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Resumes/CVs

How to Write a Great Resume and Cover Letter

Linda Spencer offers helpful tips and resources to help you write your resumé and cover letter.

What makes a great résumé and cover letter? Linda Spencer, associate director and coordinator of career advising at Harvard Extension School, shares examples of a few strong résumés and explains what makes them stand out.

Perfect Your Marketing Documents

Spencer stresses it’s important to know that your résumé and cover letter are marketing documents. Also keep in mind that the average employer takes about seven seconds to review these documents. They’re not reading: they’re skimming. So you need to make it clear right off the bat how you can add value.

Strong résumés don’t have to be lengthy. One to two pages that feature your most top accomplishments works well.

Use Action Words and Customize Your Pitch

When highlighting your professional experience, use accomplishment statements rather than descriptions of your role. Start with an action verb. Then detail the impact that action had: Did you increase, decrease, modify, or change anything in your work? Finally, be sure to quantify the accomplishments. Data helps.

Your cover letter should be one page, highly customized to each position you’re applying for. It answers two questions: why are you the right fit for the position? And how will you add value to the organization?

While it’s important to have a strong résumé and cover letter, it’s also important to remember that the number one job search strategy is networking. You don’t want to simply be reactive, applying blindly to job postings. You want to conduct a series of informational meetings so that you build a network of people you can reach out to when it comes time to start your job search.

Any Extension student can attend first-come, first-served 15-minute call-ins (via phone or Skype) with Linda. See Career Services for more information.

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The Best Cover Letter I Ever Received

• David Silverman

In my last post I talked about how to make your résumé more likely to catch the attention of a hiring manager. As a follow up, I’d like to discuss cover letters. Here’s my basic philosophy on them: don’t bother. That’s because the cover letters I see usually fall into one of three categories: The […]

In my last post I talked about how to make your résumé more likely to catch the attention of a hiring manager . As a follow up, I’d like to discuss cover letters. Here’s my basic philosophy on them: don’t bother.

• David Silverman has had ten careers so far, including entrepreneur, executive, and business writing professor. He is the author of Typo: The Last American Typesetter or How I Made and Lost 4 Million Dollars and of the April 2011 HBR article, Synthesis: Constructive Confessions .

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Here's an example of the perfect cover letter, according to Harvard career experts

Found your dream job? Don't be so confident that you'll get hired: It's very likely that there are several other qualified candidates competing for that same position.

That's where the cover letter comes in. Including a cover letter to complement your resume can be an effective way to impress hiring managers: It displays your strong writing skills, sets you apart from other applicants and shows that you went the extra mile.

Linda Spencer, associate director and coordinator of career advising at Harvard Extension School, says that a solid cover letter answers two key questions :

• Why are you the right fit for the job?
• How will you add value to the organization?

"It takes the average employer about seven seconds to review these documents," says Spencer. "They're not reading, they're skimming. So you need to make it clear right off the bat how you can add value."

Here's an example of what a strong cover letter looks like, according to Harvard career experts (click here to enlarge):

Credit: Harvard University, Office of Career Services / Harvard Extension School, Career and Academic Resource Center

Don't know where to start? The career experts share tips on how to write a cover letter that stands out:

1. Address the letter to a specific person

"To whom it may concern" is one of the fastest ways to get your application deleted. Always try to address your letter to a specific person — usually the hiring manager or department head. Include their name, title, company and address at the very top below the date.

If you don't know who to address, LinkedIn is a great place to start. Simply enter the company name and some keywords into the search bar (e.g., "Google, hiring manager, sales") and a variety of related profiles will appear.

2. Clearly state the purpose of your letter

Your opening line doesn't need to be anything extravagant. In fact, it should be the complete opposite, according Harvard's career experts.

Keep it simple and straightforward: State why you're writing, the position you're applying for and, if applicable, how you found the job listing.

3. Don't rehash your entire resume

You're not writing a 1,000-word essay that summarizes your resume. The cover letter is your chance to explain why you're genuinely interested in the company and its mission.

No need to make it super formal, either. Use your own voice and add some personal flourishes to make the letter more interesting.

"If you have relevant school or work experience, be sure to point it out with one or two key examples," the career experts note . "Emphasize skills or abilities that relate to the job. Be sure to do this in a confident manner and keep in mind that the reader will also view your letter as an example of your writing skills."

4. Use action words and don't overuse the pronoun "I"

Instead of using flowery words and cliche claims like "fast thinker" and "highly creative," go for action words.

Here are a few examples of action verbs to use when highlighting specific skills:

• To demonstrate leadership skills : Accomplished, contracted, assigned, directed, orchestrated, headed, delegated
• To demonstrate communication skills : Addressed, translated, presented, negotiated, moderated, promoted, edited
• To demonstrate research skills : Constructed, examined, critique, systematized, investigated, modeled, formulated
• To demonstrate creative skills : Revitalized, redesigned, developed, integrated, conceptualized, fashioned, shaped

Avoid using too many "I" statements because it can come off as though you're mostly interested in what you can gain from the company. The focus should be on what the company can gain from you.

