Final pass: edit, cut once more, and send one out before you leave
Okay you guys. This is it. Last lesson in this module, and I want you to actually send something before you walk out that door tonight, or at least before you go to bed. Not "this week." Tonight.
Here's why. You've got a résumé that's tailored now. You've got a three-sentence cover letter. You've got a spreadsheet ready to track it. If you leave here with all that built and don't use it for four days, the momentum's gone and you'll be starting cold again next week. So we're closing the loop tonight.
But first, one more edit pass. Just one.
The final read
Print it out if you can, or at least look at it full-screen, not in a tiny preview window. Read it top to bottom, slow. You're checking for three things:
One — does every line still earn its spot. We've cut this résumé down over several weeks now. Sometimes stuff creeps back in. Read each bullet and ask yourself the question I keep asking you guys: is that something a stranger could verify? If it's soft — "responsible for," "helped with," "worked closely with" — either put a number on it or cut it.
Two — does it match the actual job posting. Pull the posting back up next to your résumé. Not because you're copying their words exactly, but because you want your résumé and their language to be speaking the same dialect. If they say "customer relations" three times and your résumé says "client-facing," that's close enough that a human will get it, but a scanning system might not. Match their words where you honestly can.
Three — is there anything left over from an old life. This is the one people fight me on. I had a woman in a class cut ten-year-old skills only after I asked her one question: is that the job you want now, or the job you had then? She sat with it a week and cut it on her own. I'm not going to argue with you about it either. I'll just ask you the same question and let you sit with it.
Honestly, I'd rather you cut one line too many than leave one that doesn't belong. A résumé that's slightly too short and completely relevant beats one that's padded and vague every single time.
The one about Ethan
I redid Ethan's résumé a while back — not because he asked me to, he just made the mistake of leaving it open on the computer. He had a job on there from 2009. Fifteen years old, nothing to do with what he does now. I cut it.
He pushed back. Said it showed loyalty, showed he'd been in the workforce a long time, whatever. I told him nobody hiring for what he does now cares what he did in 2009, and it was just taking up space where something recent and relevant could go. We went back and forth on it for about ten minutes at the kitchen table, which, if you know Ethan, is a long argument for him.
I cut it anyway. He got hired for the next job he applied to. He has never once brought up the 2009 job again. That's the whole story. Sometimes you're not wrong to keep a thing, you're just attached to it, and those aren't the same.
Send one out tonight
Pick one real job posting. A real one, not a practice one. Something you'd actually take if they called you tomorrow.
- Save your tailored résumé with the file name we talked about — your name, the company, the date. Not "Resume Final Final 2."
- Attach your three-sentence cover letter, either pasted into the email body or as its own document, whatever the posting asks for.
- Read both one more time for typos. Out loud if you can — you catch things reading out loud that your eyes skip over on a screen.
- Send it.
- Open your spreadsheet and log it. Company, date, job title, whether you tailored it. Take a screenshot of the confirmation if there is one. I do this with every application I've ever sent, same as I photograph my canning so I know what actually worked. You want to know later what you did, not guess.
That's it. That's the whole close-out. No dramatic finish, just: it's sent, it's logged, you're done for tonight.
Before next time: send at least one more this week using everything we've built, and bring your spreadsheet so we can look at what's happening with your responses.