It’s Your Career…Sell It Well
Since employers receive 600 – 1,000 resumes for every position they post publicly, it is essential that your resume be more than just a nicely formatted documentation of your experience and credentials. As a highly-paid professional, you need a resume that compels the decision maker to respond like they have just read an advertisement. If this is missing from your current resume, it explains the lack of response you are getting, as it is nearly impossible to raise your hand high enough in the current sea of applicants to get noticed if your resume looks like everyone else’s.
The real intention of the resume is not to get you a job, it is to get you a phone call. So the document does not need to overload them with everything that you have done and everywhere you have been. You need to give employers the highlights of your strengths and achievements so that they are curious enough to give you a phone call to learn more about you. You need a 30-second commercial.
In order to do this most effectively, it is imperative that you are extremely clear on your message to a potential employer; you need to state in no uncertain terms what you can do for them and why you are the person to do it. When you define your unique combination of strengths, achievements and education, your unique value proposition, you are positioning yourself as an investment that will pay great dividends for the next company that hires you. You are positioning yourself as the Rock Star that you are. In doing this, you are no longer just another candidate. You are THE answer to their needs.
This takes more than just a resume. It takes a complete personal branding strategy. Can you imagine a political candidate approaching a campaign with just a list of what he or she has done in the past? In order to win, that candidate needs a platform, talking points, and most importantly, a differentiation between themselves and anyone else who is running for that office.
Elements of an Effective Resume
In the same way, to be effective, your resume needs to do these things:
- Define you and how you do business , quickly give someone a good idea of who you are
- Identify your core strengths to attract the employers that are looking for someone with those strengths
- Communicate your value proposition to explain why you are worth a premium price
- Strongly support your core strengths with specific, quantifiable achievements to prove your value
- Make all of these points in a relevant way to your target position
- Minimize the impact of any liabilities, like switching industries, unemployment, age, etc.
- Look completely different than anything else an employer or recruiter may receive, while maintaining a first class image
Your Immediate Results
When you are successful at the above goals, you immediately see different results when using a professionally branded resume:
- When applying for posted positions online, your response rate increases.
- When you update your online profiles on the job boards and LinkedIn, you receive unsolicited phone calls and emails from interested recruiters and employers who have found you while searching for qualified candidates.
- When getting your resume in the hands of the decision makers, you receive phone interviews from those employers who are looking for exactly what you have to offer them.
- During these interviews, the employers are extremely eager to talk with you, and you find they do most of the talking. Your resume has pre-sold you, they know you can do the job, and it’s only a matter of whether or not you are a good personality fit.
- You are presented as a top performer, a Rock Star, and therefore positioned to receive a higher offer in pay. It is easier to negotiate for a better compensation package as well, as long as your Rock Star positioning is maintained throughout the hiring process with stellar interviewing and follow up.
Our Process
As you can imagine, the traditional process for writing an executive resume has to be thrown out the window in order to accomplish the professional branding that is needed in today’s six figure job market.
At Career Resume Consulting, the resume preparation process consists of the following three steps:
- Filling out an intensive online resume application, taking 6-16 hours to complete (can be broken up into several sessions)
- Five one-on-one resume preparation and branding sessions
- A final 60-minute resume presentation and review session
This process is exhaustive and is often described as exhausting, even grueling… but in working this extensively with me, it not only allows me to craft an extremely persuasive resume, but also develops highly persuasive stories for your interview situations and it boosts your confidence in every area of your communication strategy. These specific compelling stories of your achievements with quantifiable results, win you the interview. You are not only given a new resume that gets results, but you also have 25-45 pages of our notes documenting your entire career. This is study material for every interview you’ll have until you retire.
My clients tell me one of my greatest strengths is the ability to pull achievements out of their career they had either forgotten or not even known existed, and phrase achievements in a way that succinctly tells their story and shows them to be the Rock Star they truly are. My clients consistently claim that this is the greatest value of my resume writing services.
This process is extremely difficult to do on your own, since it is hard for an individual to assess the strengths of their competition and to know what employers are specifically looking for today relative to each position. This is where an experienced professional like me comes in handy.
Next Steps
If you want to run with the big dogs and be paid what you’re worth, you need a new resume that makes potential employers pay attention, want to get to know more about you and actually pick up the phone to call you. Take the next step to owning your own Results Resume by scheduling a time to talk with me. Take this quick survey to give me some background about your career and a member of my team will contact you to schedule a free initial consultation.
