Resume Personal Branding Best Practices Part 4 - Concise - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career

Resume Personal Branding Best Practices Part 4 - Concise - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career Your resume communicates a personal brand in a snap. Thats the entire purpose of your resumes personal brand to communicate a gut-feel first impression that youre qualified and that youre a superior candidate. When your resume gets to a human being, it has to pass two quick snap-judgment tests: The 6 Second Test: Are you qualified? The 15 Second Test: Should I interview you (or recommend you for interview)? Heres what most candidates use to try and pass these tests: An Objective Statement: Describing for the reader, Heres what I want A Summary Section: 1-3 paragraphs that tell the reader everything about what youre proud of in your career, that you think should interest the average hiring manager for the average job. Selected Accomplishments: More about what youre proud of, written for the average hiring manager for the average job. Key Skills: A listing of skills that you guess the average hiring manager is searching for. There are numerous problems with these approaches, that lead to a confusing, conflicting and commodity personal brand. But lets focus on just one of the problems brevity. Resume personal branding boils down to 2 basic problems: You dont know what that individual employer really wants: If you dont know what that hiring manager wants, youre left with one of two choices, both equally bad: Throw everything against the wall, hoping that something sticks or guess. You try to do too much: When you dont know what a specific employer needs, you try to include every reason you might be qualified for any employer. Your readers dont have time to pick through all of these in 6 seconds, so you cant manage the first impression you make. When you try to list all the reasons that youre a great candidate, employers cant easily see whats really important to them. Plus, when you try to appeal to everyone, you end up appealing to no one. It doesnt have to be this way. You have the ability to craft a resume that speaks to individual hiring managers. branding yourself as the solution to their individual priority issues. You wont get there by guessing or hurling masses of statements. Youll get there by talking to people inside the employer, to gain an real understanding of what the hiring managers real problems and priorities are. As a candidate, youve got just 6 seconds to give your reader the first impression that youre qualified and just 15 seconds to give your reader the impression that they need to meet with you. In 6 seconds, theres no way your reader can make a determination of your qualifications any other way than gut feel. In 15 seconds, the most they can do is a quick scan. So youve got to be concise. How will you be able to manage your readers 6-second first impression by dumping paragraphs of information on them? by expressing your personal brand in a single line. To create a first impression in 6 seconds, take a laser focus so your reader can gain a first impression in an instant that youre qualified. Your personal branding statement is best expressed in a single line, as the title of your resume. Personal branding in a single line allows your readers to immediately internalize your brand in their gut. Once you gain an understanding of whats important to that specific hiring manager, creating a concise, focused personal brand is much easier, because you no longer have to guess. Since you know what the hiring manager needs, give it to him/her clearly and easily seen in a single line. You wont hide whats important to your hiring manager within all the other guesses of what they might need because youve first found out what the hiring manager actually needs. Because after youve learned the hiring managers true needs and priorities, you can show youre a superior candidate that has already solved problems similar to the hiring managers needs in a single, crystal clear, consistent, and concise line, reaching the gut of your reader. Which way do you think your resume will pass the 6 second and 15 second test? By guessing? By throwing anything you think might interest your reader? or by laser focusing your personal brand on your specific readers needs? Author: Phil Rosenberg is President of http://www.reCareered.com, a leading job search information website and gives complimentary job search webinars at http://ResumeWebinar.com. Phil also runs the Career Central group, one of Linkedin’s largest groups for job seekers and has built one of the 20 largest personal networks on Linkedin globally.