It all starts with you

Are you ready to show your achievements in your resume?

Are you getting ready to enter the workforce?  How about a career change after many years working for different companies? Is it time to do something else?

Many questions.  Lots of information to process.  Multiple well-intended friends and relatives suggesting what you should do.  But, where do you start?

The answer may surprise you.  It all starts with you.

Before answering that first job posting or sending that e-mail to your friend who may know about a job opening, you need to do some serious thinking about what you have done and what you want to do in the future.  You need to know as much as you can about the product that you will be presenting to the job market and that product is simply YOU.

Future employers want to know what you have done in the past because, very likely, you will be able to do the same for them.

In these days, accomplishments are the most relevant, most significant, or, the centerpiece of resumes.  People want to know what you have done and in what you have succeeded.  So, let’s take a look at what you have done so far, or, your achievements.   Here are some questions to start your thinking process.  .

·         How many whatevers did you sell?

·         How did you save your company money?

·         What problem did you help to solve?

·         What new ideas did you bring to your team?

·         How did you lead others?

·         What projects did you complete?

·         Which processes did you redesign?

These are some areas in which you may have contributed to your company and, by doing so, may be ready to contribute in similar ways somewhere else.

In our next blog post we will share how to turn answers to these questions into achievements so that you can begin to build the document that will help you to open doors: the resume.