Archive for the ‘Top of the Resume’ Category

BRANDING (Cont’d)

Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009

“What about me?” you ask.  

And that is a legitimate concern.  What if you want to do your own resume? What if you don’t want my help?  You are a good writer and you just want to get started on your own. 

Okay. I get it. 

So here is how to get started:

Ask five people who know you well what are your best characteristics.

Now listen to them carefully. When you hear the same thing twice or perhaps a different version of the same thing.  Whalla!  You’ve got the beginning of a recipe for your brand.

I will dig through my files and try to bring together some examples.  But for now just concentrate on finding out all the good stuff about you.  Whenever you hear the same thing mark it with a star or asterisk — keep on going and maybe you will hear something over and over.

People – your friends and loved ones are telling you the beginning of what you will form into Your brand.

Stay tuned and collect data.  Mary Ann

Posted in Resumes, Top of the Resume | No Comments »

Branding

Monday, November 2nd, 2009

What does that mean?

When I first started hearing this word from marketing clientele is sounded out-of-place.  I thought of Texas and branding cattle or brands of toothpaste.

The word brand –there is no branding– in my oldRoget’s Thesaurus offers some rather grey, mousey words: kind, label, mark; dull huh?  No.  Today the word is much more technicolor.

Brand is about your affect on the world.  About how YOU differentiate yourself from every other person that has a similar or same occupation as you.  YOUR  Brand .

Just as “cattle branding” mean that these certain cows have come from a certain farm, and brands of toothpaste distinguish quickly what we want for ourselves, or Martha Stewart is the diva of home beauty — now you’re getting it? 

I had to work through all of these concepts before I really understood that my own specific talent was in branding and differentiating the what and who of my individual client. Then  in the briefest possible words, say it/write it; and place that concept at the top of the resume. 

Proof  is in the pudding though; so the next step is to prove it under experience and carry that through to the cover letter. Mary Ann

Posted in Resumes, Top of the Resume | 4 Comments »

Day Light Savings Is Over

Sunday, November 1st, 2009

     little green house 006        … and am I glad.

I like to live by the sun.  It is painful for me to go into daylight savings time and experience unnatural light at night.    I could never live in extreme northern countries.

I never see clients on the weekend, but sometimes I write all day and then suddenly it’s dark and I think wow! how did this happen.  But it is a good feeling, I’ve done something that I love to do.  Write.

This is important to know about oneself.  What is it you do that you lose time doing?  Aha, that is where some of your talents are. 

For instance, I would never lose time doing my accounting.  My back hurts, I eat more and I am always  aware of time. 

When time stands still we are in a time warp because we are in our talent base.  We don’t have a word for this, but the Greek’s do.  They have two words that mean time “kronis” as the god Kronis who goes from a baby in January to an Old Man in December. 

The other word for time, kyris, means that period for YOU when time stands still.  Beautiful huh? When I interview a client I look for this moment when her/his time stands still.  This is key.

I work to get this into a branding statement at the top of the resume.  I talk about this and tell my client how important this is to develop a branding statement for interview.

Why?  What we do easily, what we love to do feels as if anyone can do this, because to us it is easy.  The truth is that it is very likely to be hard for others.  For example, for accountants (I know this from interviewing them) working those spreadsheets—- is time stopping – kyris for them.  Because they love what they are doing– -number crunching—and it is their talent base.

Think about it.  When does time stand still for you? Mary Ann

Posted in The earth, Top of the Resume | 4 Comments »

The Top

Wednesday, October 28th, 2009

I’d like to describe to you what to do first on your resume.  It is so important that I will come back to this topic many times.

Why?

Resumes are constantly changing.  If you, for instance have a resume book, look to see when it was printed – and even if it was printed 2006 – sorry it is out of date.  True, some things don’t change, but the important things that drive your resume to market — do change. 

For instance, remember how we were driven by a one-page resume.  Some clients still come to me still insisting that it is so.   Well that was so in the early 90’s because the fax stepped into the scene – and we could fax a one pager, quickly. We just thought it was the greatest – and Yana Parker of San Francisco writing Damn Good Resume taught us how to do it. But if a person had a mature career, it cut out too much of good information that helped form the decision to bring the person in for an interview.

But we’re not driven by the fax.  I rarely use it. 

Because now we are driven by the Internet – Email – Attachments – text files – web pages – email campaigns to recruiters.- even more than we were three years ago.  Telling a more detailed story is important to help define your brand.

So the things that I have to say about forming your resume is about 2009 – 2010 resumes.  After that period of time, I will probably change again or add to.

Soak this in because I have a whole lot more to say about it.  Mary Ann

Posted in Top of the Resume | No Comments »