Write Resumes and Cover Letters That Break Through

Edit your resume and cover letter to make an impact in today's job market. These strategies can help anyone, but are especially critical for women.

Mary ·

Before You Start

Goal: Optimize your resume and cover letter, quantify impact, and tailor tightly to one real job posting. These tips can benefit anyone, but are especially crucial for women.

Read: The data behind why 60+ applications can go nowhere (and what works instead) by Lean In's Dr. Mary Noble-Tolla. Members are encouraged to read beforehand, but a quick recap at the meeting works too.

Bring: Your current resume, a recent cover letter (if you have one), and a real job posting you're interested in.

Meeting Agenda · Approx. 70 mins

  • Member Updates · 10 mins
  • Icebreaker · 10 mins
  • Key Takeaways · 5 mins
  • Activities · 30 mins
  • One Action · 10 mins
  • Wrap-Up · 5 mins

👋 Member Updates · 10 mins

Go around your Circle and share personal updates. Keep them brief and focused on significant changes or important decisions since the last time you met. It's OK not to have one every month. If you have a One Action update from last time, share that too.

🧊 Icebreaker · 10 mins

Invite everyone in the group to share. Keep answers to one or two minutes per person.

Think of the last job you applied for. How did you tailor your resume and cover letter, and how did the application turn out?

🔑 Key Takeaways · 5 mins

  • Women who get hired end up with fewer offers to choose from. In 2026, only 48% of women who got hired had multiple offers, compared with 65% of men — a gap in results, not qualifications.
  • Women still face bias around their competency. Hiring managers and AI screening tools still rate equally accomplished women as weaker candidates than men.
  • Data is the best way to prove competency. Add relevant numbers showing the outcomes you drove for every point on your resume and cover letter. (Like the other tips on this list, this strategy is helpful for everyone, but especially for women.)
  • Justify your qualifications for roles that stretch beyond your current experience. Women are less likely than men to be rated on future potential and more likely to be judged on proven track records. Give evidence that you've quickly mastered new fields, offer evidence of adjacent experience, and provide evidence of your commitment to the new area — volunteer work or side projects both count.
  • Softening your language can backfire. When women claim credit for their accomplishments out loud, they're liked less — one reason so many women soften their language on paper, too. But research on application materials found that soft, communal language like "helped" and "collaborated" doesn't protect against that bias in writing the way it can in person — it reads as less capable instead.
  • Tailor every resume and cover letter. Hiring is more selective than it's been in years, even as employers say they can't find candidates with the right skills, and a tailored application is how you close that gap.

🏋️ Activity 1 · 15 mins

Map Your Materials to the Job

  1. Read the job posting you brought and list or underline its top requirements.
  2. At the top of your resume, change your headline or job target title to match the role you're applying for, e.g. "Marketing Manager," if that's the job you're applying for.
  3. In your summary paragraph, add one line that states why you're drawn to the specific industry or space this role sits in.
  4. Make sure the posting's top requirements map to specific lines in your resume.
  5. Are there any requirements you don't fully meet? If yes, write one sentence in your cover letter acknowledging the pivot and stating your confidence that you'll quickly meet the requirement, and highlighting a time you learned a new domain quickly, an adjacent experience that prepares you for it, or a side project or volunteer role that shows your commitment to it.

Discuss as a group:

  1. Which requirement was the hardest to speak to on your resume, and how did you manage it?
  2. Read your new headline or target title and your new summary line to the group. Share feedback with one another on which parts work best.
  3. Read the new "gap" sentence from your cover letter out loud. Does it read well? If you feel comfortable, ask the group for feedback.

🏋️ Activity 2 · 15 mins

Rewrite Three Lines for Ownership and Impact

  1. Read your resume and cover letter, and circle any communal or hedging words in each one — "helped," "collaborated on," "supported."
  2. Rewrite each line to describe the exact part you owned and its direct impact. If you didn't lead the whole project, describe precisely what you drove.
  3. Then re-read, and underline every claim without a number quantifying impact. Plan to add a number to every one.

Discuss as a group:

  1. Read one of your original bullets and its rewrite to the group. What's one edit someone else made that you're going to borrow for your own resume?
  2. Share one or two of the lines you plan to add numbers to, and state what kind of number you'll look for.

🎯 One Action · 10 mins

Commit to one concrete action — big or small — you'll take before next meeting. Go around the Circle and share (1 minute or less per member). Vocalizing it helps hold each other accountable.

Finish tailoring your resume and cover letter, and use them to apply to the job you brought today. Come to your next meeting prepared to share how your application went.

📅 Wrap-Up · 5 mins

Before you break, plan your next meeting and close on an energetic note. Go around your Circle one by one and finish the sentence:

Now I am feeling… (choose one word).

  • Set the day, time, and location
  • Choose the next topic or resource
  • Confirm who's leading the discussion
  • Decide how you'll stay in touch in between