|
Resurrecting the Perfect Resume, Part Two
Are you in denial about the lifelessness of your resume? If you are reasonably qualified for the type of work you seek, yet your resume is consistently failing to win you interviews, then you need to face the reality that your beloved document is dead.
Try these professional resume writing techniques to resurrect your resume and your job search today:
Problem #3: Resume Is Blind
In your eagerness to cut your job search work load have you reduced your objective statement to something grandiose and vague, something that you hope speaks to every employer but which, in fact, communicates to none? A resume with no focus is blind; without a clear focus in your resume an employer cannot perceive what you're offering them; without a concisely stated vision in your resume an employer cannot grasp the big picture of how you fit into their organization.
Solution#3: Give Your Resume Vision So Employers Can See You
- Craft a creative career summary statement. A career summary statement is just that - a summary or profile of your career to date. Remember that your "career" includes all the paid and unpaid things you've done and that even if you don't value this experience, an employer will. Claim your career focus in your summary, then in 2-3 sentences profile your most relevant skills and experience.
- Describe your creative gifts in terms that relate to the employer's needs. Whatever your specific creative gifts (and you do have them), describe them in the body of your resume. Use adjectives and nouns to describe yourself in your summary, mini job descriptions or success stories.
- Match your resume's layout, font style, graphics and paper to your career goal. If you are seeking work in a conservative industry like banking or insurance, then choose a traditional layout, a formal-looking font, few graphics and conservative white, beige or gray paper.
- If you are looking for work in a highly creative industry like advertising or graphic arts, then choose a creative or functional resume layout, an unusual but readable font, creative graphics and expressive textured paper, perhaps with a colorful border around the edge.
- How do you know what is right for you and your preferred industry? Conduct informational interviews with hiring professionals in that field and ask them what fits and what does not.
- Use your resume to hint at your responses to interview questions. If you're like most job seekers, you hate having to prepare answers for interviewing questions. A resume acts like a template for your interviews, so if you consider the typical questions you will be asked and succinctly weave bits of your responses into your resumes, you will be leading the interviewer in the direction you choose.
- Use your resume's content to design a powerful cover letter to match. Do not send resumes without cover letters! Do not take shortcuts with cover letters! Do not send the same generic cover letter to every employer you contact! Doing so will guarantee you failure. If you prefer success you will have to work for it, but it will pay off.
- Select the 3-5 most critical points you made in your resume and restate them in the second paragraph of your personalized cover letter. Weave some of the same adjectives and nouns you used in your resume into your cover letter.
Problem #4: Resume Has No Personality
One of the greatest weaknesses of most resumes is an almost total lack of personality. You are selling you, not a piece of wood! Nothing adds life to a lifeless document like uniqueness, so talk about yours.
Solution #4: Give Your Resume Personality To Attract Employers To You
- Draw attention to your uniqueness. Consider carefully the 5-7 adjectives or descriptive phrases that best describe you, your qualifications, your values and your personality and weave them into your career
summary, your success stories and your cover letter.
- Take those same 5-7 adjectives and identify other words that mean the same thing. Use your second set of adjectives and phrases and use them to describe yourself in interviews.
- Express who you really are, not who you think you should be. Select graphics, font style and paper that express your essence as well as they match the industry you hope to join. Know what makes you you and describe it in writing for your resume/cover letter and express it verbally for interviews.
- Stress your people skills. Interpersonal skills are critical for many jobs; possessing them can be your ticket to great opportunities, but you must a.) honestly possess them; b.) know how/when to use them; c.) be willing to learn what you don't know; and d.) be prepared to demonstrate your skills in your resumes, cover letters and interviews.
- Be personal and warm rather than impersonal and objective. There is a difference between being personal and intimate in writing and conversation; strive for the former, yet avoid the latter.
- Read company literature and web sites and quote their own words back to them as you use their words to demonstrate the match between you. Use quotes from other sources as appropriate.
- Be quotable. Let your research show: Let your reader know that you know something about their organization and its needs.
- Consider your personal style as a job seeker and as a professional. Do you know that how you job search conveys to an employer how you will perform on the job?
- Reflect on your personality and work-related values and design a job search and work style that expresses them. Make sure all your written materials, thank you letters included, convey that style.
Dead resumes create lifeless results! Work is too important in life to allow your search for it to drain you. Resurrect your resume with these simple solutions and you will revitalize your job search and your work life.
Cheryl Lynch Simpson is a Spiritual Director and Solutions Coach who helps women discover and create the life they've always wanted to live. Cheryl is the author of over 30 print/Internet articles and the founder of Coaching Solutions For Women, a coaching website that produces and showcases career, business, and life solutions that improve the life balance of today's busy women. For a complimentary copy of her latest e-book, Ten-Minute Stress Zappers for Women Service Business Owners, visit http://www.coachingsolutionsforwomen.com.
