To Advance in Your Career – Show the Dynamics of Change in Your Resume

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Dog writing resume

Recently I lost one of my best buddies.

Luke on guard
Luke, my personal protector

Luke became a part of my family almost a decade ago and was my constant companion and the court jester of the office.  He was also my personal guard dog. Any time someone came into our home or approached me outside of its confines, he would stand in front of me blocking potential danger and letting the world know, he was my protector.

Our little family of furries is adjusting.  My remaining male dog, Bandit, has now taken on a new role – my personal bodyguard. Anywhere I go, he goes.  On walks he now does not venture more than 10 feet from me. In the evening he watches the boyfriend and inserts himself on occasion just to let him know in that dog way, “I’m watching you buddy, I’m her protector now and I got this.”

Bandit has also changed in that he responds quicker, is more attentive and puffs up in a grandiose style when walking with his mom.  He has assumed Luke’s job as my primary protector.

How does this relate to a resume? It is all about writing forward.

You want to write your resume to where you are going, not where you have been. If that next desired position is the next wrung up on the ladder, write toward that.

What if you do not have direct experience with those required tasks, you ask? Take those tasks and break them down to the skill set necessary to complete the task. What is needed in order to do the job that you want?  List those skills, for example, communication, problem solving, certain applications, presenting, leadership etc.

Now use those skills as the framework when writing where you have been – i.e. you current and past positions.

Bandit has assumed the role of my primary protector, but he is not the alpha in the pack. That place is still held by our 11 year old Great Pyrenees / Yellow Lab mix.  But if he were applying for the alpha position, he would take the qualities it takes and demonstrate how he has performed them in the past. He would use the change in his environment to demonstrate those skills.

When there is a change in your work environment, take a moment to reflect how this has impacted you. Have you been asked to step up and do more, take on additional assignments, lead certain components of projects?

If your boss asks you to take on additional responsibility, you can easily transition that into your resume by stating that you were depended upon or requested by executive leadership to assume those duties which align with parts of the next step position.

It is more than okay to give the parameters of what is going on relative to the changes in what you do. In other words, tell the story. It is important to paint the picture of having to take on more stuff, in addition to your own, to demonstrate your flexibility, dependability, adaptation and work ethic. It shows you are ready for more.

happy office puppy
Bandit assuming his new status as bodyguard

Bandit might write, “after departure of primary protector, immediately assumed all duties and responsibilities for continual safety and security without downtime.”  He could say “maintained 100% customer satisfaction in vermin extraction while assuming the duties of full protection detail eliminating the need for a new full time bodyguard.” (You could say until a full time bodyguard replacement could be found, but no way will that happen in our house.)

Change is not always easy or fun, yet it can provide key experiences that will help you advance to where you want to go next – as long as you show the dynamics of the change and how it prepared you to take that position now.

 

 

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A little about me: I do what I love: help leaders break out of a suffocating corporate existence and into a position and place that renews their brilliance.

As the Founder and Principle of Career Polish, Inc., a national career personal branding firm, I am an Executive Brand Strategist, Resume Writer and Career Coach. I work with individual clients, companies, leadership and teams to identify, strengthen and effectively communicate their brand, engagement, commitment and most importantly – their value – by learning and leveraging personal branding as applied to LinkedIn, resumes, networking, communication, relationship management, presence and influence.

Click here – CareerPolish.com – to find out more about how we can help you.

★ To get all my latest articles, click the “Yes Please!” button on the right ★

Enhance Your Career By Using LinkedIn As A Match, Not A Flamethrower

lisakmcdonaldLeave a comment

Strike a Match on LinkedIn

 

I love LinkedIn. I am a huge fan of a platform that allows you to communicate your brand with so many enhancements to build business relationships. It is a critical and effective business tool.

Yet, with any tool, the key to success is knowing all the features, capabilities, limitations and most importantly how to use it.

  • The features include a great profile, experience section, headline, profile picture, groups and more.
  • The capabilities are the ability to convey your value and voice in a single site.
  • The limitations are the character limits and layering of options.

I am a DIY kinda girl. I like laying flooring and building things. I have a garage full of tools so how about we use these for an analogy.

Let’s say that you want to use LinkedIn to make connections and secure a new position. It is like laying tile.

