Are you ready to fight?

I realized that I am in the best fighting mood when I am seriously tired and toxic. Not only would I fight about what is bothering me, but for anything else just as well. Revolution is my middle name. Stereotypes are such mean and omnipotent forces that you just have to be in a red hot chilli mood to have enough energy to stand up to them.

Maybe you don’t, but I certainly do.

When you are writing your resume you need to keep in mind that you are marketing your skills to a variety of “buyers” (recruiters, human resource professionals, hiring managers). Each has different specific needs. Your resume is the first step in demonstrating that you offer solutions to their problems. Will your resume survive the 30-second skim?

Create an outstanding description of your strengths, experience, benefits of hiring you… but without emphasizing your age. Mature job seekers’ resumes show too much experience, fail to show the relevance of past experiences to a new career choice (the world of business has changed so much, especially the terminology, maybe the person reading has no idea what you are talking about in your resume). Mature job seekers use antiquated career positions titles and outdated industry buzzwords, fail to emphasize the strengths valued by today’s employers and do not use relevant keywords. (read the aritcle about using keywords and another one here).

How to attrack attention? When you look at a resume for the first time, what do you notice? People usually react to the following: visual impact of the document (layout, typestyle, use of white space), heading of the document (your name and contact information), the qualifications summary.

Visual impact will set the tone of your resume and you should be very careful when planning your resume and choosing a layout. Your style and the content of the document must be complementary. If this is not the case, your arguments are weak and you will probably be eliminated for this inconsistency. For example, with the use of some fonts you are building a context in which your words will be interpreted. If you choose a traditional typestyle, these will make you look strong and serious. A contemporary typestyle will make you look modern and creative. Plenty of white space will make your resume more reader friendly and it will give you an opportunity to guide your reader’s eye where you want. At the same time, plenty of white space will make your resume elegant.

The Holly Grail

In today’s world of corporate consciousness Holly Grail is a perfect employee. Everybody is looking for this perfect blend of human capital. Luckily, every single employer has his own definition of perfection. You just have to believe that there is one (employer) right for you.

Article posted on Wednesday, October 3rd, 2007 and filed under career after 40, career change, resume writing. You can follow responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.