What Are Resume Best Practices?

What Are Resume Best Practices?If you have been looking for resume best practices or read about some of them, you are not alone. Most people who get their jobs either through a job fair or with referrals to companies are searching for jobs these days and what works for one person may not work for you or for someone else.Resume best practices, more often than not, are overlooked in favor of the resume itself. The resume is just a tool. It's not the most important tool. But it is the first tool that you will use in your search for a job and if you do not use it properly, it can mean the difference between getting an interview and having no interviews at all.You need to get the job first. Getting the job means putting the job on your resume. You need to put that job on there so the employer can see exactly what you have to offer and how you would fit into their business. This job includes your work history, your education, your skills, your awards, your experience, and what your areas o f expertise are.Resume best practices include everything that can be on the resume. Whether it is your education or work history, this information should go on the resume so that the employer can know exactly what you have to offer.When you are applying for a job, there is a need to look professional. This does not mean that you have to wear a suit and tie every day. It means that you have to show that you are professional. In a formal situation like a job interview, you need to show that you are showing up to your interview wearing a suit and tie, not wearing jeans and flip flops. You don't want to give the impression that you are just going to be some slack-jawed interviewee.Resume best practices do not just involve looking professionally. You also need to look professional. There are many ways to do this, but in essence you need to dress for success.If you have ever had a career advisor tells you that you should make sure you dress for success, then you need to look at those hips and take them seriously. They are a way to set you up for success.

Measure Career Success by Your Relationships, Not Your Paychecks

Measure Career Success by Your Relationships, Not Your Paychecks Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen is arguably one of the most influential thinkers in management today. He’s most famous for developing the concept of “disruptive innovation” â€" the idea that established industries are vulnerable to being upended by fresh competitors with low-priced, apparently inferior products. Articulated in his landmark 1997 book, The Innovator’s Dilemma, that theory has been used to explain the failures of companies such as U.S. Steel and Blockbuster and the successes of firms such as Intel INTEL CORPORATION INTC -0.42% . Now Christensen, 60, has co-written How Will You Measure Your Life?, in which he applies business-school theories not to organizational management, but to finding happiness and integrity in life. The book is an outgrowth of a lecture Christensen has given to his students over the years, one that gained special significance after he received a diagnosis of cancer in 2009. Christensen spoke with senior editor George Mannes. Their conversation was edited. You apply a lot of business-school thinking to life. What’s one example? In organizations, once you articulate how success will be measured, everybody tries to game the system so that they are measured in the best possible way. If you judge schools based on test scores, every school will start teaching to the test. The whole organization optimizes on a yardstick, very often to the long-term detriment of that organization. So individually we need to think very carefully about how we measure our life. I believe that the source of our deepest happiness comes from investments we make in intimate relationships with our spouse, children, and close friends. But if you measure your life by how much money you make or where you go in a hierarchy, you invest more and more to maximize those things and less and less of your time and energy on family. Even though you think family is important, you invest in things that are counter to what you had intended to do in your heart. How should a person be measuring his or her career? You want to be in a job where you’re motivated. There’s a theory that was articulated by the late psychologist Frederick Herzberg. He makes a strong point that there’s a big difference between motivation and incentives. An incentive is, “I will pay you to want what I want.” Motivation means