If I were going to lay tile, I would make sure I have enough tile to cover the area, spacers, grout, sponge, water and a saw. I have measured out the area and laid my pattern. I have pre-planned and assimilated all the necessary equipment and items for the job, just like you have filled in your LinkedIn profile  within the parameters showcasing your voice and value.

But, if you are a DIY-er like me, you might notice that I left one little thing out – what kind of saw. What if I had a jig saw? You can’t lay tile with a jigsaw – you need a tile saw. (I guess you technically could – but that is an argument best left to Bob Villa.)

My point is just because you have a tool doesn’t mean it is the right one for the job – translation for our example: just because one method of using LinkedIn has boosted results according to one person does not mean it will work for you. Like email blasts.

This morning I received a very polite opening letting me know that the sender had gathered my information from my LinkedIn profile. They then proceeded to give me quite the narrative of their career highlights, including attaching their resume, with the request to pass on their information to our hiring manager in hopes of finding out more about our company. They are looking for a high level IT project management position.

They may have gotten my information from LinkedIn but they sure didn’t read anything else besides my email.

This is a case of using LinkedIn for career advancement like a flamethrower instead of a match. I do not recommend blasting an email such as this blindly to hundreds of people on LinkedIn. At best, it is annoying.  Be selective, research the companies and people. Find connections and then use LinkedIn as a match to strike up a conversation. Flamethrowers burn bridges, matches ignite relationships.

 

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A little about me: I do what I love: help leaders break out of a suffocating corporate existence and into a position and place that renews their brilliance.

As the Founder and Principle of Career Polish, Inc., a national career personal branding firm, I am an Executive Brand Strategist, Resume Writer and Career Coach. I work with individual clients, companies, leadership and teams to identify, strengthen and effectively communicate their brand, engagement, commitment and most importantly – their value – by learning and leveraging personal branding as applied to LinkedIn, resumes, networking, communication, relationship management, presence and influence.

Click here – CareerPolish.com – to find out more about how we can help you.

★ To get all my latest articles, click the “Yes Please!” button on the right ★

How Your Brain Sabotages You When Creating Your Personal Brand (And How To Make It Stop)

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Personal Branding and Your Brain

Do you know why most people struggle when creating or communicating their personal brand? Because they make it all about themselves.

Well, that seems quite contradictory now doesn’t it?  I mean your personal brand is all about you so if you don’t make it about you then who the heck are you talking about and how does it relate to you?

Your personal brand is about you – it is right there in the beginning of this sentence; however, there is a huge block in the way: your brain.

When you sit down to create your brand and begin with the “I have to write about myself” you approach it from the all about me stance. When you put pen to paper you get brain freeze.  If you manage to thaw it a bit and actually write something down, your brain whispers to you in that little voice, “you’re bragging”.

That’s it – game over.

Your brain works against you by telling you anything that you write about yourself is bragging!  Unfair!

Your brain is really trying to protect you, most people do not like talking about themselves so it is keeping you from doing something uncomfortable. Great leaders do not like talking about themselves because they don’t do it, they promote others. So the brain puts the brakes on.

Gee, thanks brain, but we still need to do this! So how do you get it to play nice and help you?  Shift the focus to value.

It is pretty simple and painless, it is only four questions: Who, How, What How.

  • Who do you work with?

  • How do you work with them?

  • What do you do?

  • How do they benefit?

The beauty of this is that it can start in a very broad sense – an overview if you will – then these questions can be used to target and explore.

The first time you go through these questions you will probably think about your overall position.  When you answer the first question you might come up with three groups that you work with: your team, your leadership team and your clients.

Break them out separately and use the four questions again.  If we took your teams and asked who do you work with, you might respond with: the team as a whole, the leadership of the team and individuals on the team.

With each break down answer finish asking the questions.  How do you work with individuals, do you provide support, mentoring, learning opportunities, help them identify where they want to go and how to get there?

Great, how do you do that? This is where it may feel a bit strange at first or your brain starts waking up that there might be something going on here and fight back with, ‘what do you mean how do I do it, I just do it.’ No, how do you do it?

No one just does anything. There is a system, process and skills involved. Break it down as though you are describing it to someone that does not know your position.

