I Don’t Need A Resume
By Anthony McCune
When you are at a point in your career where you are happy, when you have a job with which you are satisfied, when you see nothing but a secure financial future ahead of you — it is the best time to be sure you have a resume on hand that you keep up-to-date.
Having written more than 20,000 resumes I can say one thing without question, there can never be harm done by having a current resume. Time and time again, people who feel they have the job of their dreams, who believe they will never have to explore new employment, who “would not ever consider” leaving the position they have…suddenly, one day, find the need or develop the desire to at least explore, if not pursue, something else.
For businesspeople, especially those with small to medium sized companies, this need is frequently overlooked. A good proposal can be improved to great when the qualifications of the principal are well framed. As for executives, regardless of the size firm at which they are employed or the level of responsibility they hold, security is like life. It can change in an instant.
If you are not prepared today for your employment situation to change, for the worse, tomorrow these are the top 10 things for you to consider:
1. Be able to define what it is you want to do. Where do you want to do it. Who do you want to do it for.
2. As with any meaningful task, a simple guideline applies when it comes to securing new employment: Plan your work and work your plan.
3. Remember that you are a product. You must be able to identify the features and benefits you will offer an employer…whether that is someone who will employ you or who will contract your firm. There are three things everyone in sales must address, questions, concerns and objections. Be prepared to handle these when they come up in regard to the product you are marketing.
4. The most common mistake in terms of resume writing is seeing the document as an independent entity. A resume should be prepared hand-in-hand with the cover letter that will accompany it. {If you don’t need a cover letter, that is all the more reason to provide one.} Remember, you are preparing sales collateral to market a product.
5. The employer {or the company buying a product/service} will have a simple question, “What’s in it for me?”. You must be able to effectively state your objective.
6. Understand that there will be a portion of your background that must be presented to gain and interview and additional information to win an offer. There maybe a third step, for which you should be prepared, which is to have additional information to provide to support your position as you negotiate your compensation package.
7. While a resume will not get a job for you, having your qualifications presented most effectively will allow you to direct the course of the interview. When you arrive a potential employer, based on the information you have provided, will either want to learn more about you – which is most common – or already be interested in hiring you. {See point 5}
8. It is essential to achieve the highest quality results when you seek new employment to create and effectively execute a multi-faceted strategy.
9. You need to establish a tone through your communication to a potential employer. Consider how aggressive you want to be in pursuing an interview. How strong is your effort going to be to pursue a specific position or to join a particular organization.
10. Choose between “general” or “personalized”. Forget mail merge. Writing the same letter to me as you do a thousand other people while simply adjusting the contact information is worthless. If it is important to you, write a letter meant for that specific company, that particular position and no other.
