Resume and Cover Letter Help

Writing job applications is a nerve-wracking experience for just about everyone.

Without fail, when we sit down to write a resume and a cover letter, all the buried doubts and fears come rushing out. Who do I think I am, anyway? I’m not possibly good enough for this. There’s probably something wrong with the job if they’re interested in me. What if this isn’t what I really want to do? Ad nauseum.

But when the resume and cover letter are part of leaving academia, well, the questions and doubts just keep coming – and not all of them are the usual crazy fears and doubts. Some of them are very practical.

For example, How do I explain what I’ve been doing? Do I have any transferable skills? Do my years in graduate school count for anything? How about my publications? How do I translate what I know and what I care about for someone who has no experience with academia outside of college?

These are real – and important – questions.

And on top of that, all the emotional gunk of leaving – fears of rejection; shame, confusion, and doubt about leaving academia, and feeling like an imposter – gets tangled in there.

Before you know it, you’ve gone from mild panic to total stuck.

Of course you’re stuck

There are really good reasons why writing job applications to leave academia is going to be hard, no matter how smart, thoughtful, confident, and skilled you are.

• You probably haven’t written a standard job application since, oh, high school. Maybe college. If, in fact, you ever did. It’s not a familiar genre.

• Resumes and CVs are very different documents, for all that they have similar objectives, and it’s not easy to translate one into the other.
• It’s hard to see all of your own accomplishments, because many of them seem, to you, like they’re things anyone could do.
• Many of our skills, talents, and accomplishments we learned by osmosis instead of direct instruction or dedicated study, so they don’t seem real.
• It’s hard to know what the world out there needs and wants in terms of skills or accomplishments, because it’s all new.
• Because you’re changing careers, articulating your background in ways that connect it to the needs of your prospective employer is more difficult than it would be if your career had gone in a neat line.
• It’s really hard to toot your own horn – especially coming out of academia, which tends to prize a kind of prideful humility.
• Making documents look nice is not in everyone’s skill set – no matter how much time you’ve spent in Word.
• You may not have anyone else out there who has made the leap, and so you have no role models or people to check in with.

Most of all, it’s hard because you’re having to reinvent yourself, or at least your sense of yourself. You’re still your fabulous self with all of your brilliance and kick-ass abilities, but the way you’re used to talking (and thinking) about those abilities isn’t going to work this time, because the people you’re talking to don’t share your background or your language or your assumptions.

Also, there’s not a lot of useful help out there

Yes, there are a million and one resume and cover letter writing books and websites out there, and they can give you a lot of great information.

They’re wonderful for telling you what the format should look like, how to tell the difference between chronological and functional resumes (and when to use which), how to incorporate white space, and how to craft your objective.

But there are two key things all those resources are missing.

Specific help for academics who are transitioning to a new career. How do you talk about your research? Do you talk about your research? What skills might be transferable? How can you convince someone they are? What fears or assumptions about the PhD do people have that you might need to (subtly) address?

Any ability to personalize their advice. It’s one thing to know that you need to talk about your skills and accomplishments, and it’s another to figure out what those things are and how to frame them in a way that highlights your best features for the job. Books can’t ask questions, and they can’t answer them. (More’s the pity, because there’s more than one book I wanted to answer me back!)

That’s where I come in

If you’ve been reading around this site for a while, then you know that I’ve been where you are. I was miserable in my tenure-track job, and I spent a long time spinning my wheels before sending out applications – but once I sent out applications, things started to happen. I got phone interviews. I got in-person interviews. And I got two job offers – all within two weeks.

That’s not because anything in my background was so hot shit. In fact, I had gone straight through from undergraduate study to graduate study to tenure-track job, so I had very little in the way of official other jobs to draw from.

What I did have was this: nearly a decade’s experience teaching undergraduates how to write job materials, during which I discovered my own geeky superpower. Yes, my superpower is writing resumes and cover letters.

I can ferret out the experiences you’ve put aside or forgotten as unimportant. I can take your list of job-related tasks and dig out the accomplishments therein. I can make the case for why your skills and accomplishments are a great fit for a completely different career – without even beginning to stretch the truth. And I can do that for multiple career options, because there are a lot of things you’re qualified to do.

And I deeply believe that the skills, accomplishments, and experiences we’ve all had in academia have value out there in the rest of the world.

Even superpowers need hand-holding sometimes

Despite my superpowers, as soon as I sat down to write my job materials, all the doubts and fears I had taken on as a result of eleven years in various institutions of academia (okay, fourteen if you count undergraduate study) came busting out.

What if being an academic is all I’m good for? What if I have no skills anyone else can use? What if no one wants to hire me? What if I’m stuck here in this awful limbo forever? What if what if what if.

