A really great resume – one that captures attention, gets interviews, and lands jobs faster – has always been all about differentiating that job seeker and their promise of value from others competing for the same jobs.

Personal branding is the best career marketing tool today to get you there. And branding generates the kind of chemistry that helps hiring decision makers pre-qualify you as a good fit and sound hiring investment.

If you need help uncovering and building your personal brand, see my post The Personal Branding Worksheet.

Resumes these days often take the form of an online profile or part of an online career portfolio. Whether online or on “paper”, follow these 7 tactics to brand and power up your executive resume:

1. Lead with a personal brand statement.

Forget about an anemic “objective statement” outlining what you want in a job. Nobody cares what you want. They want to know what you will do for them. Use this prime real estate, the first thing people will see, to tell them about the unique value you offer that no one else does.

Placing a stand-alone brand statement at the top of your resume, in itself, is a powerful differentiating feature. Few job seekers are doing it. A dramatic element like this that links your personal brand with your value proposition and ROI will immediately draw in the reader.

Craft a statement of 3-5 lines that comes from your own voice, gives a feel for who you are, and lays out your brand attributes, pivotal strengths, and vitality. If a stand-alone brand statement on your resume doesn’t feel right for you, instead it can easily become part of your career bio and the foundation for your 30-second elevator pitch.

2. Format your resume with the readers’ needs in mind.

More and more hiring decision makers are reviewing resumes on the go – on PDAs, netbooks, or other small screens. Brief, brand-driven statements of value surrounded by enough white space to make them stand out will have the greatest impact. Long, dense paragraphs make it hard for the reader to quickly access and digest important make-or-break information about you.

3. Tell your story above the fold.

People reviewing your resume may have to look at hundreds or more resumes for any given position, so they don’t have much time to spend on each one. In fact, they may only give your resume 10-15 SECONDS to capture their attention. If you don’t draw them in immediately and hold them, they may move on to the next resume and forget about you.

► Showcase your most important and compelling information at the top of page one, since this is the first, and possibly only, section that will be read. Consider this: if you tear off the top of the first page, it should stand on its own as your career branding communication.

► Include 2 or 3 achievement statements or standout contributions you’ve made to companies, leading each with the quantified WOW! results. Show them the numbers! These provide evidence to back up your personal brand.

► It’s okay to move certain information from the second page to above the fold on page one, such as special training, hot certifications, or career milestones – especially if they’re relevant to your job target. If you have an MBA, don’t hide it at the bottom of the last page. They may never get there!

4. Keep your resume to 2 pages.

It may be difficult and painful, but you can do this. The purpose of your resume is to generate interest in you, compelling decision makers to want to talk with you. A resume is not a comprehensive career history covering every job you’ve ever held. It’s a career marketing document that needs to say just enough about you to do its job. So precision-writing is the key. And in most cases, there’s no need to go back further than 10 to 15 years.

To keep it brief, pare down and consolidate your value proposition and all your great achievements to just the essentials.

You can put together deeper slices of contributions, “success stories”, and your softer side in collateral 1-2 page documents (Leadership Initiatives Profile, Achievement Summary, Career Biography, Reference Dossier with Accolades, etc.).

5. Highlight your key areas of expertise just once.

Instead of taking up precious space repeating obvious lists of responsibilities under each position, consolidate them in the form of relevant key word phrases at the top of the first page. For best impact, position them in nicely formatted columns or a shaded graphic box, titled something like “Key Areas of Expertise”. Or, depending upon space, sprinkle these relevant key words throughout your achievement statements.

For the header “Professional Experience” or “Work History”, consider using a relevant keyword phrase, such as “Senior-level Management Experience” or “IT Management Experience”. Fill out the section with short statements of key contributions to each company and achievements that provide evidence of the value you will bring to your next employer.

6. Transform your executive resume into an on-brand LinkedIn profile.

This is a great way to extend the value of your resume while building your online presence and brand reputation. I’m sure you know that recruiters and hiring decision makers are searching online to source candidates and to pre-qualify those they’re considering. If you’re invisible online, you don’t exist to them. And of course, LinkedIn offers endless networking benefits.

Everything in your branded resume can be copied and pasted into appropriate sections of your LinkedIn profile. Here are a few tips:

► An abbreviated version of your personal brand statement becomes your LinkedIn professional headline – the first thing people will see, along with your photo. You can pack quite a punch with the allowed 120 characters.

► The top half of your resume, before the “Experience” section, becomes the “Summary” section for your LinkedIn profile.

