Once you’ve gotten your qualifications tweaked, you should list your experience. I prefer the term Career Summary as a header, because it gives the reader the impression you’ve been on course all along, even if it seems you’ve gotten side-tracked from time to time. Don’t worry if some of your jobs haven’t been in your chosen line of work. In this era of downsizing, company reorganizing, corporate bankruptcies, and wage-freezes, most of us have had to take a detour or two.

While these out-of-field jobs may seem like negatives, you can easily turn them into positives by looking at them and highlighting them a little differently. For instance, the fact that you’ve been in roles that don’t necessarily line up with your preferred career path shows that you’re committed to staying employed in a tough economy. It also shows a willingness to be flexible, an ability to learn job duties outside your skill-set, and that you do whatever it takes to meet your financial obligations. These are all attribute employers appreciate.

Let’s use the nurse from the last column as an example. Let’s say she was laid-off for four months and worked as a waitress while she secured another nursing role. She could list that job like this:

6/8/09-present: Joe’s Diner, Waitress

Fast-paced environment to keep me active, motivated, & fresh while securing a permanent position in nursing

Personally, I would much rather see this on someone’s resume than big gaps in employment. Even if the applicant has enough severance to survive for a significant amount of time, the longer a person goes without working, the easier it is for him or her to become complacent. The nurse in our example has shown the hiring person that she recognizes this possibility and is being proactive in overcoming it. Again, for someone who is able to read between the lines, she has made a seemingly negative career detour look like a great move on her part!

For the jobs you’ve had within your chosen profession, you should list enough information to highlight your proficiencies without getting too wordy. Someone within your field will understand the skills necessary to be successful in those roles, so focus on results and achievements versus job responsibilities. If you’re a retail manager looking for a position in a retail environment, you don’t want your resume to say this:

4/14/02-9/26/09: Joe’s Department Store, Store Manager

Responsible for hiring, firing, training, banking….blah, blah, blah!

If I’m looking for a retail store manager, I know what your responsibilities were at your last job. Why not tell me something that will separate you from the pack; something like this:

4/14/02-9/26/09: Joe’s Department Store, Store Manager

Reduced losses to one half of the company goal; trained 3 Store Managers for my District; maintained a sales increase above 6% for my entire tenure at the location

The difference between the first Store Manager and the second one is that the first one is task-oriented and the second one is results-oriented. I’ll take the results-oriented individual any day!

After your career summary, you can list any number of items. Education is important. If your schooling is in your field, the reasons to list it are obvious, but even if you’ve taken unrelated courses, you should put them in. It shows a desire to expand your horizons, a willingness to spend your free time constructively, and an ability to handle additional responsibility and work (trust me, every employer is looking for this skill!)

You can also list volunteer work, additional accomplishments or endeavors, awards, extra-curricular activities, or anything else that will help market you as an exceptional individual. It all comes down to how you present the information.

If you have space, there’s nothing wrong with adding a closing paragraph. Remember, you’re selling yourself and all good sales people close the sale! You could put something like this:

I’m a winner. I think like a winner, I act like a winner, and I find ways to win! We need to meet to discuss how I can bring this attitude and my passion for success to your organization.

If I saw that as the last statement on someone’s resume, I would be hard-pressed not to call him or her! I would want to talk to this person just to see what he or she considers passion for success!

Lastly, construct an appealing layout, and make it consistent! If one of your section headers looks like this:

QUALIFICATIONS

make them all look like that. You must assume the decision-maker is a number-cruncher and/or an “A” personality. This means he or she has an analytical mind and prefers logic, order, and consistency. Don’t use more than two font styles, and only change from your main font style if it really adds to the visual presentation. Less is more when it comes to the layout; otherwise, your resume can come across as cluttered and make you look unorganized!

I’ve seen every kind of resume layout you can imagine. The best ones always help me determine who the person is and what he or she will do on my team. As you construct and edit your resume, keep asking yourself if what you’re putting in or taking out helps to answer one or both of those questions for the reader. If not, it doesn’t belong in your resume. Be wise and selective in what you put in and what you leave out.

