MSU Extension 4-H Adulting 101

So welcome everyone to Adulting 101 Cover Letter and Resume Writing. We're excited to have you today. My name is Lori Rivetto. I am an MSU Extension Educator, pronounced she her hers. I am based in Wayne County, and I'm part of a team that gets to do this life skill building for young people through 4-H our 4-H program. We help you prepare for your future and we're excited to share about this topic today, whether you have created a resume before or you never have, and we're going to be able to help you today. Presenting alongside me is Kathy Jamieson, I'll turn it over to her. Hello. Hello. Welcome, everyone. So I work with Laurie. We are on this team. And one of the areas that we teach is cover letters and resume writing. So super happy to be here. I've been teaching about this class for probably 20 something years. So hopefully, we'll be able to share a tip or two so you can update your resume or create one. So if you're going to create one, you want to make sure you get some paper and pencil handy and take some notes. We will be sending out some resources afterwards. So that will help we'll send you some samples and some tools to help you in your cover letter and resume writing. So welcome. And in general, as mentioned earlier, we are going to be using question and answer( Q & A) So if you have any questions, please use that feature, and helping us out with responding to those is one of our colleagues, Janice Zerbi. Janice, do you want to say hi? Hello. Janice will be behind the scenes helping with question and answer( Q & A) please use that and we will open Chat later if we have time for an activity, but otherwise we'll not be using Chat, and we do have an ASL interpreter with us today, Haley. For those of you who might be benefiting from that as well. Please check out Halley. We also have the option for closed captioning. As noted earlier, there's no opportunity to speak during this. It's a webinar format. So when there's raised hands, we're not able to respond to that, please use the question and answer (Q & A) feature for support. All right. Let's get started. Of course, all of our programs are open to all. We believe fully in the principles of diversity, equity and inclusion at MSU Extension in Michigan 4-H. We know that those human differences enrich our lives, our work, our community, and we embrace our responsibility to be a resource for all and are dedicated to providing programs to all segments of our community. It's also important to understand the longstanding history and legacy of colonialism that has brought us to reside on the land and to seek to understand our place within that history. And the land acknowledgment on the screen is one step in that process. So what are we doing today? We're going to talk about cover letters and resumes. For cover letters, we're going to cover what it is, when to use it, the general do's and don'ts and formatting and what to include, and some samples. As Kathy shared, we'll also be emailing out items, but it is good to grab a pen, paper so you can take some notes and have some reflection as well during some other activities. Okay. So we're going to start off with a quick little poll on the screen there should pop up. When have you used a cover letter? Maybe your response is, what is a cover letter? I always send a cover letter with my resume. I send a cover letter with my resume sometimes when I have time, and I rarely ever send a cover letter. We've got about 50% of our group who's responded. We'll give it a little bit more time. Okay. I got 81% of you. I'm going to end the poll. All right. Let's end it. Let's see where we're at. 46% of you would like to know what a cover letter is. Great. Good place to be. We'll cover that. 22% of you always send one. Awesome, 8% of you share or send a cover letter when you have time and 24% of you rarely, if ever send a cover letter, and we'll cover maybe why you want to bump that up and maybe do more often than you currently do. Thanks for sharing. Let's start off with what is a cover letter. Basically, a cover letter is an introduction that accompanies a resume, and it explains your credentials and your interests in a position. It's a great introduction to who you are and why you're applying for a position. What I like about it is that it's included with a resume, but it includes more sentences. It's more of a written description as opposed to the succinct bullets that might be in a resume. It's a chance to get a little bit more content than you might be able to share within a resume. When is a cover letter actually required? Some actual job offers require it, and if that's the case, you need to include it. Not including it would mean not following directions. And so it's really important that you include that cover letter. It could also be that it's requested. It's something that's highly encouraged. It really helps if you're applying directly to a person and know their name, then you can include it directly and reference that you know them, that they reference this position. The same idea as if someone referred to you for a position because it's a great chance for you to include that in the cover letter. According to Jobvite data in 2017, which I know is a little bit older data, but only 26% of recruiters consider cover letter is important in their decision to hire an applicant. However, another study, on employer preference, suggests that 56% want applicants to attach a cover letter. And a career builder study found that 49% of HR managers consider a cover letter the second best thing to give your resume a boost. So cover letters in general are going to give you that little "oomph" that maybe a resume by itself is not going to have. And so we're going to help you know at least what would look good to include in that cover letter. So now we're going to show you a short, less than 2 minutes video, which will provide some samples and go over what to include in that cover letter. Okay. This is my resume. And here's its best friend, the one page