Think of your job resume as a trophy case. Think of what achievements you would put in it, what you would put in the front, and what the engraved plates would say.

Job search time is one of the most valuable commodities we have. It is considered by most as being more valuable than the money you can make on the job because you can earn more money, but you can’t make more time.

Waking up each morning, your job search is faced with “today”, and that comes with the accountability of you making the most of every opportunity. That means - don’t let today’s job search time go to waste - don’t be unfocused, negative, or defeated. Make the most out of every day.

Evaluate how you are spending your time during your job search. Make sure you are focused and remove any distractions. Get rid of any self-pity, discouragements or disappointments and execute the job search with purpose.

To put a dollar value on job search time, consider this – if you are a $100k+ person, then you are “losing” a minimum of $1,900 of income every week you are unemployed. Don’t let time, and income, slip away.

I was listening to the radio today, and there was a segment on about job search. It was talking about how there are thousands of people applying for a single job posting. It was also talking about how some of the people applying may be over-qualified.

This is all true. What really caught my attention was that the radio show guest was suggesting that jobseekers have 4 to 6 resumes – and this simply is not true, unless you have no idea what your job target is.

This is simply a myth, and my professional opinion is that a single resume can fully support the job target of someone who is focused on a specific type of career. For example, it is easy to have a sales-oriented resume that could be used across a number of industries for a variety of roles (ranging from account management to sales management and business development). It’s when you start using a “shotgun” job search approach that you can’t match your resume with a job opportunity – and then - you don’t get any interviews or job offers.

Resume writing is about getting job interviews - that is the bottom line. The job resume is not about “getting” the job – that is what the interview is for – the resume writing process is all about how to build your best resume.

Resume Writing Planning

Approaching your resume writing task takes a bit of planning. Think of it this way – would you just jump in the car and head out on vacation without knowing which direction you were going, having an idea of where you would stay and having some sense of what the trip is going to cost? You shouldn’t approach your resume writing process like that either because if you don’t know what your job target is, then it is most likely that your job search will end up going around in circles.

Know Your Audience

A key point of resume writing is to know who is going to be reading your resume. I don’t mean whether it is an HR person or the janitor, what I’m referring to is understanding that you are writing for an entry-level position versus an executive leadership role. It makes a huge difference when thinking about being over-qualified or under-qualified and how you present your job target level. Know how to write a resume that speaks the language that you will be speaking in the new role you are pursuing.

The Best of Success!

President Obama got the luxury of a – do over – or a mulligan in golfing terms, for taking the oath of The Presidency. If you personally could take a single – do over – for a job search, job decision, career change or college major choice, what would that one – do over – be for you?

Would you approach things differently, or maybe focus on a different type of career?

Networking during a job search is the most highly rated and successful way of finding out about interview opportunities. The whole process can seem a bit overwhelming and nerve-racking, but you don’t have to go it alone. Many times, job openings are passed along between, what seems to be, the most unlikely sources. You never know who knows what until you can have conversation with them.

The Low-Key Approach

Get the word out that you are looking for a new job. Contact family and friends – anyone you can think of that can possibly help spread the word about your job hunt. There are two schools of thought here- simply ask others for job search advice and direction or directly ask them if they know of any job openings that fit your skills and qualifications – do they know of anyone else in you field that you can network with? Set daily quotas for contacts you need / should make – the more contacts you make the easier the whole process will become.

A more Structured Approach

Structured networking is another option and involves identifying and attending social gathering or business association meetings. A chamber of commerce event for example, or a luncheon being provided by a local Human Resources Association, or maybe a conference being sponsored by an industry specific organization. You can see the potential of networking with these types of groups.

Online Forums

Don’t forget about online forums. If you belong to any social networking groups, don’t be shy about chiming in with you thoughts or questions. This is also a good way to network with other career professionals who just might have some good advice or information to share with you.

At all costs, follow through with networking and referral activity. Don’t go through all the effort to network and let possible opportunities pass you by simply because you did not think a certain type of referral would or could benefit you.

Always have a copy of your resume with you. Know how to write a resume and take it with you when out and about at your job networking events. Not having your resume with you is like going on a sales call without your sales brochure.

The Best of Success!

Have you ever seen pictures of a palm tree in the middle of a strong storm or tornado? It may be bent so far down that the top of the tree is almost touching the ground. Have you noticed that after the storm passes that the palm tree snaps right back into place, like nothing ever happened? Sure, it may be missing a few leaves from all the punishment, but it is still standing strong. It has actually grown stronger during the time it was being beaten down.

The palm tree has tenacity, and so should your job search. Job search tenacity is weathering the storm of time, energy, effort and maybe lost income while networking and prospecting for the career opportunity you know is out there. It is holding on firmly, being persistent and refusing to be knocked down – it’s snapping back upright when you have a bad day of job hunting.