Make sure it is no more than two pages. Any more than that and you’ll bore the reader. You will immediately give the impression that every conversation with you will be a long dissertation of non-relevant or unnecessary information. Never end your resume in the middle of a page. Either lengthen or shorten it to fit perfectly on the page(s). This is where font sizes can be really helpful. A one-page resume is superb, and a two-page resume is acceptable, but only if you have too much relevant and necessary information to fit on one page.

That should do it for your resume. If you take your time and follow my suggestions, I am certain yours will stand out from the pack and garner some attention from prospective employers. So next time, we’ll begin looking at researching jobs and making calls, so you can figure out who to send these hot resumes to!

Just like your cover letter should make the employer eager to read your resume, your resume should make him eager to meet with you face-to-face. You accomplish this by selling yourself better than the other applicants. Think of it like this: people don’t spend $100 on Nike tennis shoes because they’re the best shoes in the world. They might or might not be; I really don’t know. People buy them because the advertisers sell them!

So your resume is your advertisement. You’re the marketer and the product! That said, you should tailor your resume to suit the needs of your target market (the employer). In other words, you should have a standard resume that can be adjusted slightly depending on the position you’re seeking and the personality of the hiring person.

As I mentioned last time, it’s likely most of your resumes will be submitted online or as attachments, so you’re extremely limited in your visual presentation. Back in the day, I used Publisher to design a spectacular layout and printed it on heavy cotton paper—grey with blue font. It stood out from the pack like a glow-in-the-dark necklace, and I almost always got called for an interview!

Those days are gone, though, so you have to use different tricks. Bold print for certain words or phrases is one way, and really does a good job of making that particular statement jump off the page! (See what I mean?!) Italics can help emphasize key words as well. Different size fonts and highlighting are two other tricks, but I’d use these with less frequency. I typically use only two or three font sizes for the body of the resume: one standard size (14 pt) for section headings, another for bullet points in the body of the sections (10 pt), and sometimes 12-point for opening and closing paragraphs. Full justification always looks better than left-margin-only justification.

Those are a few tricks you can try, but the key is to use what fits your style and personality. Remember that the prospective employer only wants to know two things about you: who you are and what you’ll do on his team. The layout of your resume helps tell him who you are. You’ll use the content of the resume to further describe yourself and highlight your skills.

On that note, let’s talk about the body of the resume. There’s nothing I hate more than opening a resume and seeing this:

OBJECTIVE: To obtain a position that allows me to use my strengths to help the company succeed while offering room for personal advancement.

My response to this opening is usually to close it up and hit the delete key. Why? Because this person obviously is either stupid, lacks creativity, or he thinks I’m stupid! Every person on the planet has that same objective! You have limited space to get me interested in you. Why waste it by telling me something I already know! Instead, say something of value, and ignore the “Objective” heading. Just put your name and other personal information at the top of the page, and write a full paragraph opening below that—something like this:

For much of my life and career, I have specialized in caring for the elderly and terminally ill. I have a natural gift and strong desire to serve individuals in this stage of life, my goal being to keep them as functional as possible. My expertise in restorative nursing has given me the opportunity to develop one of the first restorative programs in the state for an Adult Day Care facility. This program includes individualized exercise programs and an exercise focus group. In addition, I have created and overseen In-Service programs for entire facilities. I have strong staff development skills, and I love to teach. As a certified STNA Instructor, I had a near-perfect passage rate for my students, and I always earn the highest possible scores on all audits. Combined with my long history of solid performance in various other challenging roles as an RN, these factors make me an excellent candidate for a position within your firm.

After reading this opening paragraph—whether you know anything about nursing or not—you now know a lot about this particular nurse! That opening is probably a bit too long (remember the two- to four-sentence rule), but it’s well-written, creative, and full of good meat, making it far more effective than the typical opening most resume-readers see. That’s your goal!

After the opening, then, should be your characteristics or attributes. This is where you describe your style: who you are and what you’re passionate about. These are not so much job skills as they are job styles. They are the inner motivators that drive your decision-making and action-taking.

