Your resume - too often overlooked. Three things to do while writing it.

First thing—you actually want to start by writing your own resume. I’ve worked with too many people at various stages in their careers who pay someone at the start to write their resume.

That becomes an issue in your interviews. Picture your future boss or supervisor reading, “proven track developing programs that positively impact all areas of the organization.” Then saying, “that sounds great, how’d you do that?” Then they watch you fumble over your words trying to come up with something. Immediately, they don’t trust you.

When you haven’t thought through your achievements, you’re not going to know how to best talk about yourself.

Now, it’s fine to hire someone to improve your resume. I recommend it, but you have to start the process yourself.

Your resume is yours, and you are you.

Next thing—it’s not all about your resume.

Your resume is like a business card or your LinkedIn page. You should have one, but don’t rely only on your resume. Get out and network. Tell people you are looking for a job.

It is very common that someone you know will introduce you to someone who could hire you. Then you want to have a resume ready that you’re comfortable with and that you can send them.

When you’re networking, you get to practice talking about yourself. Set up coffee and lunch dates with your friends and family. Ask them what your skills are. A lot of us don’t really know the value we bring. Gather the data about yourself and then go back and update your resume.

Finally, your resume should describe how you make things happen. How you get things done. How you improve things.

If this is your first job, your bullet points tell the story of how you improved student participation and community involvement at your school’s games, music events, or whatever.

Did you help with the family business? Did you introduce social media to help streamline logistics for your family’s reunions and Christmas get together?

The same thing goes for those of you already in the workforce.

If you’ve been at the same company for 5 or more years, don’t just bullet point a list of your responsibilities. That’s wasted space. What they really want to know is do you get things done? Do you improve processes? Do you improve the culture? Do you add value no matter what you’re doing?

A lot of people hiring may not really know what positions the company needs, but they do know they need someone who can figure out how to get things done and showing that on your resume will help you. It is a challenging thing to do, but it’s worth doing. Again, it will help you in your interviews to really be able to talk about how you move things forward as opposed to only doing what people tell you to do.

For more information about how to show your results in your resume, look up STAR or PAR videos on YouTube.

Here is a link to our video — Understanding the STAR Method