Guidance on Your Resume and Letter of Qualifications

It's our practice at DWD to request that a resume and often a letter of qualifications (or cover letter) be submitted in our online application process. The resume and letter of qualifications are requested in the application process to allow job experts to evaluate your work experience, education, and training in order to determine if you meet the required job qualifications.

It's important that you tailor both documents to the job at hand. When preparing your materials, refer back to the "Qualifications" section of the job posting for the particular job. At a minimum, make sure that your materials address how you meet the qualifications that you need to have. If there is a list of qualifications that are nice to have, your materials should address any of those that you have as well.

Resume

Your resume should highlight your specific work/volunteer, education, and/or training experiences related to the qualifications outlined for the job. We recommend listing your experiences in chronological order (with the most recent first).

Be sure to include your name on your resume; contact information such as address, phone, and email address can be helpful as well. There is no need to provide references as part of your resume. References are typically requested at a later stage in the selection process.

Letter of Qualifications

Your Letter of Qualifications should provide examples to expand upon or supplement the qualifications addressed on your resume. It can be helpful to organize your document with a section for each of the qualification. You can just list the qualification, followed by your examples. For instance, if a required qualification is "Experience performing bicycle maintenance and repair," your response might look something like this:

Experience performing bicycle maintenance and repairs: I have been working as a Repair Technician at Wheelhouse for the past year. I am responsible for a wide range of repair and maintenance, such as installing and adjusting brake pads, aligning wheels, and installing new tires and tubes. I also am being trained to use a bench grinder to shape replacement parts. I have also volunteered for the past 3 years at non-profit called Recycled Cycles, where I clean and perform minor repairs on bikes that are distributed to underprivileged kids in my community.

If you don't have any experience related to one of the qualifications, you can simply skip it or say that you have no experience in that area. If you don't have exact qualification, but you have something similar, consider mentioning it (e.g. I don't have experience using an inventory tracking database. However, in my job as a library assistant, I utilized a database to arrange for and track interlibrary loans.").

While a signature is not necessary on the Letter of Qualifications, including your name to your letter is recommended.

Sample Formatted Letter of Qualifications:

• Microsoft Word Version
• PDF Version

Additional Guidance

Submitting your materials: Be sure to follow the applications instructions carefully to make sure your materials are submitted properly, as the process and required materials may vary depending on the job.

Attaching documents: If you are asked to attach a resume and/or a letter of qualifications to your application, your documents should be in Word or PDF format.

Information to Exclude: On your resume and letter of qualifications, please exclude information that is not job related, such as political or religious affiliations, references to gender/ethnicity/disability, photos, social security numbers, etc.

Page limits: most applicants are able to outline their background and experience in 1-3 pages in their resume. If more than 5 pages are submitted for any single document, we may limit our review to the first 5 pages.

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