Resume & Cover Letter Tips
A strong resume is not about gaming the system. It is about helping recruiters, hiring managers, and technology quickly understand your real experience, relevant accomplishments, and potential fit. Your resume and cover letter should be clear, honest, focused, easy to read, and strong enough to support a confident conversation in an interview.
Be clear
Recruiters and hiring managers should be able to quickly understand what you do, where you have worked, what you have accomplished, and why your experience is relevant.
Be honest
Every line on your resume should be something you can confidently explain in an interview and that a reference could reasonably support.
Be relevant
A strong resume is not a complete autobiography. It is a focused career document that highlights the experience, skills, and accomplishments most relevant to your next step.
Great Resumes and Cover Letters: Your Key to More Interviews
Candidates and applicants frequently ask us for assistance with the format and content of their resumes. We are pleased to offer these resume tips and suggestions, and we hope you find them helpful.
The best resumes make it easy for a reader to see your career story, relevant strengths, and measurable value. They do not simply list what you were responsible for. They show what you contributed, improved, built, solved, supported, saved, increased, reduced, streamlined, led, or delivered.
Important principle: Your resume should help you earn the interview, but it should also prepare you for the interview. If you include a skill, result, tool, project, achievement, or title, be ready to discuss it clearly and honestly.
Show What You Achieved
When preparing a resume, many people make the critical mistake of detailing duties and responsibilities instead of highlighting accomplishments. Potential employers have only a secondary interest in the duties and responsibilities you performed in a previous job. Titles and duties say little about actual performance or what you can bring to a new employer that is unique and worthy of consideration.
On the other hand, if your resume indicates that you increased sales by 20%, earned recognition for strong performance, designed a new system, reduced costs, improved efficiency, strengthened customer retention, or solved a meaningful business problem, your experience becomes much more compelling.
Instead of
“Responsible for customer accounts.”
Consider
“Managed 45 active customer accounts, improving response time and helping increase repeat business by 18% over 12 months.”
Simple formula: Action + scope + result. When possible, answer the questions: How much? Of what? By when? What changed because of your work?
Use Strong Action Language
When describing accomplishments, strong action verbs can make the difference between a statement that attracts attention and one that seems commonplace. Choose verbs that accurately describe what you did and help connect your work to a result.
Broadened
Built
Consolidated
Coordinated
Created
Delivered
Designed
Developed
Eliminated
Established
Expanded
Generated
Identified
Implemented
Improved
Increased
Initiated
Launched
Led
Managed
Negotiated
Optimized
Reduced
Resolved
Saved
Streamlined
Strengthened
Supervised
Trained
Using AI to Improve Your Resume Without Losing Your Integrity
AI can be a useful assistant when preparing a resume or cover letter. It can help you organize ideas, improve clarity, identify areas that need more detail, and refine wording. But AI should not replace your judgment, your accuracy, or your voice.
Use AI to clarify. Use AI to organize. Use AI to improve readability. But never use AI to become someone on paper that you are not in real life.
Helpful ways to use AI
- Organize rough career notes into clearer resume sections.
- Improve grammar, flow, and readability.
- Identify accomplishments you may have under-explained.
- Suggest stronger action verbs where appropriate.
- Compare your resume to a job posting and identify relevant skills you genuinely have but may not have clearly described.
- Help you prepare interview talking points based on your real resume content.
What not to do with AI
- Do not invent experience, credentials, results, tools, employers, or responsibilities.
- Do not copy AI-generated text without editing it into your own voice.
- Do not keyword-stuff your resume with skills you do not actually have.
- Do not paste confidential employer, client, compensation, or private personal information into AI tools.
- Do not create a resume you cannot confidently defend in an interview.
Responsible AI prompt example:
“Please review the resume content below for clarity, grammar, and accomplishment-focused wording. Do not invent experience or add skills I have not included. Suggest ways I can make my real experience easier to understand and more relevant to this role.”
Tailoring Without Misrepresenting
Tailoring your resume is appropriate. Misrepresenting yourself is not. A resume should be adjusted to highlight the experience most relevant to the role, but it should never create a false impression of your background.
Good tailoring means:
- Highlighting your most relevant experience.
- Using the employer’s terminology where it truthfully applies.
- Moving relevant accomplishments higher.
- Clarifying transferable skills.
- Adjusting your summary to reflect the opportunity.
Misrepresentation means:
- Inventing accomplishments.