There are going to be difficult periods during a job search. If you understand what employers are looking for, apply some good job search tips and know how to write a resume that sends the right message, then you will come out of each storm stronger, wiser and better off than you were before.

Feel free to contact us with job search or resume questions.

The job search tips below should come in extremely handy for anyone in job search mode. Employers are obviously looking for certain things in job candidates, and all jobseekers, from entry-level to executive-level, should keep these key things in mind so they don’t lose their job search direction.

Start by realizing a critical piece of information - employers are looking for things in you that represent value to them. Basically, employers don’t care what you want from a job search or what your job objective is – they want to know how you can help them reach their corporate goals.

Here are 5 common things employers look for:

#1…. How can you help my company increase market share or increase revenue?

#2…. Who can boost our overall customer satisfaction and spur customer retention rates?

#3…. How would you be able to create and implement streamlined procedures that increase efficiencies and productivity?

#4…. Are you able to be a change agent and bring organizational structure to our Human Resources needs?

#5…. Do you have the ability to recognize and implement emerging technologies to advance our company growth?

Avoiding job search mistakes is not always easy, but try thinking like an employer and see what kind of a difference it makes in both your mindset and your success.

Feel free to contact me with questions.

Resume objectives is one of the most critical and most misunderstood aspects of a powerful job resume. Bottom line, resume objectives are overrated and misused.

Let’s get right to the point.

Point #1…. An objective is a goal. It is something you work toward achieving. It is typically something personal that you want to accomplish – It’s about you.

Point #2…. A job resume is an advertisement about your job skills. You want people reading the resume to buy your product (that would be you). Your resume needs to show how the reader is going to gain future benefit from buying your product – It’s about the reader.

Point #3…. So, resume objectives is a polar opposite statement by default. Why would you talk about your personal objective when you are trying to advertise the future job value you bring to someone else? This is not going to get you any closer to your personal goal of getting hired.

Think of it this way – if you could make the opening of your resume read like a well designed billboard along a busy city street, what would it say? How would you catch attention of readers and make them want to contact you?

Forget about resume objectives and think in terms of a resume value proposition statement – an opening to your resume that quickly catches the attention of the reader based on what the reader is looking for – the value you will bring to the reader’s world. See the difference?

Try this new approach. You will see a big difference.

Feel free to contact me with questions.

How to create resume content that really appeals to readers is a challenge that every do-it-yourself jobseeker struggles with when trying to put together a resume on their own. Even when they enlist help from family and friends, who think they know how to create resume layouts that will catch the eye, it just does not seem to come together as nicely, or as quickly, as pictured or hoped. Why is this? The reason is that there are multiple pieces that positively, absolutely need to come together to make a resume reader-friendly, while dynamically demonstrating how the job candidate can add value to the potential employer

As an Internationally Certified Resume Writer, I have been trained on how to create resume layouts, with strong content, that sparks interest quickly. It is as easy as A-B-C or 1-2-3 for me to immediately spot problem areas in a resume and make recommendations to improve the chances of the resume generating interviews. After all, you can’t get a job offer if you don’t get the interview first, and that is what the resume has to do – get you in the door for a face-to-face meeting where you have the opportunity to demonstrate your qualifications and have the opportunity to close the deal with a job offer.

Here are some main points to remember and consider for how to create resume visibility, either by the human eye or by automated resume scanning software.

The first thing to remember is that a resume is not read like a book – it is skimmed.

The opening of the resume needs to serve as the hook to entice the reader to read more.

The overall look and feel should not oversell or undersell your abilities – all based on your job target.

How to create resume keywords is HUGE. Industry specific keywords need to be sprinkled throughout the resume.

Company descriptions and job descriptions add tremendous value if presented correctly.

You MUST separate duties from accomplishments, and accomplishments need to be action filled.

Any overlapping employment or gaps in employment needs to be managed effectively.

Aging of information needs to be controlled (obvious reasons).

You need to either dummy-down or ramp-up the wording content (wordsmithing) based on entry-level versus executive-level job targets.

There are many other factors that go into preparing a top-notch resume that all help get more interview requests than the average resume. A couple of closing comments to share on how to create resume writing success – and this wraps the job search process up in a nice package – know where your job target is headed (what to put in the resume) and know how you are going to drive your resume across the bridge (how to circulate or distribute your resume to the job targets you’ve identified).

Do you have career, job search, résumé, networking or interview questions? If you want to remain anonymous in your job search, feel free to send your questions to my personal email. I will do my best to answer as many questions as possible (including in my blog) while keeping the sources of questions confidential.

Ken Moore is an Internationally Certified Resume Writer – helping connect people with careers. Having personal experience with unexpected job loss, and putting others through it, he has a first-hand understanding when answering job search questions. Visit Ken on the web.