Lastly, who benefits from you doing what you do, the way you do it and how do they benefit?  For example, your individual employees: if you provide formal and informal mentoring, this may help them develop their skills to improve their performance, spark new interest in them, help them set and achieve goals of advancing in the company.

Once you go through these questions and break it down (current and previous jobs) you will discover you will have comprised a lot of information. You now have a gold mine because we tricked your brain!

It is not about you – it is about providing value to others.  Secondly, you are not bragging, you are simply telling your story with facts, not flash.

Find similarities and themes in this information for the broad stokes of your brand and the details can be used to compose your resume and LinkedIn profile.

Four simple questions lead to you creating a value-based brand with demonstrative skill backed information that will translate consistently across all your communication platforms.  That wasn’t so hard now was it?

 

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A little about me: I do what I love: help leaders break out of a suffocating corporate existence and into a position and place that renews their brilliance.

As the Founder and Principle of Career Polish, Inc., a national career personal branding firm, I am an Executive Brand Strategist, Resume Writer and Career Coach. I work with individual clients, companies, leadership and teams to identify, strengthen and effectively communicate their brand, engagement, commitment and most importantly – their value – by learning and leveraging personal branding as applied to LinkedIn, resumes, networking, communication, relationship management, presence and influence.

Click here – CareerPolish.com – to find out more about how we can help you.

★ To get all my latest articles, click the “Yes Please!” button on the right ★

 

The Key To Personal Branding: The Way You Do The Things You Do ♪ ♫

lisakmcdonaldLeave a comment

Different guitar styles

It can be very frustrating to try to describe your value and create your personal brand when you feel as though you are the same as everyone else.  That voice in your head may be saying something like:

“I’m only a manger”

“I have the title CXX, but that doesn’t describe me”

“I just do this or that”

“I only know this industry”

You may have a common title or do the same thing as many other people, but the key is differentiating yourself.  You are different than everyone else in the way you do the things you do. (I don’t know about you, but every time I type that I hear the Temptation! Hopefully you do too now!)

Let me illustrate by using an example that is completely unrelated to resumes or LinkedIn: relaxation, my boyfriend and me.

We both have incredibly full work lives and his gets daily doses of high stress. Gearing up for our day, we take the same approach. We go to the gym first thing in the morning and hit it. This gives us a shot of energy to start our day and a feeling of accomplishment before we walk out the door.

Throughout the day we need to get in shots of relaxation to stay strong, complete our day and come home able to rejuvenate and appreciate our lives outside of work. This is where we take opposite directions to get to the same place.

I am a nature freak. In both the front and back of my office are patios where I have created little sanctuaries. Lots of plants, colors, comfy seating and bird feeders. Alternating between sitting there and taking the pups on a walk, I immerse into nature having a lot of interactions with hummingbirds, blue birds, cardinals, lizards, toads, squirrels, deer, hawks, foxes, opossums and raccoons. This time brings me a sense of peace.

The boyfriend, on the other hand, has a different strategy – he is a metal maniac. He goes to the gym, puts in earphones and turns up the metal. With Metallica blaring, he hits the treadmill or weights for about an hour. He can’t exactly thrash while he is running, but he gets the full intensity of the music and lets it come through while he is exerting a tremendous amount of energy. This gets him to a place of peace.

He goes on hikes with me and I went to Metallica and Iron Maiden with him.

We both reach the same place, but in different ways.

When branding yourself, either in your resume or LinkedIn, think about the way you to the things you do (I couldn’t help myself). You may have similar duties as others, but how to you get results? Who do you work with, how do you work with them, what do you do and how do they benefit from you doing these things in this manner?

With those questions in mind, you can begin to describe how you provide value and that is the core of your brand. Describing it is branding yourself and will make your resume and LinkedIn more effective tools working for you.

 

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A little about me: I do what I love: help leaders break out of a suffocating corporate existence and into a position and place that renews their brilliance.

As the Founder and Principle of Career Polish, Inc., a national career personal branding firm, I am an Executive Brand Strategist, Resume Writer and Career Coach. I work with individual clients, companies, leadership and teams to identify, strengthen and effectively communicate their brand, engagement, commitment and most importantly – their value – by learning and leveraging personal branding as applied to LinkedIn, resumes, networking, communication, relationship management, presence and influence.

