I’ve been working on my resume since losing my job. One issue I had with it, is that it didn’t seem to represent who I was. I’ve been thinking about injecting more personality into it, and in fact, started doing that with my cover letter. I am more than a list of job responsibilities.
This past week I went to a session by Joe Konop of One Great Resume. He verified what I had been thinking and gave me other useful tips. If you’re looking for someone who knows how to present yourself in the best light, contact Joe.
Here are a three key ingredients to show your true self to help make you stand out:
1) You need to market yourself. Joe’s had a 20 year career in marketing, so when he mentioned this it made a lot of sense to me, being a marketer myself. You need to show why you are the best product on the market. You need to show what you’ve done before, but more importantly, what you can do for a new employer. They need to feel like they’re making a good decision to bring you on board. You need to quickly and accurately tell people who you are and what you do. Think of it as a tagline. What would your tagline be?
2) Showcase your strengths. Tell the story and give context around what you are really good at. Don’t downplay or diminish your talents. Joe explained that if you just say, “I wrote the newsletter” that doesn’t say as much as “I wrote a weekly newsletter that was 14-15 pages of original content that talked about new initiatives, company news, and new products, that was distributed to 20,000 people.” See how different those two descriptions are? Think of yourself in larger terms.
3) Talk about your unique talents. Joe talked about a client who said they were fluent in Chinese but they didn’t list it anywhere on their resume. That’s a unique selling proposition. Use it, flaunt it, us it to tell the world you’re unique!
What seems odd or different to you could be exactly what somebody else thinks is special. It reminded me of a time after college when I submitted a job application and filled out the Hobbies section by writing that I liked “collecting Beatles records, and watching the Simpsons.” When I went in for an interview the manager said, “Right off the bat, I have to say you scored points because I love watching the Simpsons too.” You never know what will make you stand out from the crowd.
These three ingredients have made me see myself differently. It’s made me update my resume so I’m able to market myself more effectively. Do these tips make you think differently about yourself? How do you present your true self?
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