PARADE Update Creating a Rock Star Resume

PARADE Update Creating a Rock Star Resume PARADE Update: Creating a Rock Star Resume PARADE Update: Creating a Rock Star Resume July 6, 2010 by Career Coach Sherri Thomas Leave a Comment PARADE Update: Creating a Rock Star Resume Meghan found a terrific job opening at a socially conscience company where she can leverage her marketing expertise and culinary background. As I talked about in my book, Career Smart 5 Steps to a Powerful Personal Brand, this is what I know for sure: When you are able to articulate the kinds of responsibilities, the management style and company culture where you want to work in your next career the universe has a way of sending you those opportunities. And now the universe is churning out opportunities for Meghan! The next step is for us to create a rock star resume. Here are my top three tips for creating a resume to help you get noticed, get hired and even get a higher salary! Showcase key words. Key words are those skills in the job postings that are listed as the job requirements. Look closely at the job description and use a highlighter to mark all of the requirements listed. Then, take all of those requirements that you meet and showcase those key words towards the top of your resume underneath the Objective section. Label this section Key Strengths and list those requirements that you meet in bullet format. Emphasize results. This is the single biggest difference in making your resume stand out from your competition. Dont talk about responsibilities. Thats boring. Instead, talk about what you have achieved for an organization, or what youve helped the organization achieve. For example, dont just say that you managed a team of 9 people in the sales department. Instead, say that you led a sales team that generated $250,000 a year for the past three years. Quantify each of your career highlights in terms of dollars, numbers or percentages. Show leadership and teamwork. Hiring managers look for candidates who are strong contributors and strong leaders (or at least demonstrate leadership potential.) Talk about projects or teams that youve led and what the results were. If you havent led any projects or teams in your professional life, then highlight any leadership experience youve had in professional organizations, sports leagues, church activities or community events. Meghans Assignment this Week: I gave Meghan one of my exclusive resume templates to showcase her marketing and events-management skills. She will be busy this week converting her resume from being responsibilities to results focused. That means shell be meeting with past managers and business associates to learn the real results of her previous marketing campaigns and big projects. Ideally, shell want her resume to state that her marketing campaigns helped gain a certain number of new customers, or that the projects she worked on helped generate new revenue, saved the company money, or created more market share for the organization. Her homework assignment is not easy, but it will be the icing on the cake to help Meghans resume stand out from her competition and land that fabulous job.