Your resume is the story of you that you can share with potential employers, friends, and interested acquaintances. You build your resume, as you develop your career, gaining experience using Skills You Want to Use, filling in empty spaces with projects, patchwork experiences, and serving your community, as time allows. Create a master resume and keep it up to date. You don’t want to find yourself unprepared with the experience and documentation you need when that great opportunity presents itself.
Master Resume
Write your long story first, which is your Master Resume. In your Master Resume, include people, dates, places, tasks, skills, and results in each experience point.
The purpose of the Master Resume is to collect all your resume information in one place, so it is readily available when you need to create your Focused Resume.
Focused Resume
Once you have your Master Resume completed, you are ready to fill in page three of your LifeWork Success Planner with companies you might want to work for, a problem they want to solve, skills you want to use, and values that match a company of interest.
Your resume is a synopsis of your story. As with your story, your resume is written for your target audience. The better you know your company of interest, what their values are, what they want to be known for, and problems they may want an employee in your position to solve, the better chance you have of getting the job.
Resume Checklist
- You checked to make sure everything in your resume is relevant to the job you are applying for.
- Your resume shows your highest level of training, skills, and relevant education.
- You read the qualifications for the position, highlighted the skills and qualifications that you possess, and made sure they are on your resume; the words not the exact phrases (Your resume could get the first scan by a person or machine who is not familiar with the job you are applying for). Then, do a “find” search on your Word document to make the keywords from the job description, relevant to your experience, are on your resume.
- You showed what you did whether in a group, collaboration, or individually and a result wherever possible.
- You are showing what is unique about you compared to other applicants.
- You did a spell check of your resume on Word.
- You checked your resume for consistent formatting, wording, and spelling. Someone else checked your printed resume for formatting, consistency, and spelling.
- You have a professional email and voice mail, don’t include your address unless you trust the receiver, include your Linkedin link only if you have updated your profile and checked it for professionalism. Print your resume.You did not include references on your resume or your personal information on a job site.
- You worked with a Career Counselor or Career/Life Coach, career professional, or networking group if possible, to bring out your accomplishments and results, and feel comfortable talking about them. This step is needed by most applicants who want the best result from their resume and interview.
Print your resume
At a glance, the reader (who may or may not be the hiring manager) can see from your resume that you meet the qualifications for the job you are applying for.
You want to get the reader’s interest in 6 seconds so they will read more. White space, relevant content, and editability are more important than color and your photo that you will want to use with discretion when relevant to the job you are applying for.
Professional resume template download that is easy to edit for your focused resume.
Next, you will want to write your draft Cover Letter.
Contact Nancy if you have questions, comments, or need assistance creating your LifeWork Success Portfolio. You can visit her website at: http://www.nancyjmiller.com and you are welcome to join the Success Unlimited Career Network Facebook Group. Let us know you found me here when you request to join.
LifeWork Success Portfolio 