cover letter. A K A it's Wingman. Together, they work wonders, because what the cover letter does is set up the resume by highlighting what makes you a great fit for the job. It shows your personality with three concise paragraphs that should be readable in around 10 seconds or less. So, how do you write a cover letter? Let me walk you through one. Literally. Let's say you're applying for an engineer job. Don't forget your header. Date, name, address, contact info, all that jazz. Kick it off with a greeting to address the hiring manager. If you can find out their name. If you can't, stick with this. The attention getter, the opening paragraph. Introduce yourself and enthusiastically tell the employer why you're applying for the job. Include why you're excited and how the job lines up with your career goals. Avoid sounding formulaic by adding keywords from the job posting. The middle paragraph, dig into your most relevant experience and talk about the specific qualifications and skills that make you the perfect candidate. Oh, and feel free to pause and read when you need to. I've only got so long. Where was I? Right. Make connections between your previous accomplishments. Employers will likely have read your resume already, so avoid repeating the bullet points. Instead, deeply illustrate those highlights. To close the curtain, thank the employer. You can also make any clarifications. For example, any major gaps in employment history. Then, provide a complimentary close and signature that's friendly, yet formal, followed by your name. Well, I think that's everything. Remember that the smallest moves are sometimes the smartest. So we're going to get into detail on each of those sections and give you some more samples. If you want to go to the next slide. So first thing we want to talk about a little bit is the cover letter formatting. So here, it's really important just as the video said, to keep it to one page, and you want to find a font that's easy to read and try to use a professional font, such as Times New Roman, Cambria, Georgia, Ariel, Calibri those are just a couple of the professional fonts. You don't want to use italicized fonts, and you want to make sure that somebody proof reads it. Huge! Because you do not want to have any errors. This is a sample of your writing. So that's what employers often ask you for when they're asking for a cover letter. So they want to take a look at how well can you write. Margins, about 1-1.5 inches. So those are just a couple of formatting. You're going to want to use probably the same font that you use for your resume. So that way, it's consistent with your resume. Okay. So now we're going to look at each of the sections. So as the video said, you want to start with your mailing address so you can include your zip code, where the employer can reach you. So that's what the sender information is. So your information. Now, you don't actually need to put your full address because nowadays, employers do not communicate through the mail. They're going to communicate with your e mail or phone. So you don't necessarily have to put your complete address. You could include the city state and Zip for privacy reasons, or you could just put your name and your e mail, your Linked in, and your phone number. But you need something to get so they can get ahold of you. Then the next step, you're going to have a space, and then you're going to put the date. Now, here you want to actually spell out the month. So it's April, so you wouldn't want to go 4.10.2024. You'd want to say April 10, 2024. Then you're going to have a who's going to get the information. Here, you're going to want the full address. And this is, if you can, you're going to try to address it to a actual person. So if you don't have their information, you could say Dear recruiting manager or hiring manager. But if you can, try to call the company and try to find out who is responsible for hiring in the position so you can get their name. That way, it's more personalized. So after you start it, so you're going to have your salutation, so you're going to do Dear then ideally, it would be the person's name, or you could say dear hiring manager. Then you're going to have a body of your cover letter and that could be, usually three to four paragraphs. And each paragraph, we're going to go into a little bit more detail. And then you're going to close it. And your closure, you're going to have sincerely, yours truly, something like that, and then you're going to have a space have four spaces because you're going to sign that and then actually type out your name. So it that way you can sort of see what it looks like. So the first section is the cover letter intro. In the first paragraph, here what you want to do is you want to mention the job title that you're applying for. And where did you where did you hear about it? Did you see it in a particular site? Did somebody tell you about it? Show your interest in the role and the company, and this will show that you've done your research. So the first section of the cover letter, it's your first impression the reader will have of you. So it's important to appeal to that person quickly and succinctly. So try to start with confidence but not arrogance and like I said, clearly state why you are writing and make sure to indicate the job that you're applying for. They might receive lots of cover letters and resumes for that position. So they need to know what position you are applying for. So make sure you say that. As you can see in the sample there. Another component of the cover letter body is another paragraph after that first paragraph is what we're going to call the cover letter body. Here you're going to persuade the reader. So this is not the first impression as much anymore. As much as it is telling the employer why they should bring you in for an interview. The purpose of the cover letter and the resume is to open that door for an interview. So you're persuading the reader that you have the qualifications that would meet the job requirements