Writing A Resume, Understanding Cover Letters, & More

By Max.

What to know

A resume — which can also be called a CV (Curriculum Vitae) outside of North America — is a document that you use to present your background, skills, accomplishments, etc. to potential employers. Most employers look at your educational history and your previous work history to learn about you. Resumes can be super scary once you start Googling them, because there are so many people saying, “don’t do this,” and “don’t do that.” It gets super intimidating trying to remember all of the details.

Basics to keep in mind

Before I explain what goes into your resume, here’s a short list of tips I’ve picked up from helping the human resources department at my previous job, and speaking with employees in similar positions:

• Avoid using too many colors, if at all. Most jobs like to print out applications and resumes together to look at them on paper. Using colors can affect the legibility of your resume, since a lot of places — especially small businesses and restaurants — tend to print them in black and white.
• Try to limit your resume to one or two pages, (like the front and back of a piece of paper). I recommend between 11-14 font size. For titles you can go bigger, but your main bodies of text should stay within that 11-14 range for the sake of clarity. 11-14 is also the font range that publishers recommend for writing books.
• Use an easy to read font.
• Avoid using images.

Contents of your resume

Contact information
At the top of your resume you’ll want to put your name, email, and phone number. You want them to be visible right away, for contact purposes. It doesn’t have to be in the header, it can be in the side bar, but having it near the top is good practice. While some people put their physical home address as well, this is completely optional and does not need to be on your resume itself.

Why would I put my address on my resume?

I wasn’t sure of this one myself, until I asked. It’s because a lot of resumes were sent in to potential employers via mail in the past, or at least responded to via mail before cell phones were commonplace. Hence, adding your address is optional now, especially if you have an email and/or phone number included.

Work history
Nine times out of ten, the next piece of information should be your work history. Always list your work history from most to least recent. The formatting for these is usually something like:

Job title, Company - first month, year - last month, year

If you are still currently in the position at the time of applying for a new job, you would simply just put the first month, year - current. Below your job title and time there, you’ll want to summarize your most common duties at that job. I’ll use a piece of my own resume for example here

CASHIER, WALMART * OCTOBER 2020 – JANUARY 2021
Ringing people’s transactions out.
Handling money.
Helping fellow employees out with minor transaction issues.
Cleaning and pulling carts.
Socializing with customers and encouraging purchases on items.

Let me explain why I included certain duties from that job, and why I felt that they were important to list on my resume. I hated this part, but encouraging purchases on items is a looked-for skill in a lot of jobs, sadly. Capitalism. I also included helping employees out with their issues because employers often want to hire someone who is helpful and can save them time on tasks that would otherwise fall to them to handle.

Educational history
After your work history, you’ll want to do the same style of formatting for your educational history! Put your most recent or current education first. If you haven’t graduated high school yet, you can either put “current” or include your expected graduation date. You don’t need to include too much information for the high school portion, other than the name of your high school.
If you were or are currently homeschooled, you can simply put “homeschool”, or the name of the program you’re using, if applicable. If you’re a college student, you would follow the same format and still include your high school history, plus whatever your current path is for college. If you’re in just a general study program for college, put that down below your school name and the dates attended. This is the same process if you have a special program.

Let’s look at an example
Here’s how part of the education on my resume section looks:

AUGUST 2019 - June 2023
CURRENTLY ENROLLED, [NAME OF MY SCHOOL]
Completed General studies, currently in the progress of obtaining AS in Computer Science

Your skills
Once you have your work history and educational history taken care of, the next step is listing out any skills or certificates you have! I used a bullet point list that I split into two columns, for ease of readability. You can also list any hobbies you have as well. Are you an artist or enjoy making crafts? You can add that into your resume by putting a skill along the lines of “attention to fine details.” Are you a writer? You can put that in by adding an “English proficiency” skill. You can always find ways to include your hobbies as your skills.

What is a cover letter?

A cover letter is a letter that’s often attached to your resume or application. It’s a letter from you as a person explaining to potential employers why you believe that you would be a good candidate for the job and why you’re passionate about the company you’re applying to.

When do I use a cover letter?

I recommend using a cover letter in specialty situations! Not for things like a call center position, retail job, food service application, etc. But, if you’ve spent time getting a degree or certificate in something, or studying something very in-depth, and you know that you know your stuff, then use one!

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This post was originally created by Max, on November 8th, 2022 in The Homeschooler’s Discord server, and edited by Anne. Learn more about Max and Anne on our About Us page. Cover photo by Jess Bailey on Unsplash.