Mike:
Your resume is a great way to highlight your interdisciplinarity. First off, when some one reads your resume they get to know you from a professional standpoint. But, if you write your resume correctly once some one is done reading it, they should know who you are as a person as well. I have always had a cover letter on the front of my resume but its was always different. Depending on who is reading it I would change it up some. An example of a cover letter would be this:
Your name
Mailing address
City,state,zip
Contact numbers.
Today's date
Your addressee's name
Professional title
Mailing address
City, state, and zip
Dear Mr/Ms.
(paragraph I - grab your reader, say something that will realte you two together. Talk about what job you are applying for)
(paragraph II - can be bullet format, make convincing points on why the job should be yours. )
( Paragraph III- future contact, and state what the future will bring hiteering you. Set up an interview etc…)
Sincerely yours,
Your name
SIGNATURE
This is a good thing to have even before someone looks at your resume. It will help them to know what position you are looking for and why you are qualified for i. It will help them to know you outside of just your achievements of your actual resume. When I had to write my cover letter the sources that I used that help a bunch are,
http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&hs=s5u&resnum=0&q=cover%20letter%20resume&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi.
John:
When creating a resume you have the opportunity to show all of the good things that you have accomplished. For interdisciplinary studies students, this is a perfect opportunity to demonstrate our interdisciplinarity. We have the opportunity to showcase our many strength by creatively listing them in our resume. A great way to accomplish this is to list our areas and minors, and then add how these different disciplines can be used together to accomplish a common goal.
When creating cover letters in the past I have had some questions that helped me figure out if what I was doing was on the right track. The most obvious question was what so I put on my cover letter? I have answered this question with something that gets your intents across quickly without giving away too much information without boring the reader. Another question was how long should my cover letter be? I answered this with, short and to the point. If the reader has to read for too long they will most likely get bored and stop reading your resume. Mike gave a great format for a cover letter above.
A great place to look for help with developing your resume is at school. The best resume that I have made was done with help from my cornerstone teacher. I would make a rough draft and have them review it and provide feedback, and then I would produce a final product. I believe that the most important thing to consider while creating your resume after highlighting your best attributes is just like with the cover letter is to keep it short and to the point. Do give the readers an opportunity to become bored while reading yours, there will be a stack full of boring resumes that they have just read through. Make yours stand out, not with fancy fonts and colors, but with all of your great achievements. Any time you feel like you are experiencing writer’s block, use the Internet, Google will provide you with about 283,000,000 examples to look over for a cover letter, and 684,000,000 for a resume. That should provide you with enough information to get you going again.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
John,
ReplyDeleteOne thing I liked about what you said is what you talked about going to the cornerstone teacher about your cover letter. One thing I have learned in college is that we can learn things so much faster if we just went to the people who know the material the best: professors. We could be more successful at what we want to do if we learn from the people that have been where we are now and have been in our shoes before. In all careers it is vital to look at the people ahead of us and see what things we would want to replicate and the things we could do differently.
I never really understood the point of cover letters. I spent some time in university relations at a company and had to look through many resumes and some cover letters really did a lot for the resume. Some of them helped tie what the resume facts were into how they could apply those facts to the job they were seeking. Basically what I am saying is that sometimes applying for a job a cover sheet may not be necessary. If I am applying for a serving position and I have ten years experience waiting on tables, my resume speaks for it's self. However, if I was applying for a serving position and I had that I worked in retail for five years; a cover sheet could help explain how I could use my retail experience to help make the restaurant more successful.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I liked what you said about how we could use the cover letter to explain our major. I find that most people do not know what interdisciplinary studies is and having a cover letter would definitely help explain it and how it makes me qualified for the position. This major allows us to build and make it what we want it to be so it should be easier for us to get the jobs we want. We can make ourselves more marketable by taking all the types of classes that we care about. If all I want is the counseling side of psychology, I can take only those types of classes and be able to fulfill the requirement while also going beyond most psychology major students.
ReplyDeleteYeah I also think a cover letter is a great idea, I never would have thought of that! I do feel like an explanation of the IDS major would be useful for potential employers.
ReplyDeletejessica, summer,
ReplyDeleteYeah i never really understood the cover letter until i had to write one. but you guys made some good points. It would be a perfect opportunity to explain our major in full, and i think people will be quiet impressed with it. also a good time to let the person get to know who you really are and prove to them that you can think outside the box, at the asme time as being as professional as possible.
