You work so hard to tailor your resume for each specific position. You word-smith and tweak, re-size and fuss until it is absolutely perfect. You submit the resume for the job and follow up with the employer a few days later, only to receive awful news. The file got corrupted somehow and they couldn’t read your resume!! You tell them it’s not a problem and that you’ll re-submit right away, but quickly discover that your resume file is completely corrupted on your hard drive!
To avoid the scenario above, here are some tips to ensure you always have backups of your resume. Some of these tips may seem over the top, but if you ever find yourself in a situation where your computer has failed or your file has been corrupted and you need to re-send your resume to an employer, you will appreciate having extra copies available. Many of these tips can also be applied to your cover letters, and to any other important documents.
Don’t just save over older versions of your resume whenever you tailor a new version for a new job. Save a brand new document, naming it lastname_resume_jobtitle_company.docx
Save the final copy (the one you submitted for the job) in a few different locations, such as:
email it to yourself and save the email in a folder called “Application Materials.”
Keep your LinkedIn profile up-to-date. This is a good idea for any job seeker, but if you find you’ve lost your resume file, you can pull information from your profile as a last resort.
If your school has a career management tool, take advantage of the option to upload different versions of your resume to your account.
Finally, for a low-tech back-up solution, keep printouts of your tailored resumes with the name of the company to which it had been sent, written in pencil, in a corner on the back.
Being too generic can be the single most detrimental mistake you can make in writing your cover letter. Learn how to spot and avoid this error in this video.
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What cover letter questions have you got? Be sure to ask them in the comments below!
The Common Cover Letter Errors series exposes the most common errors found in cover letters, particularly among college students, recent graduates and young professionals.
Are cover letters useful anymore? There are a variety of opinions throughout the internet. One of the most compelling comments came from Edith Reese, an Insurance and Risk Management Professional and Attorney, saying that “There are blogger’s with HR backgrounds who state that a cover letter is outdated, but the comments on this site (LinkedIn poll page) from HR professionals indicate otherwise. For a variety of the following reasons listed here (distinguishing yourself from the other candidates, showing the company how you add value, showing interest in the position, creating a connection with the hiring manager, etc.) a well written cover letter remains an important element of the job hunter’s arsenal.
After exhaustive discussions with over 240 job seekers, many of them from the professional networking website Linkedin.com, and posting a poll on LinkedIn with the following title, “Do You Use a Cover Letter in Your Job Search”, I found some pretty interesting and relevant responses to the poll question.
This is the second post in the Job Search Marketing Toolkit series and today’s post will focus on Cover Letters. While not as important as your resume, your cover letter is typically the first thing a recruiter or company HR representative sees. If it is missing or poorly put together it is unlikely they will even look at your resume so it is important to get this right. Cover letters generally date back to the days of “snail mail” (for more on Snail Mail, please see my post – Job Hunting with “Snail mail”) but have made the transition to the Internet as the content of your email sent when forwarding your resume. Continue reading Job Search Marketing Toolkit – Cover Letters »
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You work so hard to tailor your resume for each specific position. You word-smith and tweak, re-size and fuss until it is absolutely perfect. You submit the resume for the job and follow up with the employer a few days later, only to receive awful news. The file got corrupted somehow and they couldn’t read your resume!! You tell them it’s not a problem and that you’ll re-submit right away, but quickly discover that your resume file is completely corrupted on your hard drive!
