experience” instead of “Work Experience” if you are applying for a teaching job. If you don’t have much work experience, you could include voluntary work or contributions you have made to clubs or societies instead.

Click here to view Sample of Tradition CV.

Skills based CV:

In a skills-based CV, the information is arranged to highlight relevant skills, with details presented under different skills categories. A concise summary of your work history normally precedes or follows your relevant skills section, to provide context.

This type of CV is used to highlight the transferability of your skills, and so is useful if you are applying to a role without direct experience. We generally only recommend using this style if you have a lot of experience, as a considerable amount of evidence is required to make the skills sound meaningful. As such, it is normally used by:

• • People changing career direction.
  • People transitioning from academia into industry or other sectors.

However, a similar style may be useful if you are applying to your first ever piece of work experience and have had few positions of responsibility, as it allows you to emphasize transferable skills you have gained from studying at university.