Resume Ruminations

There are many great resources for resume tips out there on the web.  When it’s time for you to freshen up your resume, peruse them all.  Here are the tips, tidbits and trade secrets regarding resumes I find the most helpful.  (Note:  I will be adding to this list periodically.)

1. Remember your resume is a self-marketing piece not a detailed account of your previous job descriptions.  Don’t get too bogged down in whether or not you collated, processed or filed.  Focus on  accomplishments, not tasks.
2. Use the objective section wisely.  Don’t use too much business-speak… everyone loves a highly motivated, detail oriented, multitasking, team player… just put it into believable terms.
3. For each job in your career history use 1-2 sentences describing the company and position, then give the rest as bullet points regarding your achievements and accomplishments in that role.
4. Show them the trees not the forest.  (see #1)
5. When listing your previous jobs use any advantageous company details to your benefit.  If it was a Fortune 500 company say so, large annual revenues can be boasted, high ranking in their industry etc… Even small company details can be exalted.
6. All business is numbers at some point.  Use numbers to describe the company, your role and your achievements.
7. Consider if you’ve won any recognition from your peers or superiors and mention it.  This includes everything from employee of the month awards to being selected project lead for nearly anything.  Everyone has them, spend plenty of time considering yours.
8. If you’ve trained, mentored, coached or hired any co-workers, mention it and tell how many (see #6).
9. Your resume must stand out visually.  It doesn’t have to have pictures and flashy design elements, but it should sit pleasingly on the page in a way that attracts others to read it.  Every job opening is bound to have dozens if not hundreds of applicants in this market.  Make sure your resume is not easy to ignore.
10. If you print it, use nice paper.  If you print it on watermarked paper, make sure the watermark is facing correctly.
11. If you share your resume electronically via email, use .PDF or some other file type aside from a Word Doc unless specifically requested.  Word Docs show all of your foibles grammatically and spacing-wise, even if they are intentional.
12. Your resume must be perfect.  You have as much time to work on it as you want before submitting it to potential employers.  Spelling errors, grammatical mistakes, punctuation inconsistencies, and incorrect formatting should not be tolerated.
13. Be creative.  Don’t just say you are, find ways to show it.
14. Show a bit of personality.  Read over it… does it sound like the best you possible?  If not, change it.

Here’s one of the best spots for good resume writing tips at DailyWritingTips.com: http://www.dailywritingtips.com/resume-writing-tips/ They tend to be a bit too black and white for me, but all the most important basics are covered… I would say there is more room for individuality in some job markets than they allow for though. 

Sensing Culture and Bettering Life

If someone were to grant you 3 wishes right this moment, would you know what you wanted without hesitation? If you had to choose quickly, would you have any regrets?  Most likely, but why?

Well, I would argue it’s because you haven’t asked yourself what you want in life often enough.  So, what do you want in life? No… what do you REALLY want in life?  Promotions, job security, a raise, time-off, acknowledgment, praise, a relationship,  a new car, power? Think deeper… why would you want these things? What do they get you?

Most likely, after consideration, I bet you’ll assume they’ll get you: Happiness… Fulfillment… Connectivity… Purpose…

And, you probably could convince me, or more importantly yourself, that there are a couple more items that would be much more appropriate on this list for you personally.  But, after fully examining one’s life/ambitions/yearnings; almost all people come to these deeper terms.  Why is that?

Well, just like sight, smell, hearing, taste and touch (the senses of human physical existence); these are the senses of human emotional/spiritual existence.  Did you think you only had 5 senses? You also have senses of movement, like: balance, texture (touch in the 4 dimension), and time etc.  But, what happens when you pay attention to all these in the context of your life?

Be quiet; completely still just for a moment.  What anxieties do you feel?  What is your gut telling you?

If you listen to it.  I mean really key into it.  And not those first superficial urgings, but keep listening till you hear that deeper inner-rumble… You’ll begin to find what you really want in life…   Now as an experiment, imagine basing just 33%, or one third,  of your day to day decisions on that feeling.  Go ahead… imagine that if every one in three times you crossed one of life’s many little decisions in a day, you contemplated fully (in the blink of a second) how that moment would affect your journey towards happiness, fulfillment, connectivity, purpose etc…

Do you think you would make better choices?  Of course you would.

