36 www.blackeoejournal.com Black EOE Journal
CAREERS
G
etting ready to job search in the new year? Use these tips to infuse your resume with energy and communicate a clear story about what you can bring to your next job.
Create a personal brand to show employers your uniqueness.
Personal branding is about communicat- ing your identity and showing what sets you apart from others in your field. It combines the personal with the professional, since a brand encompasses your skills and talents, along with personality and style.
Make Your Resume New Year Ready!
When competing for a job, you need to stand out. Besides helping you identify your per- sonal strengths, having a brand can pull your resume to the top of the pile, make you shine in interviews and leave your social media readers positively wowed. Are you ready to start thinking - or re- thinking - your personal branding strategy? Consider several of your best work experi- ences and how you contributed to them. What skill or characteristic is reflected in your best work stories? How did you use it? With what result? Ask yourself: Why do people like to work with me or employ me? What earns you compliments or accolades? What do people depend on you for? Here are two examples to get you started: Do you take unusual care to ensure details are thoroughly thought through and accurate? Your brand could be willing to take on the precision that scares others away. You might be an outstanding supervisor who makes operations flow and brand yourself a problem solver who excels at developing talent.
Your transferable skills are a major selling point; make sure to highlight them.
An important part of what makes you valu- able to an employer is your skillset. There are probably some skills unique to your particu- lar work history; take time to note these and include in your resume. Transferable skills are those that are used in many different careers and help make you an attractive job candidate. If you have a hard time coming up with a list of skills, take a skills assessment or try listing the key tasks from your previous jobs and highlight the verbs - or action words - you wrote down.
Promote your accomplishments to advertise what you can achieve.
The first thing an employer wants to learn from a resume is how could this person help my organization? Your resume should give
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