5. Reiterate your enthusiasm and thank the reader

The closing of your letter should:

• Reiterate your interest in the position
• Thank the reader for his or her consideration
• State that you look forward hearing back from them
• Include your signature at the very bottom

6. Be consistent in formatting

Visual consistency makes a big difference. Keep your letter to just one page and use the same font (and size) as you did for your resume. If you're converting the letter to a PDF, make sure the formatting is translated properly.

Dustin McKissen is the founder of McKissen + Company , a strategic communications firm in St. Charles, Missouri. He was also named one of LinkedIn's "Top Voices in Management and Corporate Culture." Follow him on LinkedIn here.

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• Here's an example of the perfect resume, according to Harvard career experts
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Job Placement

Placement timeline, faqs, and interview advice.

Placement Directors 2024/25: Gabriel Chodorow-Reich and Jeremy Stein To assist with the preparation and planning for the market, refer to the suggested timeline and FAQs. 

Timeline   (2024/25)

FAQ 1 (coming May 2024)

FAQ1a (coming August 2024)

FAQ2 (coming September 2024)

FAQ3 (coming October 2024)

Application List Template   (use this when you create your application list)

How to Do a Great Interview on Zoom  

Zoom Setup Tips: Lighting, Screens, Sound   (with thanks to Shengwu Li) 

Negotiating and Exploding Offers   (see also Advice from Chris Blattman 2014/15) 

CV, Resume, and Webpage

CV Curriculum Vitae Template  (6/25/23 version) for Harvard Economics Job Market Candidates (in Word using table layout; turn on "view gridlines" to fill it out ) and general information  ( The CV Guide ) on constructing your Curriculum Vitae. Note: The CV template is new for 2023/24 and specific to Harvard economics.

Resume For those applying to any private-sector job, a non-academic resume is your calling card. The Office of Career Services provides excellent help in the form of workshops and Resume and Cover Letter advice and templates. Previous Harvard students give OCS high marks, especially in helping with Resume writing.

Webpage Harvard is discontinuing the creation of Open Scholar pages. Paul Millett will work with every job market student to set up their webpages on Campus Press, the Harvard substitute for Open Scholar. Students with other websites (e.g., GitHub) can then add a line (e.g., "see my personal website") on the Campus Press page to enable access to their materials, including CV, JMP, and other papers.

Advice and Resources for the Job Market  

Compiling Your List

• JOE -  https://www.aeaweb.org/joe/    JOE will be your main resource.
• EJM -  https://econjobmarket.org / EJM will also be important.

Other platforms to search include:

• European Econ Assoc -  https://www.eeassoc.org/
• APPAM -  https://www.appam.org/
• Chronicle of Higher Ed -  https://jobs.chronicle.com/
• American Finance Assoc -  https://afajof.org/
• SSRN -  https://www.ssrn.com/index.cfm/en/
• Royal Ecoonomic Society RES -  https://res.org.uk/
• Academy of Management AOM -  https://aom.org/

Writing Resources

Writing well and effectively are important skills. These resources will help.

• Claudia Goldin, The Ten Most Important Rules of Writing Your Job Market Paper
• Deidre McCloskey, Economical Writing
• William Zinsser, On Writing Well; The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction

Tips and Advice (from Job Market Gurus and Harvard PhDs) and More Job Market Facts

• AEA Job Market Committee 2022 Report: Job Market Openings by Sector 
• American Economic Association, Communications from the Committee on the Job Market . Some recent information on supply and demand (what else?), plus the AEA’s advice to employers.
• Alex Albright, " So You Want to Go on the Job Market ." Reflections, sage advice, and a lot of data from one of our 2022 PhD graduates (and talented holiday party emcee).
• Chris Blattman, Managing the Academic Job Market . Chris Blattman (University of Chicago Harris School) offers some of the best advice we’ve seen. Read it. Some will be more relevant and some less relevant to your specific job search.
• John Cawley, Guide and Job Market Advice (2018-2019 edition). A standard resource in economics.
• Alex Chan, My Experience in the 2022-23 Job Market  Come to the Oct. 17, 2023 placement meeting and hear Alex. 
• Shoshana Vasserman's Job Market Tips  
• Eric Zwick, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Market . Zwick graduated from Harvard in 2014 and is an Associate Professor of Finance at University of Chicago Booth School.
• Anonymous, The Market in the Time of COVID (2021).
• Non-Academic Tips and Advice . Note the advice under “Job search through connections: Who.” You have lots of friends and family – previous Harvard PhDs. If they are working at a place you’d like to be, use them as a resource to find non-academic jobs.

GSAS Resources The  Office of Career Services  offers a wide range of services and resources tailored specifically to the needs of graduate students pursuing positions in academic and non-academic markets.

• PhD Program
• Program Requirements
• Job Market Candidates
• Career Placement for Prior Classes
• Financial Support