And that was in 2005, when the economy and the job markets were doing a sunny happy dance. If I were in the same position now, I’m sure I would add things like But what if there aren’t any jobs? What if all the jobs that are out there get taken by people who are already in that career? What if no one is hiring? What if no one wants what I have to offer?

Eventually, I had to bust through the terror and do it anyway, without any guidance or hand-holding or reassurance, because I didn’t know anyone else who had done this – left academia for another career, for whatever reason.

I desperately wanted someone who could help me write those applications, because I wanted the reassurance that someone else had done it and lived, and I wanted someone else’s insight into the tricky process of translating my academic life into something a non-academic would understand. I would have given a lot to have someone who could look over my shoulder and remind me that my odd gig interviewing people for a social science research project might be relevant.

I didn’t know anyone who could give me that reassurance and confidence from the perspective of having been on both sides of the ivory tower, but once I was on the other side, I realized I could give it to other people – and that’s why I offer this service.

I believe we who are academically inclined are too smart, too skilled, too insightful, and too valuable to waste. We’ve got real things to offer the world, but we can’t do that if we aren’t even applying because we’re tied up in terror and frustration and confusion – or if we’re selling ourselves short by ignoring many of the awesome things we bring to the table because we’ve either forgotten them or think they don’t count.

Job application superpowers activate!

Based on my own experience writing job materials, reading job materials as a potential employer, and reading ridiculous numbers of books on the subject (so you don’t have to!), I offer two different but related services.

A Master Resume solves many job-search problems, because it serves as the external memory keeping track of everything you’ve ever done. It’s easy to forget the temporary gigs, the volunteer work, the conference that took over one semester of your life – and those things might matter a great deal to a particular application. In this service, I write you a comprehensive Master Resume from information you provide me.

To help that process, the Master Resume service includes a one-hour phone conversation so I can ask questions, hear more, and generally dig into your history to make sure everything is on the page.

Once you have a Master Resume in hand, you can craft any number of job application packages by deleting irrelevant information, rearranging information to highlight your skills, and rewriting entries in the language of target career. From that point, you can write a persuasive cover letter drawing the recruiter’s attention to what you have to offer and how it fits their needs.

But if you’d like help with that piece, I also offer a Resume and Cover Letter Package. In this service, we start with the Master Resume (because it really is foundational), complete with one-hour phone conversation. Then, I write you a targeted resume and cover letter focused around a particular career or job and its attendant skills.

If you’re applying in more than one field (and many people are as they come out of academia) and would like more than one set of resumes and cover letters, that can easily be arranged.

Both services come with discounted coaching in the event that you want additional support and guidance in finding jobs (or careers!) to apply to, untangling fears and doubts that have you stuck, or navigating the broader job search process (networking, interviewing, etc.). You’re welcome to sign up for email coaching with me for only $100 a month instead of $125.

What you get

For those of you who are graphically inclined, here’s what each package includes.

So how does this work, anyway?

Once you’ve signed up for one of the services, you’ll get a handy-dandy email with a link to the all important first form – which is all about you, your experiences, your skills, and your accomplishments.

Once you fill that out and send it to me, you’ll get a link to my on-line scheduling system, with which you will then schedule an hour phone conversation. I’ll come to that conversation having worked on your Master Resume and full of additional questions that will help us get everything on the page.

When I’m done with the draft of the Master Resume, I’ll send it to you for the all-important accuracy check – because despite my superpowers, I’m not actually able to read your mind. (You’re probably grateful for this.)

Once I’ve received your edits, voila, we have a Master Resume.

If you’ve signed up for the Resume and Cover Letter Package, then I’ll send you an additional form with the final draft of the Master Resume. This form is all about the career you’d like to apply for – and once I get that form back, I’ll craft draft resumes and cover letters for you to respond to.

At every stage of the process, I check in with you to 1) make sure I got everything right; and 2) make sure you’re comfortable with how I’m framing things. After all, these documents are coming from you, not me, so you have to believe that they’re reflecting you.

Okay, I’m in!

Excellent! I’m really excited to be working with you.

To sign up for either service, just click the appropriate button below. If you’re signing up for additional Resume and Cover Letter sets, let me know in the comment section of the purchase, and I’ll send you a separate invoice for the those. (I ran into the limitations of my software, more’s the pity.)

And if you have any questions, feel free to email me at julie@escapetheivorytower.com.

	Master Resume Package	Resume and Cover Letter Package
Master Resume	X	X
One-hour phone conversation	X	X
Job materials for one career		X
Discounted coaching	X	X
	$99.00	$197 (additional career packages $29 each)