How to Improve Your Job Search Writing Skills

As the hiring manager for your dream job clicks open on your job application, your words are all you have. Your job search writing skills are on the front line. There is no opportunity for personal chemistry yet, and no right to reply. 

Just a collection of words on the screen. They need to go into battle for you, influencing and persuading, so make sure that they are equipped to do the job.

If you write a compelling application, you will secure interviews that might have passed you by. If your CVs and cover letters are littered with mistakes, interviews will be few and far between. Effective language makes all the difference, so I would like to share a few thoughts on how to improve your job search writing skills:

Make every sentence (and word) matter. Whether it is a two-page resume or a one-page cover letter, your choice of language can significantly influence the reader. Is a certain achievement worthy of two sentences, or will one suffice? There is a psychological barrier to change when you are looking at a completed CV, so be particularly mindful of every word as you are in the process of writing. Take your time over your language choices.

Mirror the employer’s language where it sounds natural. Mirroring the language that an employer has chosen to share in the job description will help you to sound like one of them, but you should not doctor your job search documents to such an extent that it doesn’t sound like you anymore. The phrases that you use should be conversational enough for you to repeat them in an interview. Your future employer will have a sense of continuity if they read your CV after meeting you in person.

Subtle job search writing skills

Consider the role of personal pronouns. While cover letters and CV summary sections call for a more personal account and considerable use of first-person, other parts of job search writing sound more detached and objective without the continual “I did this and that.” For example, a bullet-pointed list of accomplishments in a CV sounds more professional when they start with the past tense of action verbs rather than with repeated personal pronouns. 

Use the active voice where possible. This is sound advice for any writer (and something that I should heed). With the active voice “our team launched a podcast,” the subject performs the action. In the less effective passive voice, “a podcast was launched by our team,” not only is the sentence longer, but the subject also receives the action, and it feels less impactful. In job search writing, the emphasis should be on the job seeker doing things.

Learn from your grammar mistakes. This is easy to say as a lazy writer, who writes with a conversational style, but in a job search, there should not be too many grammatical errors. It makes sense to invest in a Grammarly subscription. Take the time to learn from its suggestions rather than accept them blindly. Fantastic writing skills will be useful for the rest of your career, so why not make a few improvements now?

Cut out the filler words. Wow. Okay, hypocrite alert. I am guilty of using filler words all the time. Still, there is no place for these sorts of words in a cover letter or CV: basically, totally, completely, absolutely, very, really, quite, rather, simply, pretty, just, extremely, in order, literally, actually, all of, etc. Leave it out if a word does not deepen a hiring manager’s understanding of your career story. Degree modifiers are not welcome here.

Varying sentence length can improve readability. While the format of a CV lends itself to being scanned, a cover letter must be an easy read. Use Grammarly to analyse your writing on the Flesch Reading Ease scale, then make some changes and see how the readability shifts. Short sentences live longer in the memory – especially if they contain some facts and stats about your achievements.

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This blog is shared with Job Seeker Duetists. 

Written by former recruitment ghostwriter Paul Drury (not AI).