Resume Problems: When Skills Outreach Job Title

Having skills that outstrip your job title can happen to anyone with any corporate background, and this is especially frequent with people who have a small company employment background. If your experience is in these smaller work environments, over time you will have the opportunity to “wear many hats.” Everyone needs to pitch in more at smaller companies, so there is often greater opportunity to gain a wider skill set, than you might experience in larger more structured environments.

The Last Piece Of Career Advice Torn From My Dying Lips

A few days before my recent surgery, I was part of a career marathon with twenty-five other career authors. My job was to be the opening act and in 15 minutes to set the tone for the day's marathon and share three pieces of job search or career management advice, and finally to answer a few callers' questions.

What the hell could I say in a few minutes, that would be meaningful, about the complexities of making a success of your professional life? And what I could say that would be good advice today and twenty years from now? The answer, I decided (as someone from a medical family who is therefore justifiably terrified of surgeons), was to imagine that I was dying, and these would be the last thoughts I could ever pass on.

Soooo…I didn't die during surgery, but if I had, these would be the three pieces of career advice torn from my lips in the last few minutes of life, this is what I would cram in to those moments:

 

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How Much Does A Professional Resume Writer Cost?

A resume is the critical marketing tool for any job search; it brands you, makes you visible to recruiters, and opens the doors of opportunity. If it works, you work; if it doesn’t work, you don’t work. Quite simply, it’s the most financially important document you will ever own.

This means that writing a resume is serious business that

• Requires an understanding of how recruitment and hiring strategies affect resumes
• Demands the clarity of objective analysis to decide how best to package the commercial commodity that is the professional you
• Insists on unique writing skills, because resumes abide by their own rules

Friday's 60 Seconds To Change Your Resume and Your Life

Friday’s  60 Second Resume Tactic
Core Competencies

Follow your Performance Profile with a Core Competency section. This section will contain all the words and phrases that are used in the job postings that describe your work. List all the words and phrases that describe your professional skill set. Layout your professional competencies in three columns for maximum visibility, use four columns if you have space constraints.

60 Seconds To Change Your Resume and Your Life. Thursday

Thursdays 60 Second Resume Tactic
Give Your Resume A Performance Profile

Many resumes that mistakenly begin without a Target Job Title, compound the error by starting the resume with a demand under the heading Job Objective. Now this may comes as a surprise, but no one really cares what you want unless they first know that you can do the job they are trying to fill.

60 Seconds To Change Your Resume and Your Life. Wednesday

Wednesdays 60 Second Resume Tactic
Use A Target Job Title On Your Resume

80% of resumes lack a target job title, and this makes a resume less accessible to a harried recruiter who might spend as little as five seconds reviewing it before moving on to another candidate’s resume where the writer has better focus and communication skills.

60 Seconds To Change Your Resume and Your Life. Tuesday

Tuesdays  60 Second Resume Tactic
Make Your Resume Talk Like Your Customer

We all know the customer comes first, that making sales and building business relationships requires getting to know your customers needs and then satisfying those needs.

So when it comes to writing a resume, why do we completely ignore this foundation on which all of business is built. If you are like most people, you write your resume, the most financially important document you will ever own, based only on what you think is important and expressed only in the way that you think is most appropriate; completely ignoring how your potential customers are prioritizing the needs of this job and the words they are using to express those needs.

60 Seconds To Change Your Resume and Your Life. Monday

Mondays 60 Second Resume Tactic
Give Your Resume Specific Focus

No hiring manager or recruiter ever reads a resume. In fact no one reads resumes unless there is a specific job to fill. This means, your resume cannot be a biography of all you have done in life. If you try to make it all things to all people, it will lack focus and never get pulled from any resume database or resonate with the immediate needs of a recruiter when it does get that fast, first time review.

Follow-Up & Thank You, Manners After a Job Interview

A Knock em Dead Secrets & Strategies Facebook follower writes, “When writing a "Thank you for the interview letter” should I address the person by first name since I usually refer to them by their first name in the interview?”

An interesting question of professional etiquette, where as much depends on the age and status differential between interviewer and candidate, as it depends on the interviewer being addressed as s/he prefers. Let’s review the essential rule of interview address and then apply it to a thank you or follow-up letter.

How To Follow-Up After a Job Interview

A Knock em Dead follower writes, “I went on an interview this last Monday and I thought it went really well. Should my follow-up letter be over-nighted?