Keep cover letters with your resume in Word

September 2010

By Karen Hofferber, CPRW Certified Professional Resume Writer with ResumePower.com

Job hunting electronically requires finesse. Keeping your cover letter with your resume, in a single document, lessens the chance of losing that impressive letter, and it's easier for your potential employer to print. This is one way to optimize your time and, maybe, impress your potential employer.

Planning your cover letter and resume

First, if you need help getting started on your resume or cover letter, a great source for templates is on the Career Center for Job Seekers, powered by Monster.com, where you can find preformatted resumes and cover letters that you can download and customize.

You’ll find resumes for specific situations, such as college graduate, advanced degree, and executive resumes — as well as job-specific resumes, such as computer technician, administrative assistant, or chef. Then, you can browse the cover letters for specific situations and the job-specific letters for an example that best suits your resume.

Creating sections for a cover letter and resume

To keep your cover letter and your resume together in Word 2010, you can create them in the same document and use a separate section, with different information and formatting, for each.

 Note   You can use the same technique to create title pages, tables of contents, and other pages where you want different margins and headers and footers.

Step 1: Insert a section break

1. Click the place in your document where you want to insert a section break for your cover letter.
2. On the Page Layout tab, in the Page Setup group, click Breaks.
3. Under Section Breaks, click Next Page.

Click the Show/Hide button on the Home tab, in the Paragraph group to display the section breaks. This makes it easier both to see where a section begins and to delete the section break.

Cover letter header

Cover letter footer

Resume header

Section break

Step 2: Make the header and footer different from the previous section

1. Click the first page of the resume (section 2).
2. On the Insert tab, in the Header & Footer group, click Header, and then click Edit Header.
3. Click anywhere in the header, and then on the Header & Footer Tools tab, in the Navigation group, click the Link to Previous.

Same as Previous will disappear from the Header area.

4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 for the footer.

After you set up separate sections, you can vary the layout from one page to the next and set different margins, page numbers, and other page formatting for the letter and the resume. You can even apply different page settings on the same page if you divide the page into sections. When you set the margins and other page format settings, be sure you select the appropriate option (This section, This point forward, or Whole document) in the Apply to box in the Page Setup dialog box (available by clicking the dialog box launcher in the lower right corner of the Page Setup group on the Page Layout tab) .

Cover letter header

Cover letter footer

Resume header

Resume footer

In this illustration, the cover letter uses a standard format for contact and other information (such as your name, address, e-mail address, and phone number) in the header and footer. The header and footer on the first page of the resume are blank. The second page of the resume includes the name of the applicant and the position sought in the header and the page number in the footer. Page 2 of the resume is actually the third page in the document.

About the author     Karen Hofferber is a Certified Professional Resume Writer and senior resume writer at ResumePower.com. Changing careers? See The Career Change Resume by Kim Isaacs and Karen Hofferber for help. You can contact Karen at ResumePower.com.