This same principle applies to your company.  If everyone in your organization were able to base not all, but even a small percentage of their decisions on the deeper purposes of the company, imagine what would happen.  The results would amaze you.

Take away: Mission.  Vision.  Values.  <— Develop them.  Spread them.  Use them.  For start-ups: let them become the tools that help your business become what it wants to be when it grows up.

Understanding Your Daily Value

24 hours.  It’s not much time in the grand scheme of things… geologically speaking, not even a blink of an eye.  A day is however, one of most definable significant social/business/life increments we have.  “How was your day?”  “What did you do today?”  “Is that a work day?”  Chances are you will experience over 25,000 days in your lifetime, and in some countries the average is well over 30,000.  That is a lot of opportunities!

Here are 3 keys to getting the most out of every day you have.

1.  Carpe Diem - This is the big one, and I know it’s a bit cliche but the concept works if it means something to you.  Trouble is for many people this concept is a bit too robust all on it’s own.  What does seizing the day mean anyhow?  It imbues a certain grandiose significance that we simply can’t muster every 24 hours, can we?   What we can do however is start living in the moment, and by that I mean living with intent, or giving cognoscente thought to as many of our actions as possible.  And by doing so, we can find opportunities to add value to our life and the lives around us in some very significant ways.

Here’s an example… I drink coffee.  And in my office the coffee machine is about, 25 seconds or 44 paces away.  (Yes, I like my coffee that much.)  If I am not paying attention I will get up from my desk, walk the 44 paces staring down at my feet, contemplating my spreadsheet or whatever, and will return to my desk in approximately 1 minute with a full cup of coffee.  [Time spent: 1 minute ---> Net gain: Burned 22 calories on the walk/1 full cup o' joe]

But in that amount of time, I’ve ignored 3 open office doors and the receptionist (the ultimate linchpin to any successful organization), as well as a copy room and the water cooler along my way.  Now, if I am living in the moment and giving intent to all of my actions I will open my eyes and I just might think to take the opportunity to greet the faces in those 3 open office doors with a quick hello.  Or perhaps offer to get the receptionist a refill while I’m getting my own coffee.  And maybe I’d even grab my mail out of the copy room.  I don’t even have to break stride to say hello, and if done in a cheery manner, it will actually be appreciated.  The extra cup of coffee may add 10-12 seconds onto my trip, but hey that’s worth it right?  [Time spent: 1 minute 30 seconds ---> Net gain: Burned 27 calories on the walk/1 full cup o' joe/brownie points with the receptionist/more goodwill with my coworkers/stack of mail (saving a later trip)/more pep in my step]

Give this a try in your life and you will be amazed.  The great part is, the better you get at it the deeper it goes… start with a walk to the coffee machine, but learn to concentrate on your movements, your decisions, your interactions, your opportunities and interacting with life can go from a constant battle between your interior monologue and the noise of the world to a kinetic meditative experience.  And that brings the unreachable grandiose-ness of Carpe Diem to an obtainable level.  Seize the day, but moment by moment… action by action by living with intent.  Even when relaxing. 

2.  Get better at contemplating the future. We’re focused on tomorrow too much, and in the wrong ways.  Plans are great, thinking of the future is completely necessary for visionaries and creatives.  Imagining a better world, an end goal, a new life, all have their merits… don’t loose the dreams and creative thinking, but treat them for what they are, an active experience.  We too often don’t spend enough time fully immersed in thinking about the future, and too much time pining for it.  When you find yourself considering the future, go for it full tilt.  Get out pens, paper, paints whatever it takes to get that spark to light a fire.  Make plans, paint pictures, write something down!  By doing so, you’ve then taken that passive-secondary process to an engaged primary process.  This will help you get there sooner, trust me.  Then don’t forget to act.  No matter what your dreaming about, there is something you can do today to make that future reality a bit closer.

3.  Prioritize prioritizing… Don’t waste time, those 25-30 thousand days are going to fly by.  Here are a couple of sub-tips: A) make lists B) Spend time figuring out what you want most in life… then choose to do things that get you closer to those goals C) People and education should always get top billing.  Opportunities to focus on either should never be passed up.

Give these concepts a try (practice) and I’m confident you’ll get more value of each and every day… and your life will be better for it… talk to you soon.

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