A resume is a small part of personal marketing. Very few actually ponder what they are passionate and excel at before putting pen to paper. Prose is not the answer if you want to get your point across, however statistics you can verify go a long way to corroborating your expertise. You definitely don’t want to have a novel written by a resume writer and go into the interview with your mouth agape at the first question. Here’s a fun exercise, take all you action words and make them opposite and assume that is what you are competing against or are you? So if you write “team player” on your resume, are you saying that you are distinguishing yourself against individuals who only work solo? If you write “accomplished” on your resume, are you distinguishing yourself against a poorly accomplished individual? Get the point? Simply said, make your words count; you have less than 10 seconds of the employers’ attention. Think about how fast your channel surf while watching TV and tell me what grabs your attention quick enough to stop.
If you have ever used Twitter and bother to surf through all the comments from the people you follow, what 140 character statement makes you stop and open the associated link, or what makes you send the information to others? Do you always repost the same individual’s information? If so, does their brand appeal to you? Are you trying to capture their attention or worse yet are you schmoozing?
Write down all the words that appeal to you while you are surfing the net, reading a magazine or newspaper. These words have much to do with your life interests. Now relate them to your life and see if it is your experience or your interests outside of your current experience that draws you to these words. This will distinguish what you are passionate about. Now take your expertise and see if there is a connection. If you note a connection, you are on your way to creating your brand. If not, you need to know how to get to the life you are passionate about.
Cheers to your success! Diane Rines, Wise Career Move LLC, All Rights Reserved
Credits: The opposite exercise was derived from “The Art of the Start” by Guy Kawasaki.
No comments:
Post a Comment