• Team-building & mentoring: I instill a winning attitude within my organization using training, communication, & motivation to maximize potential; I am skilled at building a team of individuals who possess the intangibles necessary for long-term success; I believe in establishing an environment where team members are empowered to grow & thrive within their set boundaries

• Sales-driven & focused: I find opportunities for growing sales while maintaining crisp, uncluttered locations; I do not settle for a “nice” increase
• Creative problem-solving skills: I root out the true causes of issues & look for the solution that works best immediately & long-term; I treat the problems, not the symptoms

As you can see, even though there are only three bullet-points, there is a wealth of information about this individual. Just like the RN above, this person has effectively described his strengths, and illustrated exactly what he means by phrases such as team-building and creative problem-solving.

Depending on the amount of real-world experience you have, the next section would be your Qualifications. Or, if your prior experience is limited, you could also list them with your with your Key Attributes, and label it as Key Attributes & Qualifications. Either way, your qualifications should specifically target the job you’re seeking. For instance, if you’re applying for an auto mechanic position, the fact that you can merchandise clothing in a department store is completely irrelevant. So give careful thought to what skills are necessary to perform the job effectively, and what skills you possess that made you successful in the past and/or will make you successful in the future.

OK, we’re about halfway there, so we’ll stop for this week. This should give you plenty to think about and work on until I finish up on the next blog. Then after we get through resume-writing, we’ll tackle the job hunt itself and take a look at things like phone skills, interviewing, follow-up, and negotiating salary (everyone’s favorite!).

Til then…

Saemus Sutton is the creator of the Wash, Rinse, Repeat leadership mentoring model and author of the book Leaders Make Leaders.  For more information, visit his website at www.leadersmakeleaders.com.

If you’re one of those individuals who is currently on the job hunt, you have some stiff competition. There are going to be more—and better— qualified applicants seeking the same occupation you are, so it’s more important than ever before to position yourself to be the best candidate available. In addition, since it’s a buyer’s market, employers are in a position to be as picky as they’ve ever been.

So what can you do to increase your odds of winning the job lottery? For starters, your cover letter must be impeccable. If you don’t get called for an interview, you have zero chance of getting the job!

If I have ten resumes in my inbox, there’s a good chance I’ll skim all of them and carefully read at least half of them. But if I have a hundred resumes, I’ll still only skim ten of them and carefully read about half of those. Just because I have more resumes doesn’t mean I have more time to read them all. The simple fact is I don’t! Most employers would probably say the same thing, so the trick is to be one of the ten resumes that gets skimmed. One of the ways you accomplish that is by enticing the employer in your cover letter.

In this e-age, your cover letter is usually an email with a resume attached, so you can’t use any visual aids like fancy paper. Therefore, the body of the cover letter is vital. Give this careful consideration, using your resume as a guide. A good cover letter has three key components.

First, it has two teasers. These are the opening and closing of the cover letter. Just like a TV commercial, you have limited time and space to get the employer to read on. You must grab his or her attention within the first two sentences, so writing, “after seeing your ad in the local paper for the available position, I decided it was….blah, blah, blah!” Next! Everyone writes that!

Try something that fits your style, like this:

Dear Saemus,

I almost fell out of my chair when I saw your ad for (insert job name), because my skills line up so well with what you’re looking for…

Now there’s a letter I’ll probably continue reading, because it didn’t get plagiarized from a Resume 101 textbook. (Feel free to plagiarize that opening from me, though!)

The same concept applies to the closing. “I look forward to hearing from you,” is just about the worst thing to write for a couple reasons. First of all, it’s what everyone else writes, and therefore, a waste of valuable space. Secondly, It puts the ball in the employer’s court, and requires him to make the next move. So you’ve not only given this person control of your future, but you’ve also communicated that you lack key characteristics like initiative, follow-up, and persistence.

Instead, your closing should make him eager to open your resume. It must have impact. For instance, “I’m a winner. I think like a winner, I act like a winner, and I find ways to win! I’ll call you Wednesday to see when we can meet.” Just make sure that you’re ready to put your money where your mouth is. Don’t tell someone you find ways to win if you give up easily, and don’t call Thursday if you said Wednesday!

