“What are you doing for others?”

It strikes me that this isn’t only a central question for your life.

It’s also the central question that your resume must answer.

What are you doing for others?

What can you do for me, my team, my company, my customers?

Anyone reading your resume has this question in mind, consciously or not. Any employer is far more interested in learning what you can do for them than what you want from them.

What you do for others is the heart of your resume–and your legacy.

What’s your answer?

The post Thoughts on Dr. Martin Luther King’s Legacy–and Yours appeared first on Resume Guru.

Resources for California workers

If you have lost your job or had a reduction in hours as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, you can apply for the State’s unemployment program. You can find more information  or apply online now.

California Employment Development Department (EDD) COVID-19 page: https://www.edd.ca.gov/about_edd/coronavirus-2019.htm

EDD page to file an Unemployment Insurance Claim: https://www.edd.ca.gov/Unemployment/Filing_a_Claim.htm

The State has set-up a one-stop online resource to access emergency resources and connect to potential employers. Visit https://onwardca.org/ to sign-up.

Resources for California small businesses

The SBA is offering Economic Injury Disaster Loans of up to $2 million in assistance to cover a temporary loss of revenue. You can find more information or apply online now.

The SBA has launched the Paycheck Protection Program. These loans are up to $10 million and the SBA will forgive these loans if all employees are kept on payroll. The money can also be used for rent, mortgage interest, or utilities. You can find more information or apply online now.

The post COVID-19 Help for California Workers and Small Businesses appeared first on Resume Guru.

The Easter egg hunt holds some lessons for the job hunt, too:

1. Be enthusiastic. Expect wonderful things to appear unexpectedly. Enjoy the hunt. Have a spirit of discovery and delight.
2. Be curious. Look in unlikely places. The legendary “hidden job market” just means “takes effort and luck to find.”
3. Be energetic. Keep moving. Don’t linger in one spot, keep looking. Traffic is always light on the extra mile.
4. Play nice. Share information and tips. It’s not a zero-sum game. Everyone can win. Helping others with advice may prove to be an investment, coming back to you in unforeseen ways.
5. Starbursts might be flavored wax. The jury’s still out on that one.

The post Easter Eggs and the Job Hunt appeared first on Resume Guru.

It’s Opening Day of the 2019 baseball season. With that, all teams are tied for the pennant race. Everyone’s got hopes. And I think there’s a lesson here for everyone engaged in a job search as well.

One way to look at baseball is as an exercise in perseverance. A great player might have a .300 batting average. Only 20 players in the history of major league baseball have achieved a .400 batting average for a season–the most recent was Ted Williams, in 1941. A .400 batting average is generally considered unattainable in the modern era.

What this means is that the greatest players succeed less than 40% of the time when they go to bat. Fail 7 of 10 times–a .300 average–and you’re a great hitter. Fail 6 of 10 times, you’re a baseball legend and the greatest hitter in 78 years.

Baseball is hard. You take your swings, you miss, you strike out, you ground out, you fly out.

You fail until you win.

Job searching is hard. You apply to a promising opening and hear nothing. You get an interview and don’t get called back. You get to a second or third interview and learn that they’ve decided to go with an internal candidate. Or they’ve decided not to fill the position after all.

Or any number of other failure points, only some of which you can control.

If you’re looking for a job, you will fail. Repeatedly. And that’s fine. It’s part of the game. It means you’re in the game.

What’s not OK is letting fear of failure keep you from stepping up to the plate every chance you get.

Fail until you win.

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The best bit of my life is that I get to talk to everybody, about everything, and put people from a bunch of different disciplines in the same room, and I get to listen and learn and apply that to whatever I do next.

Reminds me of one of the wonderful side effects of my craft: people from all walks of life, experts in several hundred fields, explain what they do and how they make a difference. I can’t imagine a more concentrated education.

The post Perspective from a Career Futurist appeared first on Resume Guru.

• Brain teasers (possibly to see how you think);
• Personal questions (often approaching or crossing the line of what’s legal);
• Seemingly unrelated (testing something other than a job skill).

The useful takeaways: tactics for responding to these questions and steering the interview back to your qualifications for the job.

The post How to Handle Inappropriate Job Interview Questions appeared first on Resume Guru.

I’ll second what others have said about volunteer/intern/pro bono/community work. “Experience” isn’t just what you’re paid for.

The bachelor’s degree is probably your most valuable asset right now. Some things to consider to get the greatest ROI for your resume:

1) Relevant specialization or minor?

2) Honors or awards, either showing general excellence or, even better, something relating to your target job? Cum laude, academic honors, merit scholarships?

3) Relevant course titles. Your transcript can be a rich source of keywords.

4) Project work. Did you produce an undergraduate thesis/capstone project/senior project? If a team project, what role did you play on the team? Did you have a specialty others relied on? Did you lead or assist others in their roles?

5) Original research/publications. Did you author or curate resources relating to your field?

6) Student leadership. Did you belong to any relevant clubs/organizations? Within those, any committees? Were you elected or appointed to any leadership positions?

7) Teaching others. Were you a TA or peer mentor? With what program or subject? Can you show you made a difference (metrics in student performance or a testimonial quote from those you worked with)?

8) Study abroad experience? Immersion experience in other languages/cultures/subjects?

9) Did you work while a student? Can you show that you maintained strong academic performance while working XX hours/week to finance education? This can prove your work ethic and organization–never bad qualities.

10) Professional associations and activities. Were you a student member of a national or regional association?

The post Degree, no experience? Solutions for students appeared first on Resume Guru.

I’m convinced that most of the people calling for infographic resumes are the people selling infographic resumes. Not employers.

Here’s an article describing several cases against littering your resume with charts and graphs–and if you’re going to anyway, how to do it right. Protip: don’t eat the crayons.

http://www.fastcompany.com/3037764/hit-the-ground-running/how-to-create-an-infographic-resume-that-doesnt-repel-hiring-managers

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You don’t stand out merely by avoiding mistakes. You must also make the most of your accomplishments. This is a lot more complex than running spellcheck, and it’s absolutely crucial to demonstrating why someone should hire you.

Today I found one of the rare articles that shows ways to present often-overlooked accomplishments: 10 Things That Aren’t On Your Resume (But Should Be) by Mark S. Babbitt (@MarkSBabbitt).

Mark suggests nine categories to consider other than professional experience:

• Social Media Savvy
• Self-Learning
• Freelance Projects
• Theses, Studies, and White Papers
• Content Creation
• Relevant Industry Competitions
• Relevant Industry Conferences
• Anything Leadership
• Reverse Mentorship

There’s a lot of potential in these categories, especially for people lacking traditional experience (students, recent graduates, career changers, returning to work).

One key with all of these: don’t just list that you know something, or that you showed up at a conference. That’s the bare minimum. Go beyond that by showing what you did with the knowledge or experience. Show how you improved something. Show your math–meaning the relevant metrics.

Also, I disagree with the author’s recommendation to omit relevant coursework from degrees. Especially if a candidate accomplished something meaningful to employers as part of a class. That’s squarely in the wheelhouse of demonstrating accomplishment, and has the side effect of raising the return on investment for a degree that cost years, effort, and tens of thousands of dollars. Relevant experience + relevant keywords + burnishing an existing asset = an easy win. Not something to be discarded. 

The post 9 Ways to Show Excellence without Experience appeared first on Resume Guru.