so that they want to meet you. It really expands on your resume. You are not repeating your resume. But you want to use some of those same kind of strong action verbs to describe your experience and show some of that hard evidence of your accomplishments. Again, this is similar. We'll talk about this with resumes, but numbers are really helpful in those cases for that evidence. You want to demonstrate that you're the cultural fit by checking their website and social media profiles. You want to tailor your cover letters tone and language to reflect the principles, values, attitude that the company conveys in its materials, So it shows that you've done your company research and that you have examples of how you're going to benefit the employer. Why should they have you come in. Clarify any abbreviations and acronyms. So we know that there's lots of organizations or programs that you might have been involved with or worked with. But everybody doesn't know what all those letters stand for. So explain them and use jargon or those specific words that only you know in the industry very sparingly. Okay? So we are going to try this out, and there's another example on the screen there of what that cover letter body might look like. Okay. I'm going to try this out with this or that activity. So there's two different examples on here, a this or a that, this and that, which statement would be better on the resume? This or that? (silent waiting) Got almost 50% of you. ( waiting) We have a couple more seconds. All right. We're going to end this and share the results. It looks like 80% of you said this and 20% said that. And the correct answer is this. The correct answer is this. So you don't want to send a generic letter, or have a generic body in your cover letter. So it's really important to tailor it to the position, tailor it to the company or organization that you're applying for. Look at that job posting, use language that reflects the job posting. Do that research on the company, include the company name. You could say something flattering about the company. You can learn a lot about what companies value or what's important to organizations by checking their websites, their social media and acknowledging what you appreciate about that organization or company and what you would bring to the table in terms of those skills and background and experience. So good job on that. That example on that slide is very generic. So for the cover letter closing, Kathy had mentioned this. It's got to have some sort of call to action. So in this case, that's typically interview me is what you're aiming for. So include the fact that you're looking forward to an interview, include your contact information, any availability that would be important to note. You can reference your resume and include gratitude so that they took the time to read your cover letter, look at your resume, consider you for this position. Gratitude can go really long way. So include that as well. And that sign off can be anything like Sincerely, Best, Regards, Respectfully, Best Regards, Kind Regards, anything along those lines. You can include as your closing along with that signature like Kathy said and your name. So we have another this or that. Which would be a better closing? (silent waiting) Please answer in quick. Thank you for participating. 64% of you right now. As a reminder, if you have questions as we're going along, please put them in the Q & A feature. All right. I'm going to give a couple more seconds, and I'm going to end this poll. All right. So in this case, the better choice would be that. So this choice is very much challenging them to hire the person. It's not going to go over positively. Remember Kathy said this is a chance for a first impression, building that relationship. It doesn't look good to say, it's your loss if you don't hire me. So instead, you really want to show with examples of your accomplishments, why you would be an asset, not challenge them. In addition, you don't know what the other candidates are like. You don't know who you're against, how many other people are applying for the role, what their background and experience is. So you don't really know how you compare. All you can talk about is the qualifications that you have and share that with pride and honesty, and it is the hiring authority's decision about whether or not you are a candidate that's worthy of consideration or not. All you can do is share the information and appreciate them for giving you an opportunity if that's the case. So, well done. Okay, so here's just another example of her cover letter in that way, you can see how it's designed. So it's Lucy Applicant. And so she put her name at the top with her contact information and how to get ahold of her. She put the date and she spelled it out. So Sam Spartan, she's writing to, and he's the media director for the creative graphic designs. And so she knew who this person was. So she said, Dear Mr. Spartan, and that's who she directed it to. Notice that there's Colons after Dear Mr. Spartan because this is a professional letter. So that's the style you would want to use as a colon. And the very first paragraph, they indicated the position. It's a graphic design position. Where did they hear it? It was advertised on Indeed. And they basically indicate their enthusiasm and their interest. The body is where they're customizing it, and they're showing some of their their accomplishments and their achievements. They won a top prize in student design competition. They have a high GPA. They did their research. The last sentence or the last couple of sentences. I have strong computer communication and writing skills and enjoy teaching my younger 4-H members graphic design. I believe these skills would be an asset, as I know your studio does a lot of work for youth organizations. So that's a statement showing they did the research, and they closed with indicating that they have a resume and that they're going to e mail them within the next week to see if they can arrange a