Between the opening and closing is the body of the letter, which might just be the most important aspect of your job search (I’ll probably say that three more times over the next few articles, so deal with it!). This is where the reader will truly decide whether or not to open your resume. Your teasers might be great, but without some substance in your letter, he has no reason to move forward with you.

The person hiring you only wants to know two things: who you are and what you’ll do on his team. You must answer these questions without being too wordy, so two to four paragraphs of two to four sentences each is appropriate. No more! Otherwise, it won’t even get read.

You tell him who you are by describing your style. For instance, I’m a mentor and a team-builder. These aren’t skills, but they help explain who I am. They tell the reader that I’m more of a coach than a disciplinarian, and give him an idea of how I’ll handle certain situations. So I will usually devote one or two paragraphs to these traits.

In addition, I have an analytical mind, so I can analyze results quickly and set solid goals for improvement. These are skills—not traits—and are two of my strengths, so I expound on them in the other one or two paragraphs.

You must do the same thing, keeping in mind that your audience will learn other things by reading between the lines. The font you use; your attention to details like punctuation, grammar, and spelling; and the catch-words and phrases you throw in all help to form a picture in your reader’s mind. Every single word in your cover letter is important, so consider them carefully

Lastly, don’t ever start off with, “Dear Human Resources Manager,” or “To whom it may concern:” It’s absolutely ridiculous to think either of those statements will get your letter read! The bottom line is that your job search should be important enough to you that you find out who you’ll be dealing with, and address the letter to that person. If you’re too lazy to bother, the hiring person will be too lazy to read it!

Hopefully, that will help you construct a quality cover letter. Feel free to leave questions or comments if you need more help.

Next blog: resume-writing

Saemus Sutton is the creator of the Wash, Rinse, Repeat leadership mentoring model and author of the book Leaders Make Leaders.  For more information, visit his website at www.leadersmakeleaders.com.

Okay, so what’s the point? It is critically important to be aware of the direction and employment of our energy. It is our “personal power” as author and motivator extraordinaire Anthony Robbins would term it. If we permit our energy to be disrupted we run the risk of at best, not achieving our goals and at worst – the proverbial burnout! So, what is your focus? Where is your energy? Is it being used or disrupted? Is it focused and powerful or is it weak or being transferred, stored, or in the worst case scenario, depleted?

For many of us, regardless of our circumstances, the stresses of daily living (or surviving as may be the case for an ever increasing number of us today) drain our physical, mental and emotional batteries with each new event, depleting or exhausting our energy resources. Even with advances in technology and medicine many people today, at every age level, are losing their precious “personal power” one distraction at a time. None of us intends to have more day left at the end of our oomph but, it happens, and usually without us even knowing how!

A number of years ago I had the privilege of working as an industrial engineering supervisor with United Parcel Service. As a part of my training I performed elemental time studies and methods evaluations on package car drivers and what I learned I think has application here. After careful analysis I found that most drivers who lost time, when compared with a predetermined method, lost that time unintentionally and in small increments. They weren’t slow; they were losing time a few imperceptible seconds each minute, unintentionally throughout their day. Of course, time was money for “The tightest ship in the shipping business.” When the driver corrected the methods they used to accomplish their daily routines the lost time disappeared.     

I believe the same is true of our disappearing energies. Our power isn’t usually sapped by one catastrophic occurrence, but by little, almost unnoticeable distractions permeating our worlds. It doesn’t matter whether it’s the kids or an interruption at work or a driver cutting us off in traffic, when our focus is interrupted we lose a little bit of energy. That’s not the worst of it. If, in our minds, the interruption throws us completely off kilter and the distraction becomes a sustained nuisance we can lose a significant amount of stored energy that we intended to use to accomplish our goals.

The associated thoughts spiraling and fuming within us during and immediately following an incident can often cause a significant shift in our mindset and a subsequent continuous drain on our energy levels.

