Keep Cover Letter and Resume Summary Short, Crisp, and Concise

Imagine a hiring manager skimming through hundreds of resumes and cover letters – would yours stand out and grab their attention? According to a study, recruiters merely spend 7-8 seconds scanning a resume before deciding whether to proceed with it or not. 

Whereas, a lengthy cover letter attached to a resume can work against you instead of giving you a favor. Therefore, candidates must keep both their cover letters and resumes sweet and concise. 

Now, the question is – how to do that? There is no need to look around as this blog post is going to discuss the proven process for it. 

So, hang around with us till the very end!

Why Keeping Your Covert Letter & Resume Summary Short Matters

There are numerous reasons behind this, some of the major ones are as follows: 

• Recruiters have limited time: As mentioned earlier, recruiters are often on a tight schedule. That’s the reason why they prefer interacting with resumes and cover letters that are concise and to the point.  
• Increased impact: A resume or cover letter overwhelmed with information will not only give a bad image of the candidate but also make it difficult for HR to digest the important parts. That’s why it is important to stay brief and concise. 
• Showcases professionalism: A sweet and concise cover letter and resume showcase the attention to detail of the candidate. It gives a feeling that the person respects the hiring manager’s valuable time. 

Now, let’s move on to our main topic. 

How to Keep Cover Letter & Resume Summary Short & Crispy

Below, we have discussed some key principles that you need to focus on when achieving conciseness in your resume and cover letter. 

1. Prioritize Relevancy

First of all, you have to be fully relevant to yourself or to the job you are applying for. Make every word count and have a purpose. HRs don’t have time to read lengthy things about your potential. 

So, avoid listing every skill or job you are doing or have done in the past. Instead, only add the information that perfectly aligns with the job description. This way, you will be more likely to embrace brevity. 

Let us explain with proper examples. 

• For the cover letter, it is recommended to keep both the introduction and the entire body focused on how your experience resonates with job requirements. Instead of mentioning the entire career history. 
• Similarly, when it comes to resumes, try to limit your summary to a maximum of 2-5 sentences. Anything above this will make it look unprofessional.    

1. Choose Short Alternatives Instead of Longer Ones

When writing a cover letter or resume summary, we often use lengthier phrases or even sentences that ultimately make the text wordy. By following this strategy, it will be a lot easier for you to stay concise and to the point. 

When choosing short alternatives, it is best to use strong verbs that ultimately have a positive impact on the reader. 

Let’s understand this as a proper example. 

Resume Summary: 

Instead of mentioning “An experienced and highly motivated marketing professional” you can write “Results-driven marketing professional.” Simple will save a lot of space, giving you the opportunity to 

Cover Letter: 

In the case of a cover letter, instead of writing a lengthy version i.e., “I am writing to express my enthusiastic interest,” you can go with this concise version: “I am excited to apply for.”

1. Take Help from Online Tools

Thanks to the continuous advancements in the field of technology, there is a huge variety of text-summarizing tools available. These can help you come up with a sweet and concise cover letter and resume summary with minimal effort. 

Such tools work by efficiently analyzing the input text and then producing a short version by eliminating all the unnecessary words, phrases, or even information. The good thing is that these perfectly retain both the quality and original context during the summarization process. 

For a better understanding, we provided a lengthy cover letter to the Summarizer and the results it provided can be seen in the screenshot below. 

So, by utilizing such online solutions, candidates can easily embrace brevity in their resume summaries and cover letters with minimal effort. 

Wrapping Up

The attention of recruiters is 7-8 seconds only. This means candidates must submit sweet and concise cover letters and resume summaries. Doing so will significantly increase the chances of getting noticed among a sea of applications. 

This blog post has discussed a proven approach that can be adapted to conciseness in the resume summary and letter. Hopefully, you will find this article valuable and interesting!

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