Resumes and Cover Letters

Earlier this week a friend asked me for suggested resources on converting her CV into a resume. Here's some recommendations I sent her. In the end, for this particular position, she sent a CV/resume hybrid.

For PhD-specific advice, you should definitely use these websites and books:

University of Illinois's Graduate College has some pretty amazing Career Resources. Check out their resume and cover letter pages. Their file of "action words" is helpful when writing a resume, as are the example resumes and example cover letters they provide as models.

The Chronicle has concrete advice for PhDers.

Leaving Academia provides good (though sometimes hard to take) advice for PhDers making resumes.

The Bible, of course, offers good advice for PhDers, although it doesn't provide too many model resumes.

For advice that is not PhD specific but still solid, check out these resources:

Although I find the design of their website off-putting, QuintCareers was an incredible resource for informational interviews. They don't disappoint on resume resources either.

Purdue University has a fabulous collection of advice, examples, and worksheets. As you click through their resources, make sure you go to the bottom of the page where in the bottom banner there is a button called "Full Resource For Printing." This triggers another screen which has the unabridged version of the topic you are looking at. For example, if you navigate to "Cover Letters 1: Quick Tips", the full resource for printing will bounce you to this page.

Resume Magic is a mammoth book. Really, with index, it's 585 pages of help. It provides lots of example resumes, gives strategies for selling our accomplishments, instructs us on how to edit our resumes. It even tells readers how to use their word processing program to format the resume. This book is pretty exhaustive (and exhausting!).

Additional advice that I have heard in the last six months:

-We have to write a new resume and cover letter for every application. Period.

-Interviewers want specifics. Consider using the STAR method in a cover letter.

-Use the language of the job ad. This is where our grad school training puts us at a disadvantage. It is not plagiarism or laziness to essentially cut and paste the job ad. Being clever with the thesaurus gets us no bonus points here. If they want a liaison who can develop, review and analyze data, our resume/cover letter should definitely include "worked as liaison for..." "developed reviewed, analyzed XYZ data."

-Focus less on academic/theoretical training we've received, and focus on the skills acquired in doing various grad school requirements. Who cares what my dissertation is about--what is important is that I was able to write a 200 page project on schedule, while multitasking other life responsibilities like teaching, running department programs, working a hourly job, etc.

-Service to department, university or community is important. Run a radio show? You can spin that as "communication skills," "public engagement," "responsibilities," "self-supervision," etc. Brought in a speaker?--that's totally "collaborated grant writing," "fund raising," "cooperation and supervision of multiple units on campus."

These are all just preliminary suggestions. If you go to any major bookstore, there will be tons of books touting their services. These are just some sites and books I have found helpful. If you have other resources, let me know and I'll add them to the list!