My resume can highlight my interdisciplinarity by showcasing my past work efforts and academic awards in varying areas of discipline, while at the same time allowing employers or superiors see what sort of activities or work I am looking to accomplish in the future. A question about a cover letter that I have would be what to actually put on one, but I seem to understand now after seeing Mike’s example. My best cover letter would be:
ReplyDeleteName
Address
City, State, Zip
Contact Numbers
Date
Addressee's Name
Professional Title
Mailing Address
City, State, Zip
Dear Mr. / Mrs.,
I am writing to apply for admission into your graduate school, which I would like to attend during the Fall of next year.
I believe I should be admitted into your graduate school program because I am a skilled worker, have achieved awards such as Bright Futures scholarship, and have a 3.5 GPA. I also would like to attend graduate school to future my education.
My past education will assist me in completing your graduate degree program, and I am looking forward to learning more at your institute for higher learning. In addition, I am excited to explore the opportunities I can accomplish after attending the graduate program.
Sincerely,
Name
SIGNATURE
A question about resumes that I have would be: what sort of information should I put on, or leave off, of a resume that would give me an advantage in applying to graduate school, because my main objective after graduating UCF would be to submit a resume to a graduate school admissions office. A resource that I found that could help someone with a resume or cover letter are websites such as: www.resume-help.org, which show someone the proper format and can help composing a resume.
Mike,
ReplyDeleteThank you for your cover letter example, I never really knew what to and what not to put on one. I understand now that it's an introduction of myself to a possible employer that is supposed to show my interest in a possible job, my skills necessary to participate in that job, and the benefits I can bring to the company. And also, my cover letter should help someone know myself outside of just my achievements.
John,
ReplyDeleteI like your way of listing out my areas of interest and minor on a cover letter and then showing how these different disciplines can be used together to accomplish a common goal; this way can really show my interdisciplinarity. In addition, I am looking forward to working on my resume and cover letter during this cornerstone class, as you mentioned, and make mine as not boring as possible.
I believe it is so important to make your resume as interesting as possible. Ask your boss or someone who is in the position where they review resumes often, if they have ever dismissed someones resume because they said it looked like everyone else's. Sure its not right that they would do that without giving it a fair chance but thats just the way it is. You've got to make yourself stand out as much as possible to get that first foot in the door.
ReplyDeleteJohn,
ReplyDeleteI like how you mentioned that you asked for advice for your cover letter, from someone with experience. In life we can learn many things if we just asked questions. That was my main problem in school until last semester. I never used to ask questions when I did not understand something, and if I did it was not from the source. I thought it was great how you asked your teacher for advice on your cover letter. I'm 100% sure that asking your teacher for help separated your job from being a good job, to being an excellent job.
John,
ReplyDeleteI would like to ask you a question concerning my resume. My whole life I only had one job, not including soccer summer camps I worked. I'm a college athlete, so if I'm not in class I'm either at practice or traveling to play a game. Should I put my college athletics career in my resume??
I think just having an interdisciplinary degree will highlight my resume. It will show that I have knowledge and skills in many different areas. Depending on what type of job I am applying for, I would probably highlight an area that is directly related to the job I am applying for more.
ReplyDeleteHonestly, I have almost no experience in writing cover letters. I have actually never heard of it before. After reading both of yours, Mike and John, I kind of have an idea of what it is.
My questions are: when should I use it and what is the purpose of having a cover letter? Isn’t a resume good alone to have?
Mike, I really liked your way to simplify how to write a cover letter. It really made me see what I need to put in it as well as how to organize it. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteAlso, have you ever written a cover letter before? If you have for what purpose did you write it for?
John,
ReplyDeleteThat is a great idea to list all of our disciplines as well as minors. I will for sure take this advice and use it when I am writing my cover letter. You are absolutely right that if I put my areas of study as well as my minors I can relate them as a common goal that I have, going to grad school or getting the specific job I am applying for.
Mike,
ReplyDeleteThank you for the cover letter example. I sort of knew what I was doing, but now I have your example to guide me. I like how the cover letter describes you a little more than your achievements.
Camilo,
ReplyDeleteI don't see why not. It shows that you are hard working and that you have dedication and drive. Plus you never know, the person reading your resume might have been a college athlete as well, and you will have instantly bonded. If you have only held one job putting your athletic accomplishments will fill in the blanks,so it doesn't look like you were just partying throughout college.