Your resume is your personal brand. Are you a doer, or an accomplisher?
Your resume is your platform that helps people recognize your value. This is your personal brand that shows up on places like Indeed, LinkedIn and innumerable applicant tracking systems used by HR departments around the world.
This is not your parents’ (or grandparents’!) job market when you walked into a company, filled out some forms, talked to someone then started your job a week later. You have to market yourself today!
What happened?
“The job market has become a lot more competitive in the last 10 years,” Benjamin Kahan, Head of Forest Hill Resumes, said on the Publio Podcast. The COVID crisis, he pointed out to Publio Founder and Podcast Host Keith Reynolds, amplified these changes in the job-hunting landscape.
“Companies have gotten a lot larger and more popular, so it’s more difficult to get your resume in front of a recruiter unless it’s specifically tailored to the job description.”
Applicant Tracking Systems – ATS software – match your resume with the job descriptions. If you’re applying for a job, your biggest challenge is how to assure the software flags your resume as a high-probability match. It’s all about the keywords, those words and phrases throughout the job description that describe specific skills, expectations, and experience.
“You can actually be the top professional in your particular field, but if you don’t have the right keywords on your resume, you may never get in front of a human recruiter,” Kahan said.
Once your resume shows up in a recruiter’s inbox, you have as little as 10 seconds to get the recruiter’s attention and decide whether or not to contact you for an interview. In addition to the ATS requirements, your resume must also capture the attention of the flesh and blood humans who will decide your fate.
Do-er or Accomplisher: What’s Your Personal Brand?
Kahan gets his clients to think of themselves as accomplishers, instead of doers. True, your job involves tasks, projects, and working with people. These are things that you do, but work is much more than what you do.
“People get into that mindset of seeing themselves as “doers.” because they have a supervisor who’s telling them what to do,” Kahan explained. “But you’re not actually just doing the work. You’re actually accomplishing goals that help the company, which defines the value of your work.”
Kahan’s angle to successful resumes is the ability to transform “what you did” into a personal brand of accomplishments. He moves his clients to think of themselves in a different light. That empowers them to realize the potential they have to achieve higher goals. Ultimately, they think of how they are perceived “on the other side of the glass.”
“Ultimately my resume writing business is how I help people recognize their value,” Kahan said.
What Does Your Business Brand Accomplish?
Just as professionals need to articulate their impact as measured by outcomes, companies also need content to convey they’re ready for the job. They must provide differentiation of their products and services to target customers across platforms within their competitive landscape. It is therefore critical to recognize and present your company or organization with the same purposeful intent as you put into your products and services – and your resume – to stand out online. This makes it easier to decide whether your firm is the best fit for the job.
How Publio Can Help Your Company
Publio brings a data-driven perspective to technology, finance, and professional services firms to open doors, qualify leads and get sales appointments. As your Fractional CCMO, Publio specializes in helping clients firms differentiate their offerings and create content that stands apart from their competitors. We use today’s cloud and AI technologies to deploy targeted media, generate new business and provide an excellent customer experience. We guide clients through our signature Publisher’s M.O.™ methodology to design and implement a marketing strategy and plan that leads to sustainable results and ROI.
Curious to learn how Publio can help your business? Schedule a free consultation with us today!
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