Tag Archives: skills

Does your resume say you are trash?

Living in a ghetto, slum or trailer park does not make you trash.  Mother Theresa lived in a slum.  Her resume was good enough to get a Nobel Peace Prize.

I get some REALLY bad resumes. They say:

I can’t do this job.  I have no skills or training.  The reason I have the nerve to apply for it is because I really will work hard.  I know I was fired from my last job.  It wasn’t my fault.  The job really was terrible.  The job before that was terrible too. I’m not a freak.

We get at least one of these resumes or cover letters every week.  Yes, this bad.  Okay, only close to this bad.  The resume is trash.  It is literally worse than nothing.

Being laid off or fired tends to get workers, salespeople and executives to focus on the negatives from their previous job.  They feel they have to explain things in their resumes.  That is a mistake.  Your resume has only one job, to get you an interview.  It is not a confessional.  It is not investigative journalism.

Here are 4 signs your resume will be thrown away in record time:

  1. Explain that you are part of a group that would normally not be hired (I want to learn to be a…)
  2. Tell why your boss was an idiot in your last job (I was not allowed to fix…)
  3. List excuses instead of accomplishments (Due to lack of…)
  4. List skills way below those really required for this job (As a carpenter I sawed boards…)

Are you sure you don’t do any of these?  Usually these errors are hidden in a cover letter or large paragraph.

Something To Do Today

Seriously look at every line of your resume and cover letter.  Every single line. Do you make excuses?  Do you subtly or openly put down your previous boss or job?  Were you smiling as you wrote it because of the subtle needle in a paragraph?  Is a skill you list so basic it shows your lack of higher skills?  Do you put yourself in a group of losers accidentally?

How to make your skills official

You need to make your skills official.  You need to get someone to put their stamp of approval on them.

A school is a hopper into which children are heaved while they are still young and tender, therein they are pressed into certain standard shapes and covered from head to heels with official rubber stamps.  (H. L. Mencken)

Today I could apply for a job as a writer and have a real chance of getting it. Four years ago it would have been much tougher. I can now prove I am an author, a writer and a man of letters.  My published articles prove it.  One particular article proves that I am an expert at finding IT security folks and possibly an expert at computer security.

In reality I was a writer and a recruiter before the articles were published.  Yet, today I am much more marketable as both.

School did not make it official.  Someone putting their reputation on the line to use my work is what made it official.  Someone with a bit to gain and a lot to lose said, “We’re proud to have him write for us.”

I have seen programmers with 3 months of experience beat out programmers with years of experience.  The reason is that the rookie looked more official.  Someone trusted the rookie with a big role in a major project and he pulled through. He was excited, passionate and had the obvious imprimatur of his boss. The senior programmers who lost were always background support doing 40 hour weeks with no enthusiasm and no risk.

It’s official when you’ve proved it in commercial competition.  Not just when the team gets the job done, but when YOU personally made it happen.

How can you make your accomplishments and knowledge undeniably official?

Something to do today

Send an idea for an article to a publication or website about your field.  Submit it and see what happens.  They may ask you to write it.

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Later:             Illegal questions

No BS interviews work

How to quit

The old boy network

Exploit the old boys

The money question

5 quantum skills of IT, accounting, legal, and operations professionals

5 quantum skills of IT, accounting, legal, and operations professionals that will change your career and your company in this article.

Previously, I explored the forces driving fundamental changes to the IT business model. This is leading to what is being called the Quantum Age of IT–an era in which IT success and value is driven less by technology and more by relationships and interactions. We examined how this is leading IT organizations to develop five organizational traits to become learning organizations, disciplined organizations, transparent organizations, intimate organizations and, finally, dynamic organizations.

read more here.

Change what you associate pain and pleasure with

I got this from Sandi in an email today and had to share it with you.  Your job search is marketing of yourself.  She is a marketer.  Her ideas about deciding what causes you pleasure or pain directly relates to your job search. — Bryan Dilts

Change What You Associate Pain And Pleasure With

By: Sandi Krakowski

You may not realize it right now but you are, at this very moment, being motivated and influenced by two things. These two things literally control how you make decisions, when you’ll make them and quite frankly, IF you’ll make them at all… or sit in limbo.

Many people go through their day, all day long, without ever giving much thought to these very important two things. Myself included! It’s not like I get up in the morning and take a conscious thought of how these two things are motivating me…. but they are. Deep inside my subconscious mind, inside your mind as well, these two things are moving everything… forward, backwards or even holding at a standstill.

