Write It Well

Write It Well client Saima Siddiqui is the Senior Associate Director of Career Services at the National University of Singapore (NUS).

Saima says that after Write It Well’s e-mail training, she noticed a big difference in the quality of e-mail that flies around the office at NUS. “There are no more big chunks of text; people use more bullet points,” she says.  ”The e-mail subject lines are better, too: people are changing them when the subject changes. I love that!”

We do too. Changing the subject line when a topic changes in an e-mail thread is a great way to help many readers understand exactly what they need to understand. It’s just one of the tips Write It Well shares in our trainings to help overworked businesspeople stay on top of the oceans of reading and writing they have to do for work.

Written communication is as important to many jobs as technical knowledge and leadership skills. Whatever your field is, you often have to demonstrate solid writing skills before you can persuade hiring managers that your full range of abilities will benefit their organizations.

Problematic writing in a cover letter or resume can sabotage your chances of being interviewed for a job, so we recently wrote an entire book with strategies just for these crucial job-application documents.

Many people find these documents stressful to write, and we thought we’d share some of our tips and tools with you here. It is possible to tailor resumes and cover letters both to an individual organization’s hiring needs and to your own unique professional history.

Several recruiters and career specialists told us that a resume often receives only 20 seconds of a hiring manager’s attention. Here are some tips for writing resumes that get readers’ attention in that very short time frame:

• Use active language and clear, specific, plain English
• Make sure you maintain parallel list structure as you list past experiences (e.g., by starting all a list’s items with verbs that end in -ed)
• Proofread carefully to avoid an impression of carelessness and project a reliable image instead

And here’s a process that helps a job applicant write more impressive descriptions of past experience:

1. Read the job description carefully, and identify the kinds of routine problems you’ll solve if you’re hired at the organization.
2. Think of a time you faced a similar problem at a previous job.
3. Describe the problem, the action you took to solve it, and the beneficial result you achieved for your past employer.
4. Tell that problem-action-result story as concisely as possible.

A typical resume item representing Step 4 is “[Performed task X] [in response to challenge Y], [achieving beneficial result Z].” A problem or challenge can be as simple as meeting a tight deadline or satisfying a client or manager.

Quantifiable results stand out in a resume — e.g., “Streamlined a customer support process to eliminate delays in response times, boosting the customer retention rate by 10%.”

Remember that your resume and cover letter are your most important marketing tools. Solid planning can help you showcase your analytical and communication skills.

With careful writing, your writing can become a powerful marketing tool. Write It Well’s techniques can help you turn your resumes and cover letters into a concise, effective pitch for your professional abilities.

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Look for our forthcoming print book, e-book, iPad folio, and e-learning module on resumes and cover letters!

Missing punctuation can confuse your customers and clients. Clear punctuation may take some extra effort, but it helps readers follow your ideas and realize you care about being understood.

Some sentences are simple enough not to need commas — e.g., to use a Wall Street Journal writer’s example, “Beets are available throughout the year but their flesh is particularly flavorful when the weather warms.”

Commas are often necessary to help readers follow your ideas. Here’s another correctly punctuated sentence:

Shaved into paper-thin rounds, spring beets provide an earthy, sharp flavor that’s different from the musky sweetness we have come to expect of the vegetable.

Notice how much harder it is to follow the sentence without the commas:

Shaved into paper-thin rounds spring beets provide an earthy sharp flavor that’s different from the musky sweetness we have come to expect of the vegetable.

Correctly placed commas help you signal readers where one idea ends and another begins. It can take effort to step back from your own thoughts and ask how a sentence will look to a reader, but that effort pays off in clarity.

Correct punctuation helps hold readers’ attention. It also signals that you respect them enough to communicate carefully by trying to think about how they’ll receive your message.

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Write It Well’s book Essential Grammar includes two full, user-friendly chapters on punctuation. We’ve made all the book’s exercises available as a free download here to accompany the e-book, which is now available on Amazon.com!

Do you have an important document but not enough time to clarify your thoughts and double-check your punctuation and grammar? Just use Write It Well’s editing services to make sure your readers follow your ideas and respect your voice.

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