► Remember to break up dense chunks of information and add plenty of white space, just as you did with your resume.

► LinkedIn may not accept some graphic bullet points that you used in your resume, but you can get visual impact with various characters that are right on your keyboard, such as: * ~ > = - <>

► Once your profile is all done, LinkedIn lets you easily convert it to a PDF file.

► Include a link to your LinkedIn profile on your resume, along with your contact information at the top.

7. Take advantage of Google Profiles’ search results power.

A few days ago, Google Profiles trumped LinkedIn and other social networking sites for building brand-solid search results, by adding a customized listing that includes your photo on page one of results for “your name”. Check it out by typing “meg guiseppi” in a browser window and scrolling down the page until you see my photo and link to my Google Profile. That’s an attention-grabber!

Google makes it very easy to set up a Google account and put your profile together. In fact, it’s much easier than LinkedIn. Cut and paste your resume into the body of the profile, add your photo and an on-brand headline under your name, and pop in links to your other online profiles, websites, blogs, etc.

Google Profiles is now a must-do online branding strategy and another great way to extend the value of your executive resume.

For more in depth strategies to brand and differentiate yourself in your resume, see my series of posts, Think Like an Executive Resume Branding Expert.

Author: Meg Guiseppi

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We hear it time and time again; the purpose of bringing together a team is to create synergy. Rub two 1’s together and end up with a 3. Accomplish larger goals than any one person could possibly achieve alone. The list of good reasons for pulling together a dynamic team is endless, but creating this oh so elusive perfect mix is easier said than done.

The first step is finding a diverse group of people, each with a unique personal brand which can fill a necessary gap. Once you’ve got the right people, you’re unfortunately only halfway there. Now the molding has to begin. Here are six necessities to help you form those separate individuals into one,  fluid masterpiece. Why six you ask? Because  five is boring and seven is far too overplayed.

1. Understanding: First, there needs to be an absolute sense of understanding when working on a team. A group of people working together will tend to fight in order to get the largest piece of pie for themselves. A team, on the other hand, recognizes the unique value brought forward by each members personal brand and allows the larger goals of the team to come before personal gain.
2. Creative Abrasion: Conflict is good, and any smart, motivated, and driven group of individuals will realize that a clash of ideas is a necessary aspect of progression. It forces us to take a hard look at validation, raises the energy level, and brings out passions. It is important to solve conflict in a constructive manner, but never shy away from a valuable dispute.
3. Strong leadership: This one is a given. Without clear leadership, expectations become vague, visions are scattered, and time is wasted. Good leaders lead by example, constant participation, and sheer charisma. A great leader knows how to embody the vision and mission of the team simply through actions alone.
4. Personal Development: Each person has to understand the unique value they bring to the group and be open to learn from the expertise of others as well. It is not good enough to simply excel in your own niche, a team environment gives you the ability to expand and learn new things out of your comfort zone while teaching others simultaneously. A team that constantly supports one another is key for  personal and team development.
5. Shared Values: It takes work, but actively establishing shared values is crucial when working on a team. These shared values create common goals, allowing everyone to effortlessly move forward in the same direction. These values also become the team’s code of behavior because they define what is and what is not acceptable. These values take the form of both corporate objectives and individual values.
6. Embrace Your Personal Brand: Encourage diversity by leveraging each person’s individuality. True energy, synergy, and value is created by throwing a diverse crew together and constantly building upon the core competencies of each individual member. The varying perspectives, inevitable conflicts, and cross pollination of ideas is invaluable. Very little in life is more rewarding than working on a team with a diverse spectrum of individuals that have somehow managed to fit together seamlessly, and in do so, created something great.

Evan Watson

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To put it mildly, the job market is the worst it has been in the past century.  Unemployment is continuing to rise as more and more people are being laid off and companies are slowing their hiring procedures.

With that being said, there are still jobs out there for you to work, but it is important that you dot every I and cross every T in your search for your next job.

One of the biggest mistakes we see time and time again is the fact that job applicants are forgetting the basics, and a good thank you note is a basic element that every job applicant needs to have in their career toolkit.