What we associate pain and pleasure with is the single greatest motivator in everything we do.

I’m here to tell you that 8 years ago this month I made a decision to CHANGE on a very conscious level what I personally associate to pain and pleasure.

Maybe you’re like me and you’ve always thought it painful to get a critique on something. Coming from the childhood I did where I was motivated nearly every single day by my performance, it was obvious that pain was directly attached to any kind of critique or opinion. And let me say this, this kind of underlying belief did NOT help me as an entrepreneur and thriving business owner.

If you associate pain to any opinions, suggestions, input or critiques, because maybe you didn’t have the loving, nurturing and caring support you deserved as a young person growing up, you will do anything to avoid these at all costs. Here’s the startling part, you’ll do it without even thinking.

You’ll ignore suggestions.

Fear critiques.

Hate when someone asks you to wait because something else must come first. You can see where I’m going with this.

However, 8 years ago I began a process of growing my life and my business simultaneously that caused me to make a decision to change this underlying belief. Now I am extremely happy when my mentor or someone I ask for input gives me critiques, wisdom and advice on how I can improve. It also changed something else in me very dramatically- who I’d listen to when it came to input on my business. I’m now very cautious, in a very good way, who has the privilege of speaking into my life and giving me suggestions for my business.

Listening to the postman and his thoughts on what we should do to grow our business to the next level, or letting that person who has never made millions of dollars, let alone even thousands of dollars in an online business give me their ideas is now attached to pain. And rightfully so. I don’t want the critique and input of someone who hasn’t done what I am seeking to be exceptionally good at! I do however pay more than six figures per year to get the best in the world to give me their thoughts. Because I associate extreme pleasure to moving to the next level!

So my question for you today is this- who are you taking input, ideas and suggestions from?

If you let someone at Walmart that you bump into, or let’s get a little more personal, that relative of yours give you input on whether to invest into your business the first thing they’ll say is, “Can you afford it?”

Newsflash, we were more than $450,000 in DEBT when I invested into my business! I didn’t consult with my checkbook to determine whether or not I could ‘afford’ to invest into something that could change my entire life and business. That kind of mindset comes from someone who has a fixed income anyways.

Trying to build a bigger future on your current income is a faulty business model!

No, I listened to the input of multi-millionaires who reminded me that to increase my own skill and to develop what is necessary in business it would take some sacrifice. It would take a commitment to “be here a year from now” and to not give in the first time hardship came. I sold things on eBay, learned to cook very inexpensively so I COULD do whatever it took to always have a mentor.

We also took an inventory on what we were spending our money on…. and made a conscious choice… pain and pleasure, remember that?….to associate pain with not moving to the next level. This motivated me to avoid whatever held me back. PERIOD.

It took a “Balls to the wall!” approach when it came to my business… which means in plain English “Do the things that make money for crying out loud” and don’t sit on Facebook all day chatting about the cutest things you can find on Pinterest and how “one day” I’ll pay cash for them when my business that I’m building on free tools finally grows.

It is my personal conviction that when someone says to me that they cannot invest into their skill set because of a layoff at work, or a down turn in their personal economy, they simply do not understand what it takes to build a business. They are still locked in a corporate mindset that says, “This is how much we earn and this is how much we can spend because it won’t change unless someone else increases my pay.”

YOU my friends have got to associate pleasure with doing the work and increasing your own paycheck because YOU have made a decision to not settle for less.

If you want a pay increase, you are going to have to make sure your skill set lines up with what commands and directs a pay increase! And you’ll need to associate PLEASURE with the entire process.

You can’t take on a typical a college degree mindset, where it becomes painful and tedious to study and learn things. Stop. Check that thought. Is this your belief? Change it!

You must flip that and begin associating pleasure to learning and more pleasure to activating what you learn!Attach PAIN to staying the same way, associate deep internal pain to doing things as you’ve always done them. You are being motivated every single day by what you associate pain and pleasure to.

This is how you pay off debt, you change your habits, you make decisions correctly and quite literally, you change your life.

The question becomes, will you do what it takes?

ONLY you can decide. For those who are ready? I’m here to take you to the next step. Come on over to my Facebook page right now and tell me that YOU have made a decision to do whatever it takes!

http://www.facebook.com/sandikrakowskibiz

With love,

Sandi Krakowski