Click here – CareerPolish.com – to find out more about how we can help you.

★ To get all my latest articles, click the “Yes Please!” button on the right ★

Resumes: How Do I Fit A 20+ Year Career On One Page – You Don’t

lisakmcdonaldLeave a comment

Frustrated writing resume

That is one question or concern I hear a lot, how am I supposed to fit 20 or more years of my career on one page when I am ready to start transitioning into my next new adventure.  To be honest, most people do not say adventure, that was me, but the concern is still the same.

You don’t.

This is not about one page or two – that debate is ongoing with each side having valid arguments. Here are a couple of articles I have written on the whole one page or two debate: Resumes: One Page or Two – and Why They Fail Based on Length Alone and One or Two Page Resume – Why It is a Shot in the Dark and Doesn’t Matter.

The bottom line is if you have the goods, the reader will read your resume whether it is one page or two.  That also leads to the answer about not fitting a lifetime of a career on one page (or two): it is not about the career so much as it is about the value.

The point is not to put your entire career in there; it is to speak to the value that you bring to an organization to be the solution or solution driver to their challenges.

To be blunt, and that is my style, no one cares about every single thing you have done over a decade or multiple decades. They only care about what is important to them.

They have an idea of what they are going to get – resumes from people who think they are qualified. What they want is someone who understands their industry, the position, the challenges and who can speak to how they successfully overcame these things in the past.  Past performance is an indicator of future success.

For the next adventure –what are the tools necessary to not only survive but thrive? Leadership, operations, finance, logistics, information technology – what are the core skills they want? Now, how can you prove your proficiency with these tools to demonstrate success in your past adventures?

If you spent 10 years in the Arctic, that is a whole different adventure than your time in the Amazon.  If you are going to a jungle location, speak of your time in the Arctic only in what applies in the jungle.  They are not going to care about dog sledding or making igloos. Those may be great stories and skills, but unless they mean anything to your jungle audience, they will not care, which translates to an unread resume.

Your value is not only where you have been and what you know. Your true value to the reader is what you know and how you have done what you have done in a way that translates to a positive return on their investment in hiring you.

So how you do translate a 20+ career on one page – you don’t – you translate relevant value to the reader from your experience in the length that works for you.

 

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A little about me: I do what I love: help leaders break out of a suffocating corporate existence and into a position and place that renews their brilliance.

As the Founder and Principle of Career Polish, Inc., a national career personal branding firm, I am an Executive Brand Strategist, Resume Writer and Career Coach. I work with individual clients, companies, leadership and teams to identify, strengthen and effectively communicate their brand, engagement, commitment and most importantly – their value – by learning and leveraging personal branding as applied to LinkedIn, resumes, networking, communication, relationship management, presence and influence.

Click here – CareerPolish.com – to find out more about how we can help you.

★ To get all my latest articles, click the “Yes Please!” button on the right ★

6 Reasons We Hate Your LinkedIn Connection Requests & How To Make Us Love Them

lisakmcdonaldLeave a comment

LinkedIn Connection Requests We Hate

To build a network you need to connect to people.  To connect with them you have to meet them.  On LinkedIn, more often than not, you need to send connection requests.

Sounds easy enough, LinkedIn even makes it easy for you providing you with an opening:

“I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn.”

Yes, it is boring and a template.  Yet, in a pinch it will work.  I get a lot of the template connection requests and I pass no judgement on any of them.

I understand some people are still getting their sea legs on LinkedIn and some may feel uncomfortable scripting something to a professional that specializes in LinkedIn.  Some are just busy and this is an easy, fast method.

Let’s face it, if people did not connect using this opening I doubt LinkedIn would still be providing it for us.

That being said, I do not recommend using the generic template.  It is best to craft a personal message (which I will discuss in short order) however, there is a line.

These next six examples cross that line.  They crossed it two time zones ago.  These are the types of messages that drive people away.

1. I Am Not Looking To Buy

This is another type of template – a cold, uninformed, annoying sales pitch of anything.  I do not know you, I am not going to buy from you because you clogged up my LinkedIn request with:

“I can save you (pick from the following): money, time, get you more prospects, get you a better job, reduce your stress, blah, blah, blah.

Nope.  Delete.

