A lot has changed over the past two weeks. I liken what’s happened to the Mike Tyson quote, “everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” It’s a bit surreal how much it feels like the world has evolved in such a short period of time.
With the realization that our economy is in the midst of a recession (and most likely headed into a depression), I’ve decided to reassess my situation. Three weeks ago, I quit my job. I founded a company with my father, a retired car dealer, and since then we’ve helped a handful of people with our new service business, CarEdge.
Then, Coronavirus began to affect the day to day lives of Americans. State by state we’ve seen the temporary closure of non-essential businesses. Sales departments within car dealerships are deemed non-essential (the full list of essential businesses can be found on the CISA website), and as a result, are shuttering (temporarily).
This makes it hard to offer a car buying service to your customers.
CarEdge, the startup I am focusing my full-time effort and attention towards, is in a state of limbo. New vehicle sales are expected to plummet, and my appetite to bootstrap this startup amidst a recession (or worse) is fleeting (less people buying cars means less potential customers for us). The past two weeks have led me to reassess my post-quitting plans.
Before the spread of Coronavirus, I took a trip to New York City to visit a friend. While there I met a man who works for the incubation arm of a large, publicly traded retailer. We had a good conversation, and he suggested that I look at their open positions when I returned from my international travels (my original plan was to spend this summer in Lisbon, Portugal while working full-time on my startup).
Fast forward two weeks, and it’s abundantly clear that I’m not leaving the country anytime soon. Lisbon, and a summer in Europe will come to fruition at some point in the future, but not in a few months. With that realization, I got back in touch with my contact, and asked him if he thought now was a good time to apply for one of their open positions.
His response inspired confidence, “People like you do well in our organization because it grew out of a startup. Our SVP (was our CEO) loves hiring ex-founders and entrepreneurs…”
Thus began the process of updating my resume and drafting a cover letter. And, that’s how we’ve arrived here, at this blog post.
How to write, structure, and design a resume and cover letter is not easy. Below, I share with you the first draft of my resume and cover letter, and the final draft I submitted with my application.
Here was my process:
- March 19th
- Research resume and cover letter design and structure
- Bullet point an outline of my resume and cover letter
- First draft of resume and cover letter (below)
- March 19th to the 22nd
- Peer review from 4 advisors
- Iterative drafting, editing, and review
- March 23rd
- Final draft (below)
- Submit application
It took me four days and four advisors to go from the first draft to submission. A humongous thank you to the individuals who reviewed these documents and shared their advice.
My first draft resume and cover letter
Click the “next page” arrow at the bottom of the PDF to view the cover letter. Or, click here: https://shefska.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/First-version-resume-and-cover-letter.pdf
First-version-resume-and-cover-letterMy final draft resume and cover letter
Click the “next page” arrow at the bottom of the PDF to view the cover letter. Or, click here: https://shefska.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/final-version-of-resume-and-cover-letter.pdf
final-version-of-resume-and-cover-letterI hope this helps as you navigate the process of creating your resume and cover letter. I’ll update this post once I hear back from the company I applied to.