that you’ve got an engine inside of you that drives you to keep working in order to feel successful and to help the organization be successful. It causes you to keep at it through thick and thin. Motivators are things like, “I have the opportunity to achieve important things,” “I get recognized for my achievements,” “I learn ways to be better,” and “I’m an important part of a team.” If you have those kinds of experiences every day, you’re motivated, and you’ll be satisfied. Many of the factors that we think will cause motivation, such as fair pay and a good manager, won’t make you love your job. Even if you eliminate what makes you dissatisfied, that doesn’t make you motivated. It doesn’t make your work rewarding. You just are less bothered by things. Does that mean that if I’m changing jobs, pay should take a back seat to other factors? Remember that once you’re in the job, what will make you happy is, “Is there substantial opportunity for responsibility and growth and achievement? And is it plausible that I can achieve those things?” You would always prefer more money to less money, but there is no evidence that more money makes you happier. What’s the mistake people make when thinking about what will make them happy at work? You believe you’ve figured out what you need to do to be successful, and you hunker down and execute that strategy. And you don’t look for opportunities that pop up at the periphery. The things that really make our careers are almost always the opportunities that inadvertently arise. We need to have a better balance between a deliberate strategy and staying open. Because in the end, most of us end up being successful in a career that we never imagined we would be in at the beginning. Say you’re in your forties or fifties and in a job that’s not giving you satisfaction. You’ve got a mortgage, you’re paying college bills, you can’t just drop everything. What do you do? The way I ought to measure my life is in terms of the others I helped to become better and happier people. That’s the biggest thing to think about if you’re not happy. Very little intrinsic happiness comes from an achievement like “Am I a vice president?” The satisfaction you get from investing in other people stays with you your whole life. Are you saying you’re stuck? If you can’t grow, there are all kinds of ways to create new companies and new environments where you can. The great thing about society today is that we are awash in money. With good ideas, a lot more people have opportunities to succeed than historically we might have thought. Really? It feels as if there’s a lot less money washing around than there was a few years ago. The advent of the cloud makes it such that you can start a company with far less money than you could have 10 and 20 years ago. With so many sophisticated information technologies available to you for so little, the barrier is low. When you discuss new ventures, you say that you have to be impatient for profits. Why? In all probability your initial strategy will fail. So you’d better not spend all your money pursuing the wrong one. What you instead need to do is get out in the market as quickly as you can with the least money possible to figure out, “Does this strategy work, or do I need to tweak it?” Therefore, you have to be impatient for profits. If you are willing to be patient for profitability, you can pursue the wrong strategy for a very long time. Once you know you will be successful, you can be negative cash flow for a while to grow. Let’s move from work to retirement. How do you plan for a successful one? I’ll give you an analogy from my life. Four years ago I had a heart attack. Then I was discovered to have advanced cancer that put me into chemotherapy. About two years ago I had a stroke. I had to learn how to speak again one word at a time. The more I focused on the problems in my life, the more miserable I was. And then somehow I realized focusing on myself and my problems wasn’t making me happier. I started to say, “Every day of my life I need to find somebody else who I could help to become a better person and a happier person.” Once I started to reorient my life in this direction, the happiness returned. So if you look at retirement and you think, “Oh, finally I can focus on myself,” you run the risk of becoming very bored very quickly. The most important piece of planning for retirement most of us need to think about â€" of course you need enough money to surviveâ€"is, How are we still going to orient our lives on helping other people become better people?

