Spruce Up Your Fashion Resume

Spruce Up Your Fashion Resume

If your goal is a great fashion career, you have to start with a professional, polished fashion resume, one that will get the attention of the best fashion staffing agencies in NYC. Whether you are searching for your first fashion gig, or you’re ready to advance from entry level to a dream position, your resume is the first step—think of it as your foot in the door.
Here are some basic elements that will get your resume into the short stack, plus special tips to help move you to the interview stage. 
The Basics
No matter the profession or field, from fashion to forensics, there are essential principles of a good resume that you must keep in mind if you want to make the first cut. 
Career counselors and hiring executives everywhere have one pet peeve above all others: spelling. If you don’t take the time to run Spellcheck, the employer will assume you would be just as careless on the job. If you misspell the name of the company to which you are applying, don’t expect to hear back. Believe it or not, misspelling the name of the company or contact person is one of the most common mistakes applicants make, and is a sure way to be excluded from consideration. Check and recheck your spelling throughout. 
Most employers are flooded with hundreds of resumes for an open position, so it helps to be brief and direct. Read on to review the key elements of a resume and cover letter.
What to Include
Before you start writing and refining your resume and cover letter, be sure you have carefully read the job description and any information about how to apply—think of this as passing the first screening test. Most employers and fashion recruitment agencies in NYC will request both a cover letter and resume.
1. The Resume
Ré·su·mé1 – 
: a short document describing your education, work history, etc., that you give an employer when you are applying for a job
: a list of achievements

The dictionary definition of “resume” is just a starting place, but it reveals a couple of keys to building into your own resume. First, keep it short. Second, include your work history, starting with the most recent post, then, move on to outline your education. Finally, include some bullet points about your achievements, awards, memberships, or anything demonstrating exceptional abilities that could be relevant in the job. 
If you are just starting out, with few jobs in your background, include some activities that demonstrate your love of fashion and dedication to learning the ropes of the industry. Think of examples like volunteering at a fashion charity event, making and selling your own styles to friends or online, or writing your own fashion blog. Add non-fashion experience, too. Limit yourself to activities that show you have learned how to responsibly perform some basic functions required in any office or retail store setting. 
If you already have a resume with past jobs and activities included, be sure to add your current job, and don’t overlook any accolades or accomplishments recently earned. Prune older or less relevant items carefully so that you avoid overloading the reader and keep attention focused on newer information. 
Show your tech and social side
Whatever your experience or skill level, your computer and program skills might just give you that added edge to place you at the top of the list. Most fashion businesses are Mac-based, so be sure to list that among your skills if you can. List programs you have used, especially mass mail programs and those related to visual arts, like Photoshop, Illustrator, or In Design.
Show your social side, too, as long as you use it to demonstrate an understanding of the marketing strategies behind using social media to market and promote fashion.2

2. Cover Letter

Think of the cover letter as a one-on-one, personal introduction to the hiring screener or manager. Imagine you are meeting this person face-to-face, and speak (or write) in a natural, yet professional tone. You have even less time to get your personality across than you do in the resume, so every sentence and every word should count. That means coming up with a few ideas that connect your strengths to the company’s profile. 

Do your homework first: get to know their web site, and concentrate on the “About Us” section to get a feel for their style of communication and the personality they want to convey to the public. Don’t try to fake matching their style (unless you have professional level writing skills), but look for values that might match your own, or words that relate to some part of your background.

Do some digging to find out the hiring manager’s name if it isn’t provided. Opening your letter with that person’s name (“Dear Joe or Jane Hiring Guru”) beats the appeal of a generic “Dear Sir or Madam,” and starts your interaction with the company by demonstrating you can do a little research.3

Limit the cover letter to only one or a few especially relevant points that will spark their interest, rather than repeating too much of your resume, which just makes the screener’s job more difficult. In the fashion industry, some companies welcome a casual, breezy style in cover letters. It is a highly creative industry, but it is also demanding and competitive. Unless you know the contact person, or the job description specifically calls for unconventional style, keep your creative expressions within certain limits of proper grammar, punctuation, and a professional—yet creative and personalized—tone.

Tips and Tricks: 

Most companies and fashion search firms in NYC now use sophisticated software programs to sort through and weed out applicants and resumes that don’t measure up to their basic requirements. Here are a few tricks for ensuring that you get past this first, impersonal step:

• Scan through the job description to catch keywords or tags
• Build one or more of these into your resume and cover letter, BUT—be sure to use them naturally. Unnatural keyword “stuffing” is a red flag that will stop your application progress cold.
• Be sure to include a reference to the exact job description at the top of the cover letter page. The software will be scanning for this to match you up with the correct position.
• Show off a little of your dedication and interest in fashion by citing something about the company’s history or a success story. Do a search for media coverage of one of their recent lines, or some way they have influenced trends that you particularly admire.

Finally, be honest, be yourself, and be professional…this may sound like an updated version of the Girl Scout pledge, but it amounts to good advice for job candidates. Before you click “submit,” on that application form or email, take a few extra minutes to check the basics one more time, then take a well-deserved break. If this job doesn’t come through, you are now a more polished job applicant, ready to go after the next opportunity.

1. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/resume 
2. http://www.theschoolofstyle.com/blog/5-fashion-resume-rules-that-will-get-you-hired/ 
3. http://www.theladders.com/career-advice/how-to-write-cover-letter 
Additional links:
1. Client web site: employers and fashion recruitment agencies in NYC