Karl Edwards presents Working Matters

Tag: resumé

  • Listen In -> Bold Resolutions for the New Year #3: Build a Team, Not Fill a Job

    One of the great self-defeating strategies of team building is the practice of culling resumes with numeric and search engine based criteria.

    Thousands of talented, appropriate and possibly “best fit” candidates are never met, because their resumes were thrown in the trash based on missing “key words”, arbitrary experience requirements, and other impersonal and unhuman criteria.

    In this week’s show, Claudia discuss the need to build teams rather than fill job openings.

    The annual “All-Star” games in many team sports made up of the best players from all the teams, do not result in the two best teams.

    The order is important. We need thriving teams in order to function at the level necessary to create a way out of our economic doldrums.

    A job opening is merely the existing set of tasks that the former employee did. It does not consider what might be possible given what the new hire brings to the table.

    The question is, will you ever know? You may have just thrown the most promising resume in the trash because it showed six years of experience instead of seven.

    Listen in.

    Just now joining the conversation? Catch up on the entire series here.

  • What’s In A Perception?

    Perception MattersSo what’s the big deal with how others perceive me?

    I can’t control what another person thinks. I can’t force them to change their mind about me if they have settled on some incorrect perception.

    The big deal is that those other people are making decisions that affect you. To the extent that their perception about who you are and what you bring to the professional table is incorrect, so will their decisions be.

    Decisions like whether to hire you, promote you, invest in your training, or in the worst case, lay you off in a recessionary season.

    While you cannot make someone see what they will not or cannot see, you can exert influence.

    Our conversation topic this month is how our resume can be a powerful perception influencer. That is, if we accept responsibility for choosing how we present our professional interests and work history.

    Begin by listing three responsibilities you would love to have in a job, even if you don’t have any work experience in them.

    Now turn each of them into a job title, however silly it might sound. For example, if I want to be in charge of the development of a new product and lead the process from beginning to end, I might call myself a “Project Manager” or a “Lead Designer” or a “Brilliant Idea Implementor.”

    The idea is to create for yourself some job-related vocabulary that would be helpful for describing yourself in terms of what you want to do next.

    Try it. Share one or all three of your desired responsibilities and corresponding job titles in a comment here.

    On your side,

    – Karl Edwards

    Don’t forget to sign up for our Resume Workshop: A Fresh Approach to Career Advancement coming up in Los Angeles on February 7th! Or contact us for information on inviting us to your community.

  • Listen In -> Resume Branding #1: Controlling How We Are Perceived

    With our Resume Workshop coming up on February 7th in Los Angeles, we thought we would revisit a series on Resume Branding.

    In this series, Claudia and I explore using the resume as a tool for describing what we’ve done in the past in such a way that we communicate what we want to do in the future.

    We want to accept responsibility for maximizing the communication opportunity that this awkward piece of paper (the resume) offers us.

    Over the course of the next four weeks, we’ll introduce an entire method for crafting a resume that articulates your distinct “brand.”

    While listening to the show, make your reservation for the Resume Workshop on February 7th now!

  • Is Your Resume Up To Date?

    Toughing out a tough job is no one’s preference. In our current podcast discussions, though, we’re acknowledging that there do exist situations and seasons when staying put is the wisest course of action.

    Vital is to affirm your own value along the way. Articulating your attributes, skills and experience serves as a reminder that you have options, even if they are limited. A reminder that your choice to stay in your current job is a choice of power, not powerlessness.

    One of the best tools for articulating one’s value is the resumé.

    In what shape is your resumé?

    Rewriting your resumé will do a couple different things for you:

    1. Help you present yourself in terms of how you want to be perceived.
    2. Help you describe your work experience as qualifications for what you want to do next.

    In the process your confidence will feel more grounded and your energy for toughing out the current tough job will multiply.

    There is nothing like the mirror of a good resumé to get excited about yourself.

    As always, I’m here to help. If you’d like a partner in recasting your resumé, let’s talk.

    On your side,

    – Karl