Job Description Administrative Assistant
In a tough economy, if you want a job with a certain employer, chances are you"ll have to do one heck of a sales job to outshine everyone else vying for the position. An Associated Press report one year after the September 2008 financial meltdown found that on average in the United States, six people competed for each advertised job.Now for the good news. You can turn a ho-hum, me-too resume into a gleaming marketing vehicle that elegantly shows off your talents and accomplishments to employer gatekeepers.
Mind-Reading Your Future Boss
The trick is to get into the mind of the person for whom you"ll be working. What problems does this person need solved? How can you make your potential boss look good to his or her superiors? How can you help to improve processes and profitability at the place you want to work?
Use each past job on your resume to explain how you cured similar pain points for your previous employers. Use keywords from the job description on the application. Use them - skillfully, not clumsily - in your resume (and in your cover letter).
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Just as with traditional sales, your pitch to an employer must be you-focused. Not "you" as in, you reading this, but "you" meaning your customer. What"s in it for them if they hire you?
And don"t expect a hiring manager to read the bulleted items on your resume and connect the dots themselves in figuring out where you"d fit in at their company.
Make the connection for them. Your cover letter is a good place to explain, "The same skill set I used in successfully managing product launches at WX Web Portal will help ensure that your semi-annual developer initiatives deliver outstanding results.
Outsourcing - Should You Hire a Professional Resume Writer?
Job Description Administrative Assistant
Should you hire a professional resume writer? Maybe. The value of a professional resume writer is that a good one will figure out ways to attractively package You Inc. -- ways that you may not have considered. That stint in the call center that you"d just as soon forget might become, "helped dramatically increase customer satisfaction and retention as account servicing representative for XYZ Corp."
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The trouble is, especially with some of the lower-priced "resume mill" services, that many resume writers don"t take the time to dig into your story so that your resume creates a powerful narrative of your accomplishments. But if a paid writer is able to land you the six-figure job that you could not get left to your own devices, then it"s obviously worth it.
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But wait, what about keywords? And should you bother with formatting or pretty language if a robot"s going to be screening anyway? Yes, keywords are important, and yes, your resume must still look good and read well, as eventually, a human, not a piece of screening software, will make the hiring decision.
If you hadn"t figured out by now, taking this targeted-marketing approach means you"re going to have to do some customization to your resume for each employer. It may seem like a pain in the neck, but that is, after all, what good salesmanship is about: going out of your way for customers, even if they"re "just" prospects for the time-being.
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