In reality most things are minor issues yet they have the potential to divert us from investing our energy into positive, dynamic thoughts and actions which would produce, perhaps, a more pleasurable or intended outcome.

I have experienced this diversion of energy and loss of focus first hand and I have seen it in others and the result is almost always the same. At best, it takes time (another loss of a non-recoverable resource) to get back on track with our thoughts and then our actions related to our priority. At worst, we are so distracted by just one incident that it bleeds over into other facets of our day. They, in turn, also sap our energy until, at the end of the day, week, month, year or lifetime we have lost total focus of our objectives.

Whew! I’m glad that’s behind me because now I want to get at the how-to’s of all of this. I believe we can maintain our focus and reserve the necessary energy for achievement by following a few simple rules:

• 1) Get rid of your ego (the unhealthy side, that is) and be in the present with yourself and everyone around you. I have learned through study and experience how debilitating the ego can be to a relationship(s), the execution of goals and the pursuit of happiness. When we place greater importance on obtaining what we want in lieu of remaining in tune with the present and open to the possibilities we are often robbed of time and energy. When we are distracted from the present moments focus to dwell on a past or future desire that isn’t yet a reality we are wasting valuable time where energy can be invested productively. If you are looking for reasons why this is so I suggest you begin to search within, because so much more will be revealed to you on that journey. For now I think it wiser only to share my experience.

• 2) Decide what really matters and practice it with all of your heart. If you have a hard time deciding, ask yourself “Why am I here?” After you begin your search for or get the answer to that question, then; don’t look back and don’t turn back. Limit the possibilities of external interference to the achievement of your goal or mission’s success and focus, focus, focus! Remember, distractions can sap you of your energy, so play the odds and limit the opportunities for disruption.

• 3) Incorporate teamwork. There is no need to venture out or go “it” alone. By “it” I mean life or any goal within it that you may choose to pursue. Creating a team to help you live life and accomplish goals not only enables your success, it multiplies and distributes it, often to those who need most what you have to offer. Human interaction promotes human growth. By including others in your life and in your projects you are inadvertently promoting and producing a positive energy – fuel for the mind and for the heart and for the spirit that will propel you to an unimaginable finish. At the same time, you may be taking someone else with you whose need and journey is even greater than yours. Or, better yet, you may be the spark to a friends own personal journey which increases their focus and energy!

• 4) Initiate and maintain healthy physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual habits. If you are having difficulty determining for yourself what healthy habits are, this would be a great reason to incorporate teamwork. Get help, find a friend, find a coach, but get going. Increase your opportunity by starting as early in life as possible building strong, healthy habits. Even in today’s difficult economy I promise you that developing positive health behavior will pay a dividend of focus and energy far in excess of any investment in them you could possibly make. I ask you not to believe me, but try it, right away. The longer you wait the more momentum it will take to begin.

• 5) Choose! This life is a life of choices. They are indeed abundant, but you must choose or you run the risk of boldly going nowhere. Whether you get there fast or slow doesn’t really matter does it? All of us need the gifts and talents of those with whom we share this world and life. In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re connected.

So, I implore you to choose to find your focus and increase your energy by getting rid of your ego, deciding what really matters, incorporate teamwork into your life, initiate a healthy lifestyle and choose to put your gifts to work for the benefit of all. Pursue your life’s mission with zest, fervor and faith. If you follow this brief recommendation I’m confident your focus will crystallize and your energy will escalate bringing you closer to the life you desire. Living a full and productive life essentially requires two things – a decision to begin and focused energetic action to finish what you start. For all of our sakes, please get started!

Here is a cool little exercise on focus.

Stare at the four black dots in the center of the image for 30 – 60 seconds.
Then quickly close your eyes and look at something bright (like a lamp or a window
with sunlight coming through it). You should see a white circle with an image inside it.