time to speak. Thank you for your consideration. So they have sincerely and then just because we don't have space, we would have their name signed and then actually printed, just so you can get an idea. Sometimes that's the best thing is just to look at a lot of samples before you get writing, just so you can get a feel for what does it look like. But some key takeaways that I want to mention, is you want to write a separate cover letter for every position. The best cover letters are customized for the employer receiving them. So you don't want to have just one cover letter and then just change it with the position. You really want to customize it. You're going to find that your job search is going to be more successful that way. Make sure we've said that a lot of times, but make sure you identify the position you're applying for. This is important because like I said, they might have many positions and you want to make sure your materials are going to the right person. Try to indicate how you heard about the position, especially if somebody who works there mentioned it because that's going to give you a plus. Especially if that's a good employee. I ask but make sure you ask if you can use their name before including it. Demonstrate professional, simple, and direct writing and make sure somebody proof reads it. Also, you don't want to just talk about you because your resume talks about you. Demonstrate that you've done your employer research and show them how you're the best candidate for them. This means talking about them and how you're a fit for what they need and they want. So really looking at that position, which is like a cheat sheet, in a sense, so you know what they're looking for and reflecting on what are those skills and experiences that are most relevant and important to this kind of position. Well, yeah, we have talked about cover letters. And we're going to take a pause before we start on resumes, and we'd love for you to complete our demographic survey. You can use the QR code on the screen or I just put it in the Chat. So please take a couple of minutes. If you are a youth 17 and under, do the youth survey adults 18 and up. Complete the adult survey. This helps us make sure we're reaching all our audiences for programming. (waiting) Thank you so much for doing that. So let's move into resume writing. So what we're going to be covering? What is a resume? When do you use a resume, the contents of a resume, the components of a good resume, and then some formatting tips as well. The first top, what is a resume? It is a marketing tool. It is marketing. You're selling you. We think about marketing as selling something. A resume is a marketing tool selling you in essence. It's going to summarize a person's skills, experience, education, and other unique factors that make the individual qualified for a position, opening or opportunity. So it can feel intimidating to create one, similar to what Kathy said. It's really helpful if you look at some examples, see what they look like, do some exploration like that before you start writing one. It is a process, and it is something you have to put some work into, but just think about it as an opportunity to highlight you. To share your career interests, your skills, your experience. Once you have that all set, you can update that and revise it as those things change in your life. As your experiences change, your skills develop, you can just adjust it. Start it and then you'll have something to work with. It really is an opportunity for you to be in the spotlight and it answers the question of: Will this individual add value and be a good fit to my organization, group or company? It's like a very long business card. It's summarizing who you are, how to reach you, and then your assets of why you might be a benefit to an organization or company or business. So we've got another poll for you. What is the status of your resume? Hopefully now, what is the resume? You won't say that one because I did just explain it. But maybe you need minor work, maybe it needs major work. Maybe you have a resume, it's great. Maybe you need a new resume for a new job. (waiting) And I want to say great questions in the Q&A. Janice is doing a great job supporting those questions. Thanks for all your active participation in thinking about how this applies to you. We are at about 70%. yeah, lets end that. Let's see what we got going on. So few of you still aren't sure what a resume is. So hopefully as we keep going, we'll explain a little bit more. 13% of you, awesome , have a resume and it's great. Fantastic, but hopefully I'll leave with a bit more of a tip to maybe tweak it a little bit. 25% of you need some major work. 21% need a new resume for a new job, which hopefully you can adjust if you have a good foundation for what your current resume is and minor work for 32% of you. That's great. We're across the board. Okay, so when is a resume needed? The cool thing about resumes is you can use it for many different avenues. It's just for your job search. It's great, of course, looking for a job, that's number one. But if you attend a job fair, you definitely want to have a resume with you. But maybe you're interested in volunteering or doing community service opportunities. It could be utilized in that capacity. Scholarships . So often when you're applying for scholarships, they will ask for a resume. So applying to college or specialized training programs often want a resume. It could also be part of an award application. So if you're in 4-H, for instance, our Michigan 4-H, we require a cover letter and a resume for our awards, and often many places do. But it also is helpful. It's a helpful part of your portfolio, as well as finding a mentor. You can share that with them and getting references. So whenever you want and we're going to talk about references briefly. But when you are trying to get a reference, giving them a copy of your resume is perfect, so they can really see your background and your education and all of your accomplishments. It