18 Tips For Becoming Professionally Independent - Work It Daily

18 Tips For Becoming Professionally Independent - Work It Daily November is upon us, which means the Professional Independence Project is coming to an end. In case you missed some of the great advice we shared this month, here are 18 fantastic tips from our contributors on becoming professionally independent! 1. Tell people what you want. “We forget that people can’t hire us if they don’t know we’re available. There is absolutely nothing wrong with letting your network â€" personal and professional â€" know what kind of business you’d like. You’d do this if you were looking for a job, right? So, why wouldn’t you do it for your own business?” (Shonali Burke) POST: 5 Lessons From A Successful 'Business-Of-One 2. Develop a solid plan. “The key to success is to set achievable goals, develop a plan to reach your goals, surround yourself with people who will help you, and â€" most importantly â€" be the CEO of You, Inc.” (Susan Butler) POST: 4 Steps To Success As The CEO Of You 3. Don't focus on becoming the 'next big thing.' “Don’t waste your time trying to figure out how to become the next Bill Gates, try first to become the best you can, and that will ultimately lead to long term success.” (Mohamed Amine Belarbi) POST: Sell Me Yourself: The Secret To A Successful Personal Brand 4. Know how to communicate your value. “Know what you can bring that someone else can’t, be able to communicate the value of that knowledge/service, and find people who are willing to pay to have that type of problem solved.” (Ben Eubanks) POST: 3 Secrets To Marketing Your Value To Anyone 5. Share your accomplishments. “If your supervisor isn’t sharing your accomplishments with higher level administration, make sure you do the sharing yourself. Keep everyone informed of what you are accomplishing.” (Elizabeth Dexter-Wilson) POST: 3 Tips For Branding Yourself As A Business-Of-One 6. Have advisors. “Select a handful or more of industry influencers, mentors, trusted advisors, and former managers to serve as a sounding board for major career decisions. This team of professionals can provide advice, of course, but they can also help you see facets of your personality, experience, and career brand that you may take for granted or overlook.” (Cheryl Simpson) POST: Fire Your CEO: Reorganize The Business Of BrandYOUâ„¢ 7. Maintain a good reputation. “Businesses and people care more than ever about reputation. And the quickest way to impress a new potential business is to have the facts there and searchable any time they choose.” (Lori Osterberg) POST: 5 Questions To Ask As A 'Business-Of-One' 8. Understand WHY you're a 'business-of-one.' “Essentially, the reason you should think of yourself as a business-of-one is because you are one! The economy and job market are no longer the same and in order to evolve with the new world of work you have to adapt at becoming the CEO of your life.” (Carrie Smith) POST: 3 Reasons Why You Should Think Like A 'Business-Of-One' 9. Stop choosing to be a victim. “When you declare your professional independence and take charge of your life and career, you are choosing to stop being a victim. You stop whining and complaining. You begin taking personal responsibility for yourself, your life and your career. And let me tell you, this feels great.” (Bud Bilanich) POST: My Declaration Of Professional Independence 10. Have a vision. “Running a business, even one where the “work” is done on the kitchen table, in a garage, or a spare bedroom, requires creating a business vision, strategy, and mission.” (David Zahn) POST: What You Need To Know Before Freelancing 11. Think like a salesperson. “Think like a salesperson â€" Gigging means constantly selling yourself. This might sound stressful but the good news is that you’re selling bite-sized bits of your time. It’s a low pressure sell, a low stakes game where both sides benefit from the transaction.” (Hugh Taylor) POST: The Memo On The 'Gig Economy' 12. Limit your target market. “You can’t support a wide array of customers and be able to provide a good level of support. By limiting your target market, it will be easier to be seen as a leader in that area and also allow you to have answers to questions and problems more readily available â€" which will in turn create a more positive.” (Cody McLain) POST: 3 Tips For Finding Your Niche - And Owning It! 13. Know how to talk to your clients/customers. “People skills are part science, part art, with a little sprinkling of intuition on top! Developing a sense for what motivates your clients will be a major driving force of your success as a freelancer.” (Termeh Mazhari) POST: 5 Traits You Need To Be A Successful Freelancer 14. Evaluate your performance regularly. “The best leaders at the top are constantly evaluating their performance and looking for ways to improve. As CEO-You, slow down and evaluate your performance every 90 days and after each major project you complete.” (Aaron Rehberg) POST: CEO-You: 5 Secrets To Navigating A Successful Career 15. Stop relying on others. “No one looks out for your interests like you can. If you’re in a habit of relying on people like your boss, family members or a mentor for direction, keep in mind that no matter how much they care about you, they can’t see what’s inside your heart.” (Joellyn ‘Joey’ Sargent) POST: Me, Incorporated: We’re All CEOs At The Company-Of-One 17. Network, network, network! “The five networking musts are: join, get involved, contribute, participate, be visible. If you are going to be successful today, you must network consistently and robustly (sturdy, vigorous, solid).” (Deborah Shane) POST: 11 Assets Every Business-Of-One Needs To Survive 18. Build valuable relationships. “Establish a true RELATIONSHIP with people and don’t be a business card collector extraordinaire. There’s power in the quality, not in the quantity of people you know.” (Jeff Sheehan) POST: 7 Things You Should Do Before Becoming A Freelancer Want to take control of your career? If you want to take control of your career, check out our fall series, the Professional Independence Project. Throughout the month of October, we will be sharing expert advice and insight on how you can build a successful career you love. Sign up now to get five FREE video tutorials that show you how to market yourself to anyone, anywhere. Start your path the professional independence. Sign up today!       Photo Credit: Shutterstock Have you joined our career growth club?Join Us Today!