                Upon meeting the other people who were doing the same job in different areas of the company, I began to figure out quickly that I had stepped into a whole new atmosphere.  What I thought would be so exciting, I found it to be nauseating.  It was fake, nothing more and nothing less.  There were airplanes and expense reports, corporate meetings and a corporate office, which I had believed made you “significant”.  However, there was deception at the root of it all.  A cloud of shallowness hung over the initial meetings and I began to see that I could not fully execute their plan and stick to principles that I had learned from the Bible.

                It was all about appearance.  They wanted an appearance that said we were better than everyone else.  They could care less about the heart of a person.  They just wanted people who looked good.  I am a person who does not care about the outward appearance because I know that it fades over time.  If a person’s primary focus is how they look, what lasting effect will that leave when they have gotten older and they can’t sustain the look that they had when they were in their twenties and thirties?  If a person has heart, that will last beyond because the heart of a person doesn’t age.  If their heart is about Christ, others are truly impacted by their lives.  It always takes me back to 1 Samuel 16:7 which says, “for God sees not as man sees, for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” 

                Time wore on and I became more disillusioned with the job as the principles were completely misaligned.  The final straw came when we were told to steal business from our competitors.  I couldn’t do it.  Their belief was that any business was fair game; I could not cross that threshold to where I thought I was doing something shady.   It would not be long before I would have to step down from my position as I was not meeting the criteria for the job and upon being notified of the demotion, I breathed a sigh of relief.  I would take a large cut in pay but the reward was distancing myself from anything that could cause others to slip away from God.

                There are so many times where we visualize what it would be like to be somewhere else, rather than where we are.  We dream of it being a paradise and those ideas often cloud our daily judgments and lead us to pursue the wrong things in life.  I found that living in those visualizations causes us to forget that God has us where we are at this moment for a reason.  I was put in the position to where I would have to compromise biblical truths to keep a job that existed in a world which I would never want to take up residence.  As we sit at work and dream about those perfect careers, we must ask ourselves two questions.  Are we really willing to compromise what we believe for the career we have dreamed of for so long?  Are we paying attention to see what God is doing with us in the place that He has us now?  The other side may seem appealing but once you get there, it might just be appalling.

With the renowned British weather now giving us more hot sunny days than cold or wet days, a whole manner of insects and bugs thrive in the new season. All of a sudden they stir from their slumber and begin to make life all the more interesting, often at the most inconvenient times and in the most annoying of ways!

One of these creatures is the ant. Think about ants – have you ever watched how they do things? Before you knock over an anthill or get the boiling water ready, let’s look at five things we can learn from ants about getting things done.

Firstly, ants build huge colonies to survive in. Although one ant may seem insignificant, each ant has the bigger picture in mind – it knows how its particular task contributes towards the bigger picture of things. If we know the bigger picture of what we are trying to achieve, it can help us make decisions and prioritise tasks as we take steps towards our goal.

Secondly, ants work with what they have got. They make use of any resources around them – twigs, leaves, stones, whatever they can get hold of. Sometimes we let lack of resources be an excuse to not begin the tasks before us when we could use it as an opportunity to be resourceful, creative and adventurous.

Thirdly, ants do things bit by bit. A mammoth task is broken down into many smaller, more manageable jobs. And as the ant diligently perseveres, even the biggest obstacle is moved. We can draw inspiration from this – no matter how big the task in front of us is, often we just need to do one bit at a time. As we keep going we start to see the impact our seemingly small actions have.

Fourthly, ants keep going. If they don’t, the odds are they won’t survive. They are persistent and persevere – they don’t quit. They are faithful and hard working which, like us, is the only way they will see the results they want to.

Fifthly, ants prepare for the season ahead of them. During the summer, they collect their food for the winter months. They don’t live in the moment or refuse to think ahead but instead work now to save problems later down the line. Ants don’t procrastinate because if they do, there could be a big problem approaching they would be unable to deal with later down the line. They show us what it means to think about what is coming.

Ants are persistent and hard working. They don’t bite off more than they can chew. They work bit by bit. If we want to be productive and successful, let’s remember the ant.

Anthony Hilder is a professional life coach based at www.lifematters.me.uk. Previously he was involved in church leadership and corporate banking. He blogs at www.anthilder.co.uk.