MORE RESOURCES:
Jobs City of Rochester (.gov)
Careers Washington State University
Careers Freedom of the Press Foundation
Careers Gwinnett County Public Schools
JobFeed NSW Department of Education
|
|
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
How to Become a Real Estate Agent
If you're wondering how to become a real estate agent, the basic process is fairly simple, although it does vary a lot from state to state..
Look in the Mirror
Take a moment to step outside yourself. Now, be honest with me here? If you could be your own boss, how would you rate your own performance in the last three months? Would you get a raise, a day off as a treat, or would a big and brawny security guy kindly escort you to the parking lot?In order to be an effective marketer and a progressive human being for that matter, you have to take a breather and look in the mirror.
Job Lead Websites To Use in Your Telecommuting Search
Let me ask you a question: are you tired ofusing job sites only to find scam after scam? I bet you're noddingyour head in agreement to that question. I know that I was sickand tired of spending all my time online searching fortelecommuting jobs only to find scams.
Lets Talk About Trust
I agree with Brooker T. Washington, "Few things help an individual more than to place responsibility upon him, and to let him know that you trust him.
Networking Masterclass - Part 2 Practicing Altruism
Practicing Altruism The 'Golden Rule' occurred in the Greek and Chinese cultures thousands of years before the Christian era: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." The spirit of the Golden Rule is one of generosity and altruism and is at the heart of any personal networking and 'right' living.
Dynamic Interviewing Practices
The pre-hiring process can be a challenge. If you're reading this article, you are finished with the pre-hiring process and are looking for tips that will guide you through the interview.
Benefits of Maintaining a Career Portfolio
Have you ever tried to contact a past employer only to discover they are no longer in existence or your former manager has moved on and been replaced by someone else? Of course, if you are an avid networker this shouldn't be much of a problem when it comes time to provide proof of your experience, education and accomplishments. A portfolio of your career should be developed and maintained using all documentation of your career history in order to overcome any problems that could arise in proving any aspects of your career.
How People Really Explore New Careers: What Does A Real Career Search Look Like?
The traditional model of career choice suggests a linear pattern. Get to know yourself.
Become an LPN, the Fast Path to a Nursing Career
Licensed Practical Nurse (LPN) CareersLicensed Practical Nurses provide the most amount of direct patient care within the nursing category of healthcare. If you're interested in a healthcare career dealing directly with patients, becoming an LPN is a rewarding opportunity.
Yesterdays Project Manager is Todays Project Engineer
The rapid growth of technology, greater exposure to knowledge, higher levels of awareness are making the young project engineer act more and more like a project manager.What I mean is, todays project engineers are actively supervising new graduates, setting and monitoring schedules & budgets, interacting with clients and so on.
Who Should Write Your Resume?
This is a question we get a lot. It seems rather easy to do it yourself if you have access to a word processing program and printer and feel comfortable writing your job history.
Helping Mid-Life Employees Find Meaning
People work to live, but most also live to work. A study on the meaning of work conducted back in 1987 revealed a strong attachment to work as a way of life.
What is a Career Anyway?
A career is the sum total of all of your work-related contributions to society in a lifetime. This includes time and effort spent to provide goods, services, or benefit to others.
Resume Writing - Get That Job
Looking for a new job, whether it is with a new company or a promotion within your own organisation, requires time and effort. To make your job search more effective you need to take five fundamental steps on the road to success:· Analysing your skills· Writing a winning Resume· Managing your job search· Coaching for interview success· Negotiating your job offerStep 1: Analysing your SkillsThe most crucial step in the job search process is to assess what skills you have to offer to your future boss.
The Telecommuting Tightrope
For many of us, telecommuting seems like the ideal situation. You wake up, shuffle over to your home office, work at your own pace.
Finding the Right Travel Nursing Placement Agency
Travel nursing is becoming one of our nation's fastest growing professions, and it's no surprise. If you love seeing new places and enjoy exciting new experiences that evoke the feeling of taking an extended vacation, then the career of a traveling nurse might be just what the doctor ordered! Travel nursing enables many people to stay on vacation for two to six months in free luxury accommodations while earning high hourly wages at the same time.
Waiting for Lightening to Strike
Author and management guru, Peter Drucker says, "People adjust to the level of demands made on them." I would add, we also adjust to the level we demand of ourselves.
Virtual Heroes: The Growth of the Virtual Assistant
Building and expanding a business is a difficult task, when the management of the business in its existing form takes up much of the time. The administrative, office-based and creative tasks behind running a business, although time-consuming and often repetitive, are vital to the continued operations of the business.
Get Off Your Butt and Out of the Rut
It's amazing to see so many people who are prepared to sacrifice their lives for the sake of their careers.I'm sure you know of someone like that.
Five Biggest Resume Mistakes You Can Fix Yourself
A career consultant can diagnose and overhaul a troubledresume. But you can check off the basics yourself.
|