Writing is an indispensable skill that requires real effort and dedication if you want to do it properly. It’s also the most important skill to master before you enter the workforce, because the strength of your writing skills may very well determine the chances that you’ll find decent employment. Writing a resume, a cover letter, and email correspondence to a potential employer takes finesse and skill.
Unfortunately, strong writing skills are becoming scarcer as fewer young professionals get proper training in the discipline; even many college students lack proper writing skills when they graduate. Obviously, most people know how to write, but they just don’t know how to write for their audience (namely for an employer or job recruiter) in a captivating and compelling manner.
Allow me to share with you some indispensable writing skills that will set you apart when you’re applying for jobs.
Active voice and descriptive language
When you’re writing any sort of correspondence to a potential employer, you want to sound like you know what you’re talking about. To do that, you have to keep your language clear and concise at all times: you don’t have any room to expand sentences with useless phrases or impressive-but-empty words. Use only active and powerful verbs to describe your goals, your inspirations, and your qualifications. That means doing away with any “to be” verbs and other weak verbs that do nothing more than take up space on a page. In essence, you want to be assertive and descriptive with every single word. Your employer should fully understand your application and your background by the time they finish reading what you’ve written.
Check and double check for errors
You can avoid most common grammatical mistakes and spelling errors that go unnoticed by spellcheck if you simply look over your writing before you submit it. You’d be amazed (and embarrassed) by the number of errors you can write into any resume or job application. Some people don’t look over their work more than once because they assume that if nothing shows up on spellcheck then there’s nothing wrong with the piece, but the truth is that most spellchecking systems miss a great deal of errors. So whenever you finish a draft of a resume or a cover letter, do yourself a favor by printing it out and going over the text line by line with a pen. That way you’ll be sure to catch any potentially disastrous mistake!
Avoid templates and overused phrases
If you lack confidence in your writing abilities, you might be tempted to look up a writing template on the web as a guide for your material. You might also fall back on common catchphrases and clichés in lieu of original material because you’re either too afraid or too lazy to express yourself to a potential employer. While this is certainly a quick way to finish a job application, it certainly won’t assure you a job. You want to stand out among other job applicants competing for the position that you’ve applied for, but how can you expect to do that if you use the same old phrases that everyone else uses? Unless you make the effort to distinguish yourself, you employers will throw away your job application just as they threw away countless identical applications.
How do you refine your writing skills?
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Author:
This guest post is contributed by Lauren Bailey, who regularly writes for online colleges. She welcomes your comments at her email Id: blauren99 @gmail.com