Part 4
Starting
to get your Resume/Linked In profile/About Me together
Hopefully by this point you
have started to amass some job skills, whether it’s specific software skills or
more loosey goosey type skills such as “good with people.” Depending on what
you want to do, you’ll likely need a combo of both. If you are IT or Analytical
and can’t have a conversation with someone and can’t present to a group in a
cohesive way, a management position in that area is not going to be for you.
You’ll be considered a back-room player—which is fine, but your progression
will stop at a certain point. (that doesn’t mean that the money will stop—think
about how much back room actuaries earn…) And if you are a good manager and people
person, you’ll need a skill set behind you to be able to move to the next step.
What I want to do now is to
help you formulate your skill set into something that is easy to read, looks
good and will help explain who are you are to people who will be looking at a
sheet of paper.
1. The top
of your resume. The only reason I bring this up is because many of you will be
applying for jobs while you are in college and may not apply in the area that
your family lives (ie you want to work in NYC for the summer or permanently—your
family lives in Ohio—you are in school in Florida). In this case, you need to
put only your name, phone number and email address (and a professional blog
address if you have one).
If you’re trying for that NYC job, the company
will want to know that you’ve figured out where to live so if you have a local
address put it as part of the top. Putting one in Ohio will be turn-off some
people (“I don’t want to deal with an intern/new hire who now has to figure out
where to live….”). You want people to think that working with you is easy, not
difficult—that you’ve figured out how to get where you want to work and how to
live. If you don’t have an address, then talk about your situation in a cover
letter. Even if it’s a full-time job,
you want the company to know that you’ve figured out your living situation or
can figure it before you start. You can
do that by saying I can start with two week’s notice—and then figure out how to
sleep on someone’s couch or get a quick temporary apartment share.
The
next part of your resume should basically be a short summary preceded by a
title. Your resume will be looked at quickly so you want to make the most
impact as fast as possible. Generally HR
people and recruiters look at the top of a resume first to see where you live,
then go to the end to see where and when you went to college, and then will go
back again to the beginning to see if it says anything related to what they are
looking for.
So if
you give yourself a title, you are capturing a moment where you are best able
to position yourself in the readers mind. Your level and experience will define
the title. My title is Senior Level Executive Recruiter and Talent Acquisition
Specialist. When I worked in advertising it would have been Seasoned
Advertising Account Executive, if I was in IT I would say Senior IT
Professional with Financial services Experience. You can say something like
Junior Copywriter or Social Media Strategist—as long as you have something to
back it up and you’re not lying, it’s okay.
So look
at this:
Brandon
H. Quillian
646-822-2678
Copyblog.wordpress.com
Social
Media Strategist
The
next part of your resume can be a short summary and then some bullet pointed
skills that highlight what you can do. The one thing that you don’t want to put
on your resume is an objective. A “I’m looking to work….” Portion is not going
to help you get a job. Companies don’t really want to know what you want to do,
they want to know how you are going to help them achieve their goals. At some
point in your career they will pay more attention to what you want, but not
until you become a valued employee and a company wants to make you happy and
not leave.
My next
post will be the skill section and the rest of the resume.
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