Job search

,

There's No Reading Between the Lines on Your Resume - Here's Why

,
There's No Reading Between the Lines on Your Resume - Here's Why

I recently watched a great job search webinar delivered by my fellow coach and friend, Anish Majumdar. While he was sharing tips about crafting an effective resume, he said a few lines that I just couldn’t shake:

“Don’t expect any employer to read between the lines on your resume…”

“They don’t know you!”

“You have to tell them!”

I’m paraphrasing slightly, but the essence and power of these three statements is clear. One of the mistakes I have seen clients repeatedly make when discussing their resumes is assuming knowledge on the part of their audience. As they distill their stories into concise bullet points (no easy feat), the complete, first-hand narrative they have in their head is somehow assumed to be accessible to their readers who, “should just understand what I mean.” The simple question I respond with is, “how?”

Unless you possess powers of telepathy and/or your target audience has ESP, there is no transmission network yet in existence to share your thoughts/memories/knowledge with another human that ultimately doesn’t rely on speech or the written word. Until we develop the ability to directly beam our thoughts via WiFi or Bluetooth, we have to make the implicit, explicit -- and tell our audience exactly what we mean.

Why Knowing Your Truths is Key to a Successful Job Search

Why Knowing Your Truths is Key to a Successful Job Search

It is often said that “the truth will set you free.” I would extend that adage, adding that in many aspects of life, the truth will also protect you and guide you. The realm of job searching is no exception. Conducting a job search is fraught with many challenges along the way. These range from what job(s) to pursue and how to effectively market yourself, to what role to accept. One of the biggest challenges is maintaining resilience despite the inevitable frustrations and rejections you will experience. Searching for a job is hard enough. I believe that it can become even more arduous if we either aren’t honest with or forget the truths about ourselves.

I believe that there are two main truths that any professional should reflect on and identify before they begin a job search:

  1. The truth about what you want

  2. The truth about who you are

Having clarity and conviction on these two issues before you take your first steps into a job search will help you save time, act with clear purpose, and provide a degree of psychological and emotional shielding to deflect the slings and arrows sent your way. Think of it like taking an intentional step back and performing a pre-job search gut check before any actions are taken.

,

Controlling Your Career Narrative: 3 Steps to Shift Perception to Reality

,
Controlling Your Career Narrative: 3 Steps to Shift Perception to Reality

Your career narrative is one of the most powerful tools you have at your disposal to inform and influence how others see you. Quite often, however, I encounter clients who either aren’t clear on what their narrative is or don’t feel like they are in control of it. In both cases, not having ownership of your career narrative can impact how others perceive and engage with you. This calls to mind the trite maxim, “perception is reality.” While reality is absolute, given that perception is subjective, you have the power to shape it through your storytelling. However, for it to become reality, your storytelling must be accompanied by evidence and action.

We have all experienced the co-worker who we believe is not very good at their job, yet somehow is well known by company leadership and always seems to advance ahead of those who produce better work. Whether we like it or not, these individuals have mastered their career narrative and have learned to bend reality to their desired perception. The challenge for the rest of us who do great work but aren’t the slickest salesperson is to shift perception to our reality.

3 Simple Questions that Can Radically Transform Your Resume

3 Simple Questions that Can Radically Transform Your Resume

For many job seekers, writing a resume can often feel like a difficult or awkward exercise in professional self-reflection. Though they say that “hindsight is 20/20,” why is it that visualizing one’s professional past can appear so hazy? Well, depending on the length of your career and/or tenure in your roles, you are often digging through the layers of many years of experience in order to surface the gems that should appear on your resume. Since writing a resume is not something that you do often, your excavation tools may not be as sharp as needed for the task. In this case, your digging tools are the questions that will help you uncover the achievement stories that will effectively position you for your target audience.

In a previous post, I wrote about how to adopt a journalistic approach to help you build context in your resume. Here I want to share three specific questions that will help you select rich achievement content for your resume and help you drill down to why it matters.

,

The Juice vs. The Sauce -- Which One is Your Professional Brand?

,
The Juice vs. The Sauce -- Which One is Your Professional Brand?

Imagine that the whole purpose of your professional brand is to answer the question, “Why should I hire/advance/speak to you?” The quality of your response to this question is crucial, whether you are a job seeker or seeking career advancement. Whatever your response, it’s important that it be memorable and stick with your audience. This is where “the juice vs. the sauce” comes in.

“Why should I hire/advance/speak to you,” really means, “why should I care?” By answering the “why” question effectively…you can make your audience care. When they care, that means you have achieved buy-in. When you have achieved buy-in, you can be hired or advanced to the place you wish to be.

3 Reasons You Should Chase the Company, Not the Job in Your Job Search

3 Reasons You Should Chase the Company, Not the Job in Your Job Search

I’m willing to bet that you really care about your work environment. Whether it’s the culture, how leadership treats staff, opportunities for growth, name your issue… you have spent time considering these either when choosing to leave or take a job. These concerns are key to professionals, but as job seekers, our focus is often in the wrong place. The funny thing is that the job doesn’t contain these critical elements — the company does. This is why I strongly advise job seekers to chase the company, not the job, in their job search process.