- Exaggerating scope or seniority.
- Adding skills you do not have.
- Copying job-description language that does not reflect your experience.
- Creating a resume that sounds impressive but is not true.
ATS-Friendly and Human-Friendly Formatting
Applicant tracking systems are part of many hiring processes, but your goal should not be to “beat” the ATS. Your goal should be to make your resume easy for both systems and human readers to understand.
- Use clear section headings such as Professional Experience, Education, Skills, Certifications, and Technical Skills.
- Use a clean, readable layout with consistent spacing and simple formatting.
- Avoid relying on graphics, icons, photos, charts, text boxes, or complicated columns for online applications.
- Include relevant keywords truthfully, especially skills, tools, credentials, industries, and responsibilities that genuinely match your background.
- Use standard job titles where appropriate, while still remaining accurate.
- Save the file in the format requested by the employer or application system.
- Keep a clean, plain version of your resume for online applications and, if desired, a more designed version for networking or direct sharing.
Helpful reminder: Relevant keywords are useful only when they are true. A resume filled with keywords that you cannot discuss confidently will create problems later in the process.
Do You Need a Cover Letter?
A cover letter can be a valuable way to introduce yourself, explain your interest, and highlight the experience that makes you especially relevant for a specific opportunity. Some employers read cover letters carefully, some skim them, and some do not require them. When one is requested, or when it helps explain your fit, it should be thoughtful, concise, and specific.
A strong cover letter should not simply repeat your resume. It should help the reader understand why you are interested, why your background is relevant, and what you can contribute.
A cover letter can help when:
- The employer specifically requests one.
- You want to explain your interest in the company or role.
- You are making a career transition.
- You are relocating or open to relocation.
- Your resume needs context that a letter can provide.
- You want to show communication style and professionalism.
A cover letter should include:
- The specific role or type of role you are pursuing.
- Why the opportunity interests you.
- Two or three relevant strengths or accomplishments.
- A clear connection between your experience and the employer’s needs.
- A professional closing and invitation to speak further.
Need a cover letter that feels current, credible, and specific to the role? Our Modern Cover Letter Template walks you through how to introduce yourself, connect your experience to the employer’s needs, use AI responsibly, and avoid sounding generic.
The Do’s and Don’ts of Resume Preparation
Do:
- Make your resume easy to read.
- Keep your resume focused and concise; two or three pages is ideal for many experienced professionals.
- Use concise sentences and avoid overwriting.
- Know your audience and use the vocabulary of your targeted field.
- Stress past accomplishments and the skills you used to achieve results.
- Focus on information relevant to your career goals.
- Highlight transferable skills where appropriate.
- Proofread carefully for spelling, grammar, dates, names, and formatting consistency.
Don’t:
- Include salary information unless specifically requested.
- Include personal information such as marital status, whether you have children, country of origin, gender, or other unrelated personal details.
- Stretch the truth. Misinformation or untruthful comments will come back to haunt you.
- Use overly complex formatting for online applications.
- Rely on generic AI-generated language that could describe almost anyone.
- Send a resume you have not reviewed carefully yourself.
Be Ready to Defend Every Line
Anything on your resume is fair game in an interview. Before adding a skill, tool, result, title, credential, or accomplishment, ask yourself whether you can explain it clearly and honestly.
- Can I explain what this means?
- Can I describe my role in it?
- Can I provide context?
- Can I discuss the result honestly?
- Could a reference or former manager reasonably verify it?
- Would I feel comfortable answering follow-up questions about it?
Need Inspiration, Examples, or Templates?
We get it. Writing a new resume is not everyone’s cup of tea, nor everyone’s idea of a good time. Fortunately, there are useful tools and examples available. The key is to use them thoughtfully rather than copying them blindly.
Resume examples
Resume examples can help you understand structure, wording, and common ways to present experience across different positions, industries, and job functions.
Design tools
Canva is an easy-to-use tool with many resume templates. Designed resumes can be helpful for networking or direct sharing, but for online applications, consider also keeping a clean, simple, ATS-friendly version.
Template caution: A great-looking template is only helpful if the content is accurate, relevant, readable, and easy to parse. Design should support your resume, not hide or complicate it.
Ready to Put Your Resume to Work?
Once your resume and cover letter are clear, truthful, and focused, use them to support a stronger job search, better interview preparation, and more confident career conversations.
