Chapter 1.
Introduction
This book has several purposes. ·
To assist you in getting what you really want out of your job life. ·
To assist you in finding out what you'd really like to be doing right
now -- your current job objective. (You can repeat the process if you change
your objective later on.[*]) ·
To show you how to develop a resume that supports your objective. (So
when you do change your objective, you won't need to hire a resume writer --
you’ll know how!) ·
To discuss such things as games, dress, and attitudes and how they
affect your success both in the interview and on the job. This is a workbook -- NOT a reading book. To get the most value out of
it, set aside the required materials and enough time to do each exercise
completely. This book is also not is a place to show off any "superior"
writing skills or command of the English language I may think I have. Such
skills can only be of value to you if I use them to assist and inform you.
This book is written for that purpose; it's simple, short, and to the point,
with no fancy words or filler. This will to make your job using it simple and
short also. This workbook mixes the practical and the imagination to achieve its
results. Some of the exercises call heavily on your imagination. If you're
the practical type, keep in mind that the practical will be applied as you go
along and exercise that imagination of yours for all it's worth. Remember,
every practical thing we have in the world today, started out in life as
someone's brainstorm. Think: using electricity, radio-TV, telephones, cell
phones, airplanes. All sorts of good stuff. If you're the imaginative type, remember just
imagination alone doesn't get things done on this planet. After you create it
in your mind, you've got to believe in it enough to go out and do it. For
some of you, forcing yourselves to follow up on marketing once you have your
resume and interviewing skills in hand will be your key to success. To get the best results, do the exercises in the order in which they
appear. Each exercise builds on the previous one, though the relationship may
not always be obvious. If you skip, you cheat yourself. So, use this book actively; do the exercises; and go out and make your
joblife exactly what you want it to be. And who knows, you just may find
these techniques rub off on other areas of your life as well. They certainly have mine. The book is taken from a workshop that takes the better part of two
full days to complete; so don't expect to finish it all at one sitting. Section 1 covers useful hints on job hunting; Section 2 contains exercises to develop your goals, resume, and
interviewing skills; Section 3 provides worksheets to make the exercises easier. Chapter
2.
Writing
a Winning Resume
Just What Is A Resume? A resume is a tool to interest someone (your market -- the reader) in
interviewing you for a job that you want. It is YOUR sales brochure; YOUR
advertising. (It's not, mind you, a tool to GET you a job; only you can do
that. We'll discuss that further under "Interviews."). There are
Winning Resumes, Useful Resumes, and Resumes That Are a Waste of Time and
Paper. (We’ll discuss them under "What Resumes are not.") And
What's a Winning Resume? A Winning Resume is a description of who you are and what you've done
AS THEY RELATE to the job for which you want to interview. It is a living
document: ongoing, constantly changing as YOU change; as YOUR WANTS and
DESIRES change; and as YOUR CURRENT JOB DESCRIPTION changes. A Winning Resume
is one that assists YOU in getting exactly what YOU want. That's the kind of
resume we're going to focus on here. And A Useful Resume? A general resume has a broader scope than A Winning Resume, but it
does have a specified objective and is written to support that objective. And,
because it is used in large numbers, it often (but not always) has effective
results. Once you know how to write A Winning (specific) Resume, writing a
general one (or something in between) will be a piece of cake. The techniques
are exactly the same. Only your objective is different: it's a range of jobs
rather that a specific job. General resumes can be useful as long as that
objective is relatively narrow. When you get back to describing too much
subject matter in way too much detail to cover all contingencies, you're back
to the Resume that's a Waste of Time and Paper. Just What Does Winning Mean? What I mean by WINNING is getting what YOU want out of: The RESUME The INTERVIEW The JOB Your LIFE What do YOU mean by winning? SERIOUSLY! Give a lot of thought to that
question. If you don't identify what winning means to you, you won't be able
to recognize it when it comes along. Many people go through life successfully
achieving more and more but never experiencing any great satisfaction from
"winning" because they never identified what "winning"
was to them. I Want To Be A Winner! How Do I Go About Writing A
Winning Resume? The first thing you need to do to write a WINNING resume is decide
exactly what job you want. At the very least, you need to decide what kind of
a job you want _ to practice goal setting. WHY? If I Just "Need A Job" -- What
Difference Does That Make? Well, some jobs are just jobs. If you want to sell jewelry in the five
and dime or pack popsicles in an ice cream factory (don't laugh -- those were
my first two jobs after high school), you probably don't need a resume at
all. Or a list of jobs would probably suffice. (And if that's all you were
looking for, you would not be reading this book.) For most interesting jobs there's at least some competition. The
person doing the hiring wants to talk to those who can do the job best and
then made an educated decision on who to hire. So the more your resume
interests the hiring manager, the better it supports your contention that
you've the right background for that exact job (think Marketing), the better
the chances of edging out the competition and getting the interview. So, you
need to know exactly what you want to do before you can write a resume that
says you can do it. What a Resume Is Not! A resume is not a guarantee of a specific job (or even of any job).
(The resume gets INTEREST; if it gets enough interest, you get an interview;
but it's YOUR rapport/chemistry with the hiring manager and your personal
interviewing skills will get you the job.) A resume is not a "list of
jobs," or a "list of everything you did" at each job. A list of jobs probably doesn't provide enough information. A list of
everything you did on a job, on the other hand, probably includes lots of
trivia that doesn't support what you want to be doing and wastes the hiring
manager’s time. (And you know how popular wasting people's time makes you.)
For instance, in several early jobs, I did purchasing and the library -- both
of which I hate. My resume no longer mentions those things, so no one brings
me in for an interview because they want those skills and I don't get stuck with them after I'm hired.
(It's amazing how job descriptions get rewritten often after you've started a
job.) |
[*]
You probably will. Most people today have several careers (often by default) in
their lifetimes. This is your chance to learn to take control -- to choose and
succeed at determining your own life.