2. My Name Is Important

Back in the day (as my son would say) when we used phones mounted on the wall and no Caller ID, we had to answer the call and then determine if it was a sales call.  For my house, it was easy.  My maiden name is Teepe.

Yep, Teepe – c’mon, I’ve heard them all – the wigwam and toilet paper jokes.  Yeah, it was a blast growing up with that last name.  The one benefit is I could always tell a solicitor because they did not know how to pronounce it.

Misspelling someone’s name in a connection request is the same as butchering their name in person.

My name is pretty simple – Lisa.  Can’t really go wrong there, although here is a trick: I use my middle initial in my profile.  When you use something to automatically fill in the first name, for me it will populate “Lisa K”

My dad was and will be the only person in this world who ever called me Lisa K.

3. Do You Even Know What I Do?

This goes along with number one, but to a different degree.  These connection requests seem like they are more personable because they are not obvious mass copies; however, there is one problem: they did not read your profile.

They are sending you something that demonstrates they did not even look at your profile. Case in point: I had a connection request from someone offering their services as a LinkedIn profile writer.  Really?  Even if they had just looked at my title they might have seen that, gee whiz, that is what I do!

These are the ‘personal’ messages selling rawhide bones to cats and catnip to dogs.

4. Shotgun Recruiter

I have a great deal of respect for recruiters, I really do. I do not have a great deal of respect for recruiters who send out blast messages.

I have received connection requests from recruiters saying they have a great job opportunity for me…in some obscure field I have no experience in whatsoever.  That is cheap, throwing a bunch of requests out there with a potential hook to see what sticks to the wall.

As for me, I love what I do.  I also have a pretty cool boss and my office mates are three crazy dogs. Top that work environment!

5. This Would Not Pass Mrs. Traycoff’s Class

Mrs. Traycoff was my high school English teacher.  A very tiny yet powerful woman who would perch at the front of the class on her three legged stool wrapped up in a shawl or blanket and with one gaze she could stop you in your tracks and make you fear getting an adverb and adjective mixed up. I loved Mrs. Traycoff.

Connection requests with bad grammar, horrible spelling  and just no sense to your sentence structure equates to spam or someone who has not grasp the whole communication thing yet.

6. This Is Not A Party line

Do not hit on a potential connection.  This is not an online dating site. It is creepy and wrong.  Just stop it.

To take your connection request up a notch from the standard template do this one thing:

 

Think like a person.

 

If you were meeting this person in-person, what would you say?  How would you introduce yourself? LinkedIn is a digital handshake.

“I noticed that we have 13 connections in common, I thought it would make sense for us to connect”

“I see that you and I are both a member of Community Volunteer Group, I don’t know how I have missed meeting you…..”

What do you have in common – people, organizations, schools, passions, past employer – find it and mention it.

Maybe you have read an article that someone wrote or a presentation they gave, that is your opening.

“I really liked your article XYZ and would appreciate connecting with you on LinkedIn.”

These are all examples, but the most important thing is to make them your own.

Remember, you are just a person digitally standing in front of another person asking them to connect to you. Be yourself and you will do just fine.

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A little about me: I do what I love: help leaders break out of a suffocating corporate existence and into a position and place that renews their brilliance.

As the Founder and Principle of Career Polish, Inc., a national career personal branding firm, I am an Executive Brand Strategist, Resume Writer and Career Coach. I work with individual clients, companies, leadership and teams to identify, strengthen and effectively communicate their brand, engagement, commitment and most importantly – their value – by learning and leveraging personal branding as applied to LinkedIn, resumes, networking, communication, relationship management, presence and influence.

Click here – CareerPolish.com – to find out more about how we can help you.

★ To get all my latest articles, click the “Yes Please!” button on the right ★

 

My Dogs are Jedi Masters

lisakmcdonaldLeave a comment

mom and boys

 

Yoda has nothing on my dogs.  They really are the Jedi Masters of peace and tranquility.  They are so good, they taught me to chill out.

 

I got to the point in my life that chaos was the norm. My best friend and I used to joke about how we have this sick tendency to actually enjoy having a full plate. It makes us energized and even perform the competing tasks at hand better than if there was only one to do.

 

Chaos became the norm.  That was okay when it was work, I felt I could handle it.  But it never just stays at work.

