Resume Tips For 2010, Article #3

The Powerful Resume Help You Need

Check it out! Great resume tips fill this third article with the keys you need to develop your powerful job-winning resume.

Quick question: How often do you think about other jobs or careers?

I'm always amazed by how many people say, "Will, I think about it all the time!"

And that part is fine, but the trick is that these people rarely take action toward the jobs they are dreaming about!

To be perfectly honest, the reason the majority of these people think about it all the time yet take no action is because they never invest even one little hour to unveil a written list of their talents and skills.

Sounds too simple? It may sound that way, but, I guarantee you this is a powerful solution to build the super strong foundation you need for your job-winning resume.

Here is why you need that insight: Once you have a clear view to your personal best talents and skills, you can then cross off all the jobs for which you are not qualified, write a list of the skills you are ready to learn, and most importantly you can circle all the jobs for which you are qualified every time you're reading the Help Wanted ads, browsing Monster.com, or anyplace else!

To make sure we are all talking about the same thing, let me answer two questions. .1. "What's the difference between a skill and a talent?" and .2. "How can you know which talent or skill your resume should feature?"

Question .1. Your skills are the abilities you gained through direct training or some type of hands-on experience. In contrast, your talents are those gifts or natural abilities you realize you have even though you did not have to develop them.

To give you a more practical handle on skills, let's contrast un-skilled workers and skilled workers.

Un-skilled workers are the people with little or no formal training. They will do jobs like envelope stuffing, grocery bag packing, and general entry level jobs at minimum wage.

Skilled workers generally get higher pay because employers pay for the abilities you developed through training and through experience. Skilled workers do everything above the Un-Skilled category including back hoe operator, copier repair, computer programmer, bank president, etc.

When we compare all that to your talents, natural abilities, and inborn qualities, we see that your talents are often the starting point for the skills you develop.

For example, my older daughter is naturally social, outgoing, and able to open a conversation with just about anyone at just about any time. She also happens to have the inborn ability to relate positively with infants, toddlers, and young children in general.

Based on those talents she is eagerly pursuing a career as a teacher. As you can appreciate, the talents alone are not enough to gain a role as a teacher. Those talents are the starting point, and then her college education provides the educated and trained skill sets required to gain a paying job as an elementary school teacher.

Question .2. "How can you know which talent or skill your resume should feature?"

As I noted in the example about my daughter, the talents and skills you need to feature make themselves easy to see.

This resume tip is straight forward: the more you work through this process of listing your talents and skills -- as well as your strengths and weaknesses -- you will know what needs to get more attention.

If you have any doubts, then keep the full list, and then compare it to actual job descriptions when we get to that stage of this process.

It is time to take action. This is a quick little project very similar to the one you just finished in article #2.

Grab your piece of paper, or open a new document on your computer, and launch into this powerful list of skills.

Your Resume Tip: think of your skills as action phrases or as verbs. For example, My skills include preparing menus, calculating food costs, developing kitchen work streams, leading efficient teams, etc.

When you need help creating a deeper list of skills, do one or more of these: --- Ask a friend to say what they see as your top three skills --- Use your favorite search engine to find "transferable skills" or "career skills" --- Use your favorite job site to get job descriptions for roles in which you are interested --- Visit my website and contact me, I will be happy to send you links

The next quick step is to list your talents. Some people find this to be very easy, while other people find it hard to come up with more than one or two.

If it feels like your skills and talents overlap, then just think through the parts of each concept in which you were not trained. What do you naturally know how to do?

If that does not work, then circle back to your friends, relatives, school mates, etc., and ask them to list the top two things you are naturally do well.

Be aware! If you are disappointed in your skill list for any reason, keep in mind that they are not necessarily show-stoppers. There are many ways to build new skills (read books, night school, universities, etc.), and there are many ways to gain experience using those new skills (volunteer work, part time jobs, mentors who coach you on best ways to get started, etc.).

Be sure to keep you list of skills and talent as well as your list of strengths and weaknesses nearby. All this info will be a HUGE advantage when we compare it with the attributes listed in your favorite job descriptions. More to come in the next two articles!

Your resume tips summary: the better you know your talents and skills the better you can feature them in your resume.

Do not miss this chance to unveil this powerful foundation to your resume!

Action: If you did not yet do so, then do it now! Take 5-10 minutes to do your talents list, and then take 5-10 minutes to do the skills list right now.

Once again, these exercises are simple and powerful all at the same time. Knowing yourself is the powerful foundation to your resume!

BONUS POINT >>> If you are ready to build your skill right now, yet feel very time-challenged, then you are ready for the "1/96th Of One Day Challenge!" Believe it or not, "1/96th Of One Day" is just 15 minutes.

Here's all you need to do: get a book, training DVD, etc., then commit to using it 15 minutes each and every day.

You will be amazed at how quickly you finish it. It is a great program and leads you to your goal in easy steps!