Resumes and Cover Letters

The first article that I clicked on was "Words that Score On a Resume And Open Doors to Interviews." I thought it was a cool article because we had already talked about most of it in class. It was really neat to hear advice that I already knew. The article really emphasized the benefits of reading the description of a job listing and then implementing those nouns into the resume.
Another article that really perked my interest was called "A Memorable Cover Letter Will Boost Your Chances." This article went into a lot of detail about the ins and outs of effective cover letter writing. I really had never heard of a cover letter until the beginning of this semester in my internship preparatory seminar. When I had to write my first one, I basically copied the format exactly out of a text book and changed the words to apply to my desired outcome. This article really is helpful because it goes into so much detail. I had never really thought about using quotes from former employers in a cover letter. At the end of every summer, our boss at camp sends us all an email including an evaluation of our performance for that entire summer. That type of resource, according to this bit of advice, would be perfect to include in a cover letter. Most of the points on my evaluation are positive so it would be really beneficial. The article also mentioned a few tricks in order to have things to talk about during an interview. Ideas such as not mentioning money and tailoring the cover letter for the audience. One other aspect I thought was very interesting was to take a risk and include additional "risky" information in a post script. It is true that even if people do not read an entire letter, they always read the post script because sometimes that is where the most interesting information is kept.
I really think that these exercises of reading "advice columns" concerning interviews and resumes/cover letters will be so helpful not only for the tasks we need to complete in this course, but also for the future when we need to do all of this things as close to perfect as possible on the first try.