 

I used to work for an organization that was simply exhausting.  Chaos would have been a welcome break.  I had over an hour drive from work and would use this time to ‘decompress’ and put myself in a better place for when I got home and was with my son.

 

When I quit that job the first thing he said to me was, “Thank you, you were always in a bad mood during the week when you got home.”

 

So much for decompressing and being in a better place.

 

I used to run around on the weekend trying to accomplish what needed to be done throughout the week in a day. Cleaning, cutting the grass, weeding, grocery shopping, laundry – and by the way, how do two people have so much dang laundry?  Chaos was becoming a norm in my personal time, too.

 

One night I was sitting down, exhausted, and over came one of my pups.  He nonchalantly plopped his head on my lap.  My first thought was “I am too tired to play” but then I looked down at him.

 

If you are a dog person, you will understand the look I saw in his eyes.  If you are not, just go with it. He looked at me as if to say, “really *sniff* you don’t have time to even pat my head?”

 

Guilt by dog.

 

Of course I patted his head, rubbed his ears, and gave him undivided “mom” time.  This brought one of the other ones over and it became a puppy love fest. For that period of time I did not think of any tasks or things left undone, I just enjoyed getting happy mauled by my dogs.  Once they had their fill of attention, they went back to sleep.

 

Just as easy as that.  Fifteen minutes of play time then so relaxed that they took a nap. Seriously?  I want that!

 

As crazy as it sounds, I studied my dogs that weekend.  I was like a modern day doggy Jane Goodall. When they had a task to complete (eat, chase, dig) they gave it their complete and undivided attention.  When they were done, they were done.  They did not go back to that hole and think, “I could have done more, maybe I should dig from the outside in next time.” The threw themselves into the task at hand.

 

Then they napped.

 

They enjoyed the outside, laying in the sunshine, soaked it all up until they sounded like they were about to pass out, then they went in the house and laid on the cool tile floor.

 

Then they napped.

 

On walks they literally stopped to smell the roses…and the grass, and the mailbox posts, and the other dogs poop, and the wind and their own butt…  Even if we just saw that mailbox post yesterday, they were going to sniff it again, you never know what could have happened in 24 hours. Every smell was awesome! They took full advantage of what was around them.

 

Then they napped.

 

At night they nestled close by, getting belly rubs, rolling their little puppy eyes back in their head from sheer pleasure then started snoring.

 

These guys know how to live! Besides realizing my dogs took a lot of naps, I realized they had taught me a thing or two:

 

  • Put all your effort in the task at hand; when it is over, it is over.
  • Enjoy your surroundings.
  • Rest and rejuvenate.
  • Move – play, keep your body active.
  • Every day is a new day, you never know if there is something new in your same old path.
  • Relax, it gives you more energy when you have tasks to accomplish.
  • There is great joy in the smallest pleasures.
  • Treats are good.
  • Take time for yourself.
  • Take time to love the ones you love.

 

I have incorporated my Yoda dogs teachings into my daily life:

meditation pup

 

I take breaks throughout the day to go outside and enjoy the sunshine, birds, clouds, rain – whatever the situation is, I do a mental break and immerse myself in the sights and sounds of the right there.  Recently I put up a couple hummingbird feeders outside my office – I am in heaven during these breaks watching those little guys buzz about.

 

When the work day is done, it is done.  Then it is time for the family, dedicated, quality time.

 

Sleep.  We get sleep now as a regular thing not as a so-exhausted-I-fell-into-bed thing and please let me get just a couple of hours.

 

Daily walks with the dogs and time at the gym to keep physically active helps reduce stress.

 

And treats, lots of treats.  A massage, a manicure, a day trip, a special meal – whatever it is, treats are good!

 

Try following a dog’s life this weekend and see if you don’t get converted by these Jedi Masters of happiness.

 

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A little about me: I do what I love: help leaders break out of a suffocating corporate existence and into a position and place that renews their brilliance.

As the Founder and Principle of Career Polish, Inc., a national career personal branding firm, I am an Executive Brand Strategist, Resume Writer and Career Coach. I work with individual clients, companies, leadership and teams to identify, strengthen and effectively communicate their brand, engagement, commitment and most importantly – their value – by learning and leveraging personal branding as applied to LinkedIn, resumes, networking, communication, relationship management, presence and influence.

