Contents
   Career Coaching - What Is It?
   Step 1: Self Assessment
   Step 2: Resume Preparation
   Step 3: Crafting Cover Letters
   Step 4: Targeted Job Campaign
   Allen & Associates - Career Coaching Experts

Resume Preparation

"Many executives today are living in a vacuum when it comes to having a powerful results driven resume:, says Peter Newfield, president of Career Resumes and "The Resume Expert" for Monster.com. "More than 85% of the resumes that come into our offices for evaluation needs major surgery. People just don't have a clue as to what is necessary to compete in today's labor market. They don't realize that they are competing with hundreds of people for the same job whose credentials are equal to and sometimes greater than their own.

If their resume isn't a winner, it's a killer. A resume should be a marketing piece, not a document of past history. Done poorly, as most are, it will virtually guarantee that the individual will never get past the front door. Even if they have the correct information on their resume, if the format (visual presentation) isn't "Tiffany," with the volume of resumes that come in to a company on a job posting, they won't get called." As Mr. Newfield states in his articles on HeadHunter.NET and Net-Temps, "The resume must get past the gate keeper whose job it is to screen paper out, not in. A resume's job is not to get you a job; it's to get you a phone call inviting you in. Once that happens, you can rip the resume up; the resume has done its job."

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Optimizing Electronic Resumes

The electronic form of your resume must meet some standards that have been necessitated by the various databases and email systems that the resume must pass through. It must be a plain text document. All the formatting such as bolding, tabs, underling, italicizing, etc. that you cherish in your traditional resume must be removed. Also many hidden commands that are entered into the document created using word processing programs such as WordPerfect must be removed so that they do not corrupt or distort the resume when it is received by a hiring agent's database or email. You can try to beat the system by entering a resume loaded with html, or other formatting commands, and sometimes you will get away with it, temporarily. Sooner or later, your resume will be corrupted - guaranteed! Don't fight the system! Do it right the first time!

"If you're competing in the job search of TODAY, you'd better get wired or you're going to get whacked," says Alesia Benedict, CPRW, Certified Professional Resume Writer, Executive Board Member of the Professional Association of Resume Writers, and CEO of Career Objectives: "You can no longer get by the way you once did -- using paper resumes to answer ads, contact executive search firms, etc. Electronic forms of your resume (e-resumes) must meet standards that have been necessitated by various databases and Internet sites, or else it will be rejected. It's more than just eliminating bold and underlining on the resume, and it isn't about loading the resume with html," states Ms. Benedict, whose work has been published in 8 national books. "The greatest opportunity in job search right now is on the Internet, through both companies' and recruiter's sites and databases," says Ms. Benedict, "if you're merely a wannable.com and not competing with a sophisticated e-resume -- you're dead."

Indeed the power of the Internet is outstanding. At this moment, some 159 million people worldwide are now online. By 2003, International Data estimates 510 million people will be. Companies and executive search firms continue to ask for resumes electronically, and that trend will only soar.

"At our firm, we used to ask our clients their paper color preference for printing -- now we simply supply a paper resume to them as part of their package and concentrate on developing aggressive e-resumes and dynamic, short electronic cover letters," explains Ms. Benedict.

"Still not convinced you need an e-resume and of the power of the Internet?" asks Ms. Benedict, "how did you find THIS article?!"

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Confidential Resumes

One of the major concerns of employed executives is distributing a resume with their name, address, name of their company and other identifying information on it. One way to handle this issue is to create a "confidentialized" version of the resumes, particularly the electronic version. To do so, you remove your name, replacing it with "Confidential Resume", "Confidential Executive Profile" or an alias. Then remove your address, indicating, "Southern California Resident" or "Greater Chicago Resident". Recruiters have an obsessive need to know where you live. Don't fight it! The hiring agent must, however, have a method of contacting you. An email address should be listed, but won't provide the level and ease of contact that is required. You need a phone number. If your phone number will give you away, use a fax number or acquire another number, possibly even an 800 number. Some companies will actually field the calls for you, notifying you of the inquiries, and responding to the inquirer as per your instructions.

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