Don't Ramble; Focus on Your USP
Avoid rambling on too long in your cover letter or telling the story of your life/career. Keep you letter as brief as possible. Never, never more than one page. Keeping to four or five paragraphs of no more than three sentences each is a good guideline. Using bullet points in the letter is a good way to break up blocks of text and interest the reader. Some job-seekers tend to use their cover letters to provide a narrative of their life or career. That’s not what the letter is all about; it’s a marketing tool that should focus on the qualifications that will sell you to the employer. Your letter should answer the question that the employer will be asking while reading the word

Avoid Information Overload on Your Resume
Be careful not to overload your resume with too much information. When identifying employers, list your position/title, company name, city, state, and dates of employment. You do not need street addresses, phone numbers, or names of supervisors. The rule of thumb for someone with considerable experience is to list about 15 years worth of jobs. Age discrimination, unfortunately, is a reality, and even more likely, employers may think you’re too expensive if you list too much experience on your resume. You can get more information about resumes, including some sample Web resumes, by visiting Quintessential Careers: Resume Resources.

Tailor Your Cover Letter Specifically
Be sure to specifically tailor your letter to the job you’re applying for. If you’re answering an ad or online job posting, the specifics of your cover letter should be tied as closely as possible to the actual wording of the ad you’re responding to. In his book, Don’t Send a Resume, Jeffrey Fox calls the best letters written in response to want ads “Boomerang letters” because they “fly the want ad words — the copy — back to the writer of the ad.” In employing what Fox calls “a compelling sales technique,” he advises letter writers to: “Flatter the person who wrote the ad with your response letter. Echo the aut

In Your Cover Letter, Don't Rehash Your Resume
Don’t rehash your resume in your cover letter. You can use your cover letter to highlight the aspects of your resume that are relevant to the position, but you’re wasting precious space — and the potential employer’s time — if you simply repeat your resume.

Transition from Maiden to Married Name on Resume
How to handle the reversion from a maiden name to a married name — or conversely, from a married name back to a maiden name — on your resume, especially if you’ve published work under one name and are now using a different name: Do not change your name in your publications to your maiden name because if a potential employer were to look up the article and find a different name, the immediate assumption might be you are lying on your resume or vitae, and that’s the end of your chance with that organization. Instead, try one of two simple remedies. First, and perhaps the easiest, is to simply include your current name in parenthesis, so, for example, if you were Mar