Interviews are the first step to landing a job. You must show your value and your experience, along with a glimpse of your personality, in your resume and cover letter.
The hiring manager will quickly assess your experience and skills to determine if you are well-prepared for the job for which you are applying. The hiring manager will spend more time reviewing your application if you can quickly prove that you are a serious candidate.
Your cover letter should demonstrate that you are able to understand.
A persuasive and original cover letter shows that you have a good understanding of the employer’s needs and clearly explains how you can meet them.
Although there are certain guidelines for a cover letter’s structure, you need to write one for every organization you apply. Don’t send a generic, or formulaic cover letters!
Please note that transferable skills are only.
This means that you should emphasize your transferable skills if you apply for a position in nonprofit event-planning.
If you were a front desk clerk at a fancy hotel, it may seem like a completely different job. You can either leave it off your resume or include it with the other duty-oriented details.
You’ll be able to see the similarities between these jobs if you look closely.
- Customer service can be achieved through self-discipline
- Organization and precision
- Communication between people
- Ability to follow policies and communicate policies with diplomacy
Your past experience in event planning, along with any transferable skills that you have gained from working at the hotel (and other jobs), and your connection to the organization’s issue-area and your passion for event management, should be highlighted in your cover letter.
You should only list the transferable skills you have from any job (paid or volunteer), their context and major related accomplishments on your resume.
If your job description for event planning required you to arrange flowers for the lobby, for example, your hotel clerk job should not include flower arrangement.
The “Can you tell which job I am applying for just by looking at me?” test. Test
If your resume has been drafted for a particular job opening, give it to a friend without the job description and ask them “Can you tell me what job I am applying for?”
Your friend should be able tell you the details of the job after a quick review of your resume. Because the job description should appear throughout your resume,
- Use the same language as the description of the job in your language.
- You can feature the accomplishments and tasks you choose
Your resume and cover letter are not your autobiography. When a hiring manager reads your application, they only want to know the answers to these three questions.
- Are you able to do the job?
- Are you up for the task?
- Will you fit in?