is a great networking tool. So it's not a bad idea to have some resumes with you in your bag or in your car, in a folder somewhere because you never know when somebody says, you know, Do you happen to have a resume that you can send me? And if you have it right there, you can give it to them. So making sure that you get their business card if you don't have it, so you can e mail it to them. Okay. So some of the contents of a resume. There's a lot of different things that you can include in a resume. But of course, you're going to include your contact information, and that would be your name. You could include your address. We did indicate it is an optional thing, and we're going to go into each one of these a little bit more detail. But your name, your phone numbers, website. We're going to talk about profiles or career summaries and highlights of qualifications. Education is an important component, as well as your workshops or technical training, you could include experiences, and that could be both formal and informal. So volunteer, as well as your work experience. Maybe your skills or your strengths that you have, and you could have a section on volunteering and community service. It all depends on the organization, by knowing that the culture of that organization and what's important to them. Other things that you could include activities, hobbies, affiliations, honors awards. This is not comprehensive. You could include your articles, you could include different it really depends on the position. So it could include your performances if you're going for acting. So there's all different kinds of sections, your writing, that kind of thing. Okay. So I just want to mention a little bit about skills because that's one of the sections that you could have. But there's different kinds of skills. There's hard skills, and those are the skills that are related to specific technical knowledge and training. Hard skills are those that are often learned to perform a specific job function and can typically be measured. Some examples would be like a computer program, maybe video production, speaking a foreign language, graphic design, just to name a few. Soft skills, you might have also heard them as core skills or common skills. Those are the abilities that relate to how you work and interact with other people. Examples. There's a whole bunch of examples on this slide right here, but leadership, communication, time management. Soft skills are those personal attributes. Unlike hard skills, they're applicable across industries and really any profession. All of these things that are listed could be done in any position, whereas those hard skills are very job specific. The cool thing is the vast majority of employers, 77% believe that soft skills like the ones listed are just as important as those hard skills. And based on a recent poll, some employers even indicated soft skills are even more important than our hard skills when evaluating candidates for a job. The thing that you need to know though is it's not sufficient to just list those soft skills. You can't just say I'm a good communicator. What you want to do is you need to show it. Provide examples. Let's say you want to say that you're a team player. You need to provide examples of how you've worked on a team to accomplish a particular goal. Maybe you work well under pressure. So give them a situation that you handled with ease. The key is really trying to make those intangibles tangible. Okay. So another section, and this is usually the first section of your resume. Make sure your name stands out somehow, and you can make it stand out by bolding it, capitalizing your name, making the font larger. Sometimes I've seen it on the side, separating it with an underline. I'd be cautious with that because with AI often reading the resumes, that line, if you separate it with a line, The computer sometimes thinks that it's done. You got to be cautious by using that line. But like I said, address is optional, and if you're concerned with privacy, you can just include the city, state zip. But the thing with the address is employers and I've hired lots of people, employers really look at where you live. And the reason they're doing that is they're looking at the distance you might have to travel to that job. And they're thinking, it's like, well, this person is going to have to travel this much time to get here if it's an in person job. That could be a plus or a negative. If you live close to where you work, you might want to include your address. If you live pretty far, you might consider not including it. But the key also is you want to make sure to use a professional e mail address. And it's really easy to set one up if you don't have one. I know a lot of people might have one on their own private e mail that might have a fun name, but you want to have a professional e mail address. And using your name and your e mail address will just help you remember it. So you might want to just use something like that. If you have a linked in account, include it, especially if you're active. This is a wonderful way to network in a place where your contacts can endorse your skills so employers can look you up and see. So here you can see a sample of a contact. I put my address, that's not my phone number, but that is my e mail address and my linked in account. So that's a real thing. So feel free to contact me. And connect. Let's talk about the difference between a career summary and an objective. Those are two different components that might be on a resume, and we encourage a career summary versus an objective. A career objective is something that you might be familiar with with resumes from the past. It's really focused on what the job seeker is looking for the position you're seeking. It has a passive voice. It can be pretty concise and job specific, so there's an example of seeking an internship and web development. You can still use a career objective, but we are leaning in recommending the career summary. The career summary is a focus