Click here – CareerPolish.com – to find out more about how we can help you.

★ To get all my latest articles, click the “Yes Please!” button on the right ★

 

 

Don’t Let One Word Sabotage Your Message

lisakmcdonaldLeave a comment

not listening

I am going to make a generalization here and throw this out there: if you do not think one word is important or can change the whole meaning of your message or dynamic of your conversation – you have never talked to a woman.

Don’t believe me? Try this little experiment: tell your wife or girlfriend tonight “You never do …” fill in the blank.  (By the way, it works for men, too).

That never will probably get you a raised eyebrow, followed by an “Oh, really” and then the fun begins.  Never and always are pretty much banned in our house.  My boyfriend and I are challengers – give us a challenge and we will make it our life’s mission to do it.  Give us a ‘never’ or ‘always’ and we will mentally rehash over two years of our relationship to find that five second interval that proves the other wrong.

Communication is the most important tool we have, yet it can easily be turned from a tool to a weapon with just one word.

The weapon can provoke or harm your audience.  With one little word you can completely destroy someone’s confidence in themselves, or you; deflate their attitude or progress; cause them to be defensive or completely shut down in listening to you altogether.

Some of the words that create such chaos include: ever, never, always, but, only, guess, try and might. These are just the beginning pack of words, but enough to get you started in being more cognizant in how you use them.

“Did you ever finish that report?”

“You never answer my calls”

“You did a good job, but…”

“You only had to do this task”

“I guess I could help/attend…”

“I can try to help/be there…”

“I might be able to…”

In the above examples, the underlying message is disappointment, disengagement and insincerity – to name a few.  Is that really the message you want to convey?

Just by being a bit mindful of the small little words we throw into our communication we can keep peace, harmony and momentum while still getting our original or intended message across.

‘But’ is my personal most hated word.  When you use but in a sentence it completely invalidates everything before it and puts the receiver immediately on the defensive.  If you think someone did a good job and there is a bit more to do, try saying it in a different way:

“You did a good job on this project, now let’s try making these tweaks and it will be fantastic.”

“You did a great job; however, this part missed the mark a little, what do you think we can do?”

“You did great and we are almost there we just need to tweak these two parts…”

Your message of ‘there is still work to be done’ is conveyed without losing the positive message.  The receiver will be more inclined to listen to ideas, take direction and keep momentum in completing the task because their effort was recognized, appreciated and clear direction was given for what is next.

Removing small little words that create big conflicts sure makes life easier for everyone.  And just for the record, I really would not suggest doing the experiment mentioned above, to make your life easier, just take my word for it.

 

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A little about me: I do what I love: help leaders break out of a suffocating corporate existence and into a position and place that renews their brilliance! 

As the Founder and Principle of Career Polish, Inc., a national career personal branding coaching and practice firm, I am an Executive Brand Strategist, Resume Writer and Career Coach. I work with individual clients, companies, leadership and teams to identify, strengthen and effectively communicate their brand, engagement, commitment and most importantly – their value – by learning and leveraging LinkedIn, resumes, networking, communication, relationship management, presence and influence.

Click here – CareerPolish.com – to find out more about how we can help you.

★ To get all my latest articles, click the “Yes Please!” button above ★

 

 

 

One or Two Page Resume – Why It is a Shot in the Dark and Doesn’t Matter

lisakmcdonald1 Comment

One or Two Page Resume

One of the most frequent questions I am asked is should my resume be one page or two?

It is no wonder people are confused. If someone were to try to find an answer online it would take all of .81 seconds to get about 15,800,000 results of articles that do not all agree on the subject.

– Shorter is better.
– You cannot encapsulate your experience in one page.
– No one likes a two-page resume.
– A one-page resume does not have enough information.

And so on and so on.

Here is the bottom line.: The only person it matters to is the person reading your resume. Since you cannot exactly call up this person and ask what they prefer, you just do not know. It is a 50/50 shot in the dark.

That does not seem quite helpful. But here is the good news, the answer to three questions more important to the reader than page length:

1. What are you applying for?
2. How do you qualify?
3. Can I find it easily on your resume?

These are the items you should focus on with your resume rather than making page length a priority. Write your resume for context, value and readability and then you can play with it to see if it works better on one page or two.