There are 5 elements to a good thank you note:

1. Timeliness! Let’s say that you just got done interviewing for your dream job and you know there are 100 others interviewing later that day.  I would be willing to bet you that only a handful of these individuals actually take the 30 seconds to write a good thank you note.  When you leave the interview you should have the thank you note already written and you should drop it off with the secretary on your way out or in the first mailbox that you see.  The key is making sure that the note is in the hands of the interviewer within 48 hours.
2. Spelling.  While the job interview may have gone really well if you send a thank you note and you misspell the person’s name that interviewed you, you might just as well start looking for elsewhere.
3. Grammar.  Just as spelling is important it is good for you to write out your thank you note in Microsoft Word beforehand so that you can make sure your sentences make sense and that it says what you want it to.  If you are not the best writer have someone else look over it for you.
4. Legible.  Now people will go back and forth trying to decide if it is acceptable to have an email thank you note, I believe that in today’s world it is alright however a hand written one is ALWAYS preferred.  If you do end up hand writing the note you should write slowly and make sure that the recipient is going to be able to read how much you look forward to hearing from them.
5. Short and Relevant. It is a thank you note, not a memoir!  2-3 sentences max!  You want to thank them for their time, explain how much you enjoyed the interview and how you look forward to working with them in the future.  Don’t make the note so vague that it appears that you have one template that you send to everyone.  You need to make it fit the company you just interviewed with.

Don’t beg for the job, don’t sound desperate, and don’t over think it.  A good thank you note will set you apart from the crowd. It could help seal the deal between two candidates, and it will remind them of your qualities at a later point in time.

Author: RJ Sherman

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For the past few months, I’ve been writing about personal branding, and especially how it can help job seekers. If you’ve followed me on this blog, you know that I don’t talk about theory, but about practice. People who see my presentations know I talk about the “big picture.” LinkedIn alone means very little, and you can say that for almost any single component of your personal branding effort. The big picture is how you put all these things together so everything catalyzes everything else. You know, you have to make 1 + 1 equal 3 or more.

That’s as theoretical as I get. The rest is what I’ve observed myself. I confess that I read a lot about the subject, and I pick up ideas all along the way. I’ll also confess that the only business book I’ve read all the way through is “I’m on LinkedIn. Now

What???” and that’s partly because it’s short.

I’ve started many business books, but I’ve never had the patience to read them. Here’s my little secret: I find almost all of them trivial, boring, or just wrong. (Not a good observation for someone who hopes to write a book.)
I had the same problem through most of my work in graduate school.

Theoretical constructs drive me nuts. Show me how you can use this stuff!!!! Economics? Oy vey. It was obvious to me as a young man that economists didn’t have a clue what they were talking about. (I guess I was right, but it’s unfortunate that the proof is the current financial melt-down.)

© 1998 Mark A. Hicks

Did you ever sit through a class where a teacher spent 90 minutes describing how to make a decision? Broke it down into all its major components? Asked lots of seemingly dumb – oh, excuse me – academic-type questions? OK, I’m listening to this drivel and wondering: “Why does this matter? The real issue is whether the decision was right. Was it implemented correctly? Did the manager collect the right information? Analyze it right? Get other people involved so they would participate in the solution?” The theoretical constructs of decision making are baloney. If it helps, go sit in a hyperbaric chamber and listen to Mozart while you’re pondering your decision.

The only thing they can’t (or don’t) teach you is how to make the right decision.

Which brings me back to my first point: what makes the teacher an expert? Academic credentials? Having read tons of meaningless articles, which they promoted as gospel? I don’t think so. The person who’s an expert is the one who makes these decisions successfully! You can argue all day about elasticity of demand and how it affects pricing, but I had actual experience with several products – changing pricing up and down and watching sales results. Theory be damned, I knew what worked.

Thought I was wandering, didn’t you?

Let’s apply that to personal branding. If you accept the basic premise that having a public personna in your field (aka being an SME – subject matter expert) will help you promote your career or job search, then you can do the same thing I did. Try a bunch of things and see what works.

I tell people to sign up at personal branding and reputation management sites. Go to Ziggs and create a profile. Why? Because when I started tracking the Google results for “Walter Feigenson” I kept finding Ziggs near the top of the results. I also saw Ziki there, and ZoomInfo, and others. That’s how I came up with my personal branding tactics.

Is that going to get you a job? NO! Will it stop you from losing out to a competitor for a job you’ve found? YES! That’s why personal branding is important.

1. You need to be found when somebody is:
   1. looking for you specifically
   2. looking for a subject matter expert in your field
2. You need to have a “portfolio” for people to look at when you meet them:
   1. a corpus of articles that prove you’re a subject matter expert
   2. “stuff” on the Internet that puts a personality behind your name and resume

Remember, when you’re out looking for a job – or a consulting gig – you have one product, and that’s YOU. Promote yourself the way any company would promote a product. Don’t be shy, be proud of what you’ve accomplished – and show it to the world!

Author: Walt Feigenson

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