on what you can do, the value you bring , and the company's needs. We've been saying this a variety of times, but it really helps to emphasize what you are bringing to the organization and the value added for your role in that company organization versus you saying what you want. So it's not what's in it for you, what's in it for them, right? and having that different focus. It has more of an active voice. Action words, we're going to talk about active verbs. It's going to be a short paragraph. As opposed to that short sentence that was the career objective, it's going to be a short paragraph or a bulleted list. It's going to emphasize key strengths and accomplishments. So it's really focused on what you're bringing to the table. There's an example on their computer savvy student with two years experience, looking for a part time position where I can apply my web design skills to support company growth and sales. So it's focusing on what you're bringing, your past experience, how you can help that organization. And very tailored to that particular company or position. Similarly, a summary of skills or qualifications is a huge important section of the resume. I see a lot of people in the question and answer section asking about highlighting of skills, and this is the best way to do it is to summarize your skills and qualifications. You want to place this near the top of your resume right after your name. You want to highlight those skills related to the position for which you're applying that will strengthen your resume. The best way to approach this is to sit down and make a list of all your skills and then build from there. Again, you probably have developed skills in many ways, school courses, experiences with family, work experiences, internships, volunteer activities, extracurriculars, reading, hobbies or interests, sports, travel, friendships, study habits, all of those things. So think about your skills in a variety of ways. What are the things that you're strong at? What are the things that you're good at? Include those action words. Think about what an employer might want to know, think about what are you proud of, or what do I do best and you're not just making a list of duties or tasks that you've completed, but think about some of those significant accomplishments, some of the things that really show the breadth and depth of your experience. There's some examples on the screen, and one of the best things that we talk a lot about is adding those tangible numbers if you can. You can see that they talked about writing for the newsletter for three years, increasing reading readership by 20% or having a 90% accuracy in keyboarding or Exceeding sales for three months. So that gives some tangible information, a very specific results oriented example. Here's another example of how you can put accomplishments or achievements. Again, bullets, showing those quantifiable or results. So you see all those xs and ys and those examples are some very specific numbers or specific details, either showing those results, quantifying when you can and including responsibilities in your resume along with some of these types of accomplishments. Okay. Another really important section of your resume is your education. And the amount of detail that goes into the education section really depends on two factors. How long have you been out of school and how relevant your educational background is to the position you're applying for? So what I always tell people is always throughout the resume, you want to put your strengths first. So when you're thinking about the job, is your education most relevant or is your work experience? Whatever you answer to that question is what's going to go first on your resume. So when you do your education, what you want to do is you want to always put your highest education level. So, if you have college, you would put that down. If if you're in college, you actually don't have to talk about your high school at all. But if you would want to go, depending on how many degrees you might have, so if you have a master's degree, that would be first and then a bachelor's and then associates and so forth. But you want to include the school information. So you'd want to include the name of the school and then the city and the state of the school. And include your GPA, if it's 3.0 or above. Other things that you can include would be your honors and accomplishments. So we're going to show you some examples. This might include some special courses that you've completed, certifications that you might have gotten those kind of things. So here's a sample two samples. Notice that they bolded the high school name. These are two separate. This wouldn't be on the same resume, but just some different styles. So maybe you haven't graduated yet, and that's okay. But you can tell them when do you plan on graduating. So this one, they happen to be graduating in June. So they're mentioning some of their computer classes, their skills that they've learned, any kind of honors or advanced classes as in the or the second sample. So if you're not going to graduate for another five years, I wouldn't mention that. But if it's in the next year or so, then you would want to include it. So just some examples. So now let's talk a little bit about work experience. So when describing your work, your education or your job experience, be as specific and results oriented as possible, like Laurie was saying. And here, just like your education, you're going to list your most recent job first. So if you're currently working, that's the job that you're going to indicate. And for each job, you're going to include the job title, the company name, the city state and the time period. Try to use action verbs and statements, and we're going to show you a whole list of them, and we're going to send you a whole list of them, that will be helpful for when you're writing. But here is where you want to show potential for more responsibility. Describe the skills and the knowledge used or gained not just