What Are You Applying For?

If there is a direct correlation between the job you are applying for and your current position use the job title as a title on your resume. If there is not a direct correlation (moving up in your career) incorporate the job title into your opening.

How Do You Qualify?

What strengths, skills, experience and value to you bring to the position that are in direct alignment with that they want adding value to the position, teams, clients and organization? Use key words and demonstrate your expertise using four questions as a starting point for your bullet points:

– Who do/did you work with?
– How do/did you work with them?
– What do/did you do?
– How do/did they benefit?

These questions help transform job duties to demonstrated value-add and expertise.

Can I Find It Easily On Your Resume?

This is not only a visual element but a structural one. For human nature, if something looks hard to read (too small of text, everything condensed, no white space) people are not inclined to read it or give it a good read.

Use white space to make it easier on those human eyes. Structure your resume so it makes sense, flows and easy for someone to find exactly what they are looking for. If you have been at an organization for quite some time, instead of having a large portion of your resume look like death by bullet point, use subheadings.

Break down those 20 bullet points into 4 or 5 categories and use those as your subheadings. For example, these can include things like, “Project Management, Risk Management, Cost Controls, Training & Development, etc.

Focus on your value, writing for the reader to answer their most important question: what can you do for me? If you have a value-driven, easy to read resume, the reader will be more interested in the content and you, rather than if your resume is one page or two.

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As the Founder and Principle of Career Polish, Inc., a national career personal branding coaching and practice firm, I am an Executive Brand Strategist, Resume Writer and Career Coach. I work with individual clients, companies, leadership and teams to identify, strengthen and effectively communicate their brand, engagement, commitment and most importantly – their value – by learning and leveraging LinkedIn, resumes, networking, communication, relationship management, presence and influence.

I help people get from where they are in their jobs to where they want to be in their careers.
Click here – CareerPolish.com – to find out more about how we can help you.

★ To get all my latest articles, click the “Yes Please!” button above ★

Just Who Does Your Resume Think You Are?

lisakmcdonaldLeave a comment

questioning grampa

The point of your resume is to tell your story the way you want the reader to understand it. What story is your resume telling right now?

If I were to say there is a mistake made on most resumes it that most people tend to use their job descriptions as their bullet points. Job descriptions are easy to copy and tell the reader about your job, right? Wrong. Well, they are easy to copy, but they miss the mark about telling the reader anything of real value.

There are two problems with this approach:

1. This tells the reader what you were hired to do, not what you did.
2. It eliminates you from your resume.

The two most important factors in telling your story are your voice and your value.

Your voice is you speaking through your resume. When someone reads your resume they form an image of you based on the words you choose. It is just like when you form a picture of a character in a book (and why I cannot watch a movie of a book that I have read).

Use words that resonate with you. If you are outgoing and driven use words that match your energy. If you are a behind the scenes driver use words that convey that strength.

Your value is not what you were hired to do, but what you did and how you did it. Think about who you work with, how you work with them, what you do and how they benefit. That is a story of your value.

A duty is running reports. A value is gathering all the information, compiling, partnering with ABC team in providing the report which they use for XYZ. Maybe it is a sales team that uses the report to track their success, identify new target markets. Maybe it is a committee to track and manage expenses. You added value by providing the information needed to increase revenues or reduce costs.

If your resume is bleeding from duty driven bullet points then your resume does not think much of you. It thinks you are one dimensional and boring.

If your resume paints the picture of the value you brought to an organization, clients, teams or community in a manner that sounds like you then your resume thinks you are the bomb – and that is what it will convey to the reader.

✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰
As the Founder and Principle of Career Polish, Inc., a national career coaching and practice firm, I am an Executive Brand Strategist, Resume Writer and Career Coach. I work with individual clients, companies, leadership and teams to identify, strengthen and effectively communicate their brand, engagement, commitment and most importantly – their value – by learning and leveraging LinkedIn, resumes, networking, communication, relationship management, presence and influence.
I help people get from where they are in their jobs to where they want to be in their careers.
Click here – CareerPolish.com – to find out more about how we can help you.
★ To get all my latest articles, click the “Yes Please!” button above ★