11.5 Next Steps

SUBMITTING YOUR MATERIALS

employment materials checklist

Before sending out your materials, review the following:

  • Proofread carefully. Do not rely on spell-check alone. Reading your work backward one sentence at a time can help you focus on sentence-level writing rather than on content and flow. Ask a few friends to help you proofread before you send your materials out.
  • Make sure verb tense, font, and design choices are consistent throughout.
  • If you are submitting your documents as hard copies, use high-quality paper.

If you are emailing your materials:

  • Save the cover letter and résumé as PDF files to preserve formatting.
  • Send the PDF files as attachments to a brief, introductory e-mail.
  • Use an informative subject line for your email. [Your Name: cover letter and résumé attached]
  • Do not replace a job application letter with an e-mail. Job application letters warrant formal letter format, and the letter should be sent as an attachment to the email.
  • Consider also including the résumé in the body of the e-mail in case the employer is wary of attachments. (Some employers specify this as a requirement in their job listings.)
  • Do a trial run: send a copy of your email with the attachments to yourself first to make sure it opens, is formatted properly, and all of the attachments open correctly.

MODULAR MATERIALS

It may sound like a lot of work to create a new set of employment materials for every job opening you pursue. While it takes time and effort to customize your employment materials, you do not have to create a new résumé and cover letter from scratch for every job opening. Instead, you can create modular materials with moving parts that you can simply adapt and reorganize for each job.

Let’s say you are a nursing student, and you are looking to work in a related field while you are in school. You might be happy as an administrative assistant in a clinical setting, as a medical translator, or as a biology tutor. If you use the skills résumé format, you can create three different templates of your résumé, each of which emphasizes and expands upon different skill categories: administration, communication, and education. Each of these résumés, however, would stress your medical background.

The same holds true for the cover letter. Once you have a draft cover letter, you can work with it as a template for numerous jobs, keeping the overall format but revising some key sentences. The central paragraphs may undergo substantial revision, depending on how different one potential job is from another, but the final paragraph of your cover letters may never change. Check the details before you send out a letter you’ve created using a previous file: addressing a potential employer by the wrong name might well remove your application from consideration.

Résumés and cover letters are two documents in an ecology of documents related to the employment process. Job descriptions, interview questions, thank-you notes to be sent after an interview, writing samples, and on-boarding documents are some of the many documents you might find yourself reading and writing as your hiring process moves forward.

FOLLOWUP

After an interview, sending a thank you note or short letter of appreciation is not only polite, it’s an opportunity to get your name in front of the employer again and let the employer know that you are serious about pursuing the job. Keep it brief, but use the opportunity to restate your qualifications and your interest in the job.