duties. So that's important. Internships, work studies, co ops and volunteer. Experience can also be added to work experience if you don't have a lot of experience, and that's okay. Just listen just like a job. So you would just put intern, but it would look just like it. So we're going to show you some samples. So here's three different samples of work experience. So it wouldn't be the same because they're using different fonts. I just wanted to show you what it looks like with different styles, different formats. But you could put the job title first and then the name of the company, or you could put the name of the company first and then the job title, doesn't matter. But always think, what's going to attract that employer? Is it your job title or is it the employer? The first sample is a paragraph form. Notice that they're using those quantifiable data like Laurie was mentioning, showing the accomplishments. They raised $2,000 for scholarships and program supplies. The second example here they They use bullet bullets. So you want to make sure that you don't just list your duties. So you try to you can put a couple of duties together like they used here in this example. So prepared food as ordered during busy lunch hour crowd , insured proper food sanitation. And then the last one, the teachers aid, they use bulleted paragraphs. Again, they're they're using action verbs and they're showing quantifiable data. And notice that the last sample is present. So that's like a current job. You want to use, The tense is different. So if you're currently working, you want to use present tense. That's a stickler to a lot of employers. They want to make sure that you have the right tense. So whereas the other ones are past tense, recruited, screened, trained because they're not working there anymore. And then the Burger King is prepared because they're not working there past tense. I don't know if we're going to have time for the reflection, Laurie? well we can- we can just mention it, yeah. Okay. Here's some of the action verbs, and we have a whole list that's even larger than this. But take a moment to take a look at some of these action verbs. And what you want to do is there something that strikes you as something that you have and can you create a sentence demonstrating some things that you've done at your work or school or your accomplishments. Potentially if you can quantify it and try to write it in a sentence. So why don't we give about 30 seconds and see if you can pick an action verb and write a bulleted point of how it applies to you. Present tense, if you're in this position now. Yeah. These are all past tense right now, so. And when you are describing your work experience and your education, try not to use the same action verb more than once. There's so many to choose from. So try to use a variety. And if you're not sure, use a thesaurus, look up synonyms online, find something that's similar. All right. Hopefully you gave that a try. You may not have any honors and awards. If you don't, you can leave the section off. Like Kathy said, you're going to make your resume tailored to what is important to showcase and spotlight for you. But your honors and awards can show that you have skills and that you're dedicated. Again, if you don't have a lot of work experience, this might be really important to show. It could show that you're into writing or that you have perfect attendance, that you're leadership skills because you were MVP. You can add some details that tie awards two skills, so you can note that. Perfect attendance per school year. You can reference that as being that you're dedicated, that you're reliable, that you show up. Think about any of those honors and awards you've achieved through community events or studies or contests, extracurriculars, sports. If you don't have any of these, just think about ways that you might get engaged in activities so you can start earning this type of recognition and add it to to your resume is helpful. You know, I just want to make one comment because the cool thing with the honors and awards, it can really show we've talked about those soft skills earlier. So like, perfect attendance you know, that shows that you're a reliable person. Right. You know. So all of these things are tied. So rather than saying that you're reliable, you're showing evidence of it. Right. It's more about the evidence, too. So it and actually the combination of both. So sharing that specific soft skill or hard skill, but soft skill and and showing the evidence or the examples of that. So same here with trainings, workshops, professional development. Maybe you don't have a degree or specific certification. But if you have attended additional training that is relevant to the position that you're applying for, I did see some of that in the questions include that. So maybe there's specialized training or extra information you've received that's beneficial for the position. Share that. That shows that you had that initiative, again, showing that skill, showing that initiative, that extra learning, maybe that piece that puts you a cut above somebody else. Okay. And I would actually organize them according to the most recent first. Yes. And so this example, don't go this way. You want to go the most recent first. I didn't catch that. So for references, we're just going to talk briefly about this. Don't put references available upon request. That is going to be expected that you are going to have references. Sometimes you're including that if it's an online form, you might be including it there because no resume is going to be complete without that list of references. You're going to list them on a separate page and/or you might have to enter them in an online system depending on their system. Make sure you're choosing your references wisely because they are going to have to represent you in a positive way. So make sure you're thinking about that and that you're communicating with them ahead of time. Like Kathy mentioned, having them have a copy of your