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Full disclosure: I am a resume writer and also a national speaker on career management topics. 

What I always advise people on regarding their job searches is to have a 3-legged stool: 1) Polished resume, 2) Targeted job search and 3) Network network network.

A significant change on the resume development side is to create a value-oriented document that showcases the applicant's achievements, versus simply cutting and pasting job duties. Employers are evaluating these documents to find out the 'so what?' of what the applicant did so they can make a better estimation of what this person could possibly do for the new employer.

I volunteer by teaching a resume writing class every 2 weeks at Worksource Oregon's Portland Central office to help job seekers understand what they need to incorporate into their career documents to make them compelling, keyword driven, and to show how they are going to help a potential employers.

But it goes beyond the resume...networking effectively is incredibly important - a lot of people fall down in this category- either they are too timid to set up informational interviews or fail to see the importance of joining professional industry organizations to gain networking and educational access to job specific training / counterparts.  

As Ms. Grant will likely agree, having an online presence is also important so employers can find you. If you are looking for work and are NOT on LinkedIn.com, you are missing a huge opportunity to be 'discovered' and to bolster your online presence. Using online forums such as Twitter, Facebook, Quora, and LinkedIn can help you access people and communities that can assist in job searches.

Finally, looking for work requires dogged follow up and never giving up. It's okay to be discouraged, but if you let yourself give up hope, then you aren't opening up any doors to possibility.  Take a moment to get through the feelings of rejection if you don't get the job, but then pick yourself up and just keep moving forward. By building upon your knowledge, contacts, and networking, eventually, you are building a web so far and wide that eventually, something will get snared into it!

Please feel free to contact me if you have further questions:

Dawn Rasmussen, Pathfinder Writing and Careers - Portland, OR

posted 2 years, 1 month ago
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