resume, letting them know about the positions that you're applying for or what it is that you're looking to do is very, very helpful. When you list them, you're going to list three to five on that separate page. Ask them permission as well before you include them. So not only share that information, but ask their permission so that they are prepared and they are comfortable in that role. Include a page heading as well that would match your resume in case it gets separated from your resume. That same contact information that's on your resume should be on your reference page, and include for that reference the name, their title, where you know them from or their place of employment, how to contact them. So an address, phone number, e mail, email and phone number are usually the best and list their relationship to you. How do you know them? They were your soccer coach for three years. They were your employer or supervisor for two years, whatever it is, have that information because that helps when an employer is calling or emailing your reference. So in conclusion about some of the pieces with the resume, we know that no one size fits all. So you are going to need to adjust it depending on the circumstances that you are applying for. You want to target the resume to the position. The cover letter and the resume are helping a recruiter, hiring manager, employer, look for a good fit between the job and you as a candidate. Tailoring that can really help you get into that door for that interview. It really is helpful that with technology, you can keep several versions of your resume, so you can make copies and adjust it and tailor it as you need. Think about what the employer would be looking for, reflect that in your resume, get information about the job, the company ahead of time, do that searching online, social media, asking friends in the company, read the position description. What's in it for them? Is the question that you should keep in mind? What are the benefits for the employer of having you as an employee? Okay, a little bit about formatting. It's very similar to the cover letters. So I would recommend using bullets or other symbols to highlight those accomplishments, sort of breaks up the key information and pulls out those selling points that could be missed otherwise. Make sure you refrain from using I, the and and. We know you're talking about yourself, so you don't start the sentence with I You start with action. Okay. So it's really important to proofread. I would proof read with a ruler to carefully proof read each line and you might even want to consider reading backwards. That way you can catch it and reread the resume from the bottom up to prevent skipping over any mistakes and have somebody else look at it too. Because there's going to be sometimes that words are, they won't pick them up. Spelling errors won't be picked up because they're not actually spelled wrong, but they're used wrong. Be very consistent when you choose your format throughout the entire resume. So for instance, if you're bolding all your subheadings, then bold them all. Don't just bold one. Try to leave a 1 " margin on all four sides. This provides more space for an interviewer to write notes and gives a resume an organized appearance. Once your resume is complete, like I said, have it critiqued. You've been looking at it for a really long time, and it starts blurring. So make sure somebody a different set of eyes. And And ask that person, you know, do you have any ideas of how I can make it stronger because they can give you some tips. Does it look well organized? Is it easy to follow? You know what don't you like? So some destroyers, resume destroyers, things you don't want to do. You don't want to necessarily use a resume template. People review lots of resumes can spot them. And I would keep it simple. If you can get it all on one page, do it for those that have lots of experience that you might go onto a second page If you're printing your resume, make sure it's laser printer, and it's good quality. Review for extra words. Sometimes you add extra words and that way, it's not going to be picked up. So also don't use an unprofessional email. We talked about that earlier. I don't know if we have time for this. We'll just do the conclusion. Okay. You already skipped that. So in conclusion. So you know what, like the cover letter, resumes are going to evolve over time. I recommend that you update it regularly. Because your experience is always changing. It's a process. Good resumes and cover letters will help get you those interview opportunities. It's the interview performance that's going to actually secure that job. What you put into your career search is really what you're going to get out of it. So by customizing these to the position, you're going to get more hits on your resume. You're going to get more phone calls to be interviewed. And I strongly encourage you to include a cover letter, you know, with your resume. Almost in every circumstance. So we have a quick little survey. I think it's just a couple of questions. We would love if you would give us some feedback, and then we can stay on and try to answer some of these questions because I think that Janice might be gone. Oh, no, Jae still here. Okay. Okay. I thought she was going to have to leave. There might be a good questions out there. So we might want to turn off recording and maybe we can try and answer. Yeah. But thank you all for coming. If you have completed our program evaluation and our demographics, I will put those back in the Chat. We appreciate if you take time to complete the demographic survey and the quick program evaluation. You can use a QR code for the program evaluation. We hope you'll join us for our next Adulting 101, which is on building and protecting your credit, learn why credit matters, how to start obtaining credit, and how to manage it. So that link is also in the Chat. We'll hope you join us then. Kathy, do you want to stop recording? Thank you all for joining. Stay on to answer any questions.