Resume Ideas: Build “Skills Awareness” and Give Yourself the Full Credit You Deserve!One of the most powerful and common resume ideas I share with clients is the importance of building their own greater awareness about their skills, accomplishments and specialized knowledge. Strange as it may sound at first, we seldom have a full or clear view about all of our abilities, things we know and things we’ve done well so far in our career. Sometimes we forget things, but more often we don’t give ourselves the full credit we deserve in the first place. We discount our particular skills and downplay our unique accomplishments and special knowledge. Resume Ideas: Confronting “That’s Just Normal!” I discussed in one of my job interview articles the “just normal” effect: We tend to undervalue our skills, accomplishments and knowledge because we think they’re “just normal” and “anybody with half a brain can do that!” We don’t realize that so many other people can’t do them nearly as well as we can, and may even rely upon us for them. Doesn’t that count for something? Something big! So let’s take some credit for our strengths and special talents! We’re taught not to think or speak highly of ourselves in our daily life. While this humble approach serves us well in social situations and helps keep our egos in check, it actually hurts us enormously in our job search. Job searching is not like the rest of life – it requires a somewhat altered set of rules. When we’re job searching, we need to shift gears and learn to talk about ourselves in very positive, glowing terms. Not in a shallow, boastful way but rather in a substantial, grounding way that impresses others by describing particular skills and backing these statements up with matching examples of specific accomplishments. Resume Ideas: Build Self-Esteem through “Skills Awareness” The greater self-knowledge we gain through exploring our skill set and related achievements doesn’t only help us with communicating our “added value” to employers through our resume and job interview. They help us in a much deeper way by solidly and lastingly enhancing our “job search self-esteem.” Through this process, we realize how much we know, how skilled we really are, and also realize how much we didn’t know or remember before we undertook this amazing, uplifting exercise. Resume Ideas: Think and Remember Take a moment now to sit back. Think, think, think! Think about even the tiny, minute details of what you’ve accomplished in your past jobs that relate specifically to the job you’re applying for. Don’t hide them. Give yourself full credit for what you’ve done, without exaggerating it in any way. It doesn’t have to have been a major part of your job duties – if you know how to do it, tell the prospective employer and let them ask you further questions about it if they choose to. Fill out your resume to a full 2 pages with these valuable details that you can add to both your objective/headline, summary and experience sections, and elsewhere when applicable. • How are you a leader? How do you solve particular problems that others can’t? • What are you best at, most interested in and most knowledgeable about? • What most impressed your boss, co-workers and clients/customers? What have other people complimented you on regarding your special skills, gifts, talents? Consider especially unsolicited comments and opinions? Did you “blow them off” at the time? If so, see if you can remember them again now, and write them down in point form on a piece of paper. • What sorts of skills or special knowledge have your co-workers relied upon you for? In what specific ways have you most contributed to the teams that you’ve been a part of. As I mentioned above, these are crucial resume ideas too. How special is the co-worker who can fix your word processing glitches when you can’t figure it out yourself? How much time does that save you? In what particular ways are you similar? • Think hard about all that you’ve accomplished thus far. What’s the hardest thing you did in each of your paid and volunteer jobs; what are the most advanced skills that you used? In each of your academic achievements? • What's the most challenging project you worked on or situation you faced in each of your jobs - either a one-time situation or an ongoing circumstance or limitation. What specific skills and knowledge did you use to overcome these? Consider also how you would respond differently today, with the additional skills and knowledge you’ve gained since then, to find solutions to these situations. • How did you respond effectively and successfully to workplace challenges and problems on your worst days, on days when things turned chaotic and unpredictable – not just on your easy, care-free days. Again, what skills and knowledge did you use to “keep it together” for yourself and your team? • Think back to a particular task or assignment that you completed, or project that you finished. What were the small, specific steps that you took from the very beginning to the very end? For instance, when you served difficult or irate customers what specific actions did you take, what words and body language did you use and in what order? Resume Ideas: I’m Sure that You Offer Employers Special Skills and Knowledge We all have special skills and knowledge to offer the world, to help others and provide meaningful service to people. Without exception. If you think you don’t have any, then you simply haven’t discovered or remembered them yet. I have yet to meet someone who doesn’t have a special talent. It doesn’t have to be a unique talent that nobody else in the world has. You don’t have to have “flipper feet” like Michael Phelps for instance. Although Michael Phelps is certainly a good example of what I’m talking about. He combines his flipper feet with his other “special skill” of Attention Deficit Disorder (“energy to burn”) to win bagfuls of Olympic medals. :-) Resume Ideas: Value of Your Volunteer Experience Many clients are either unsure where to talk about volunteer experience on their resume, or they prefer to put it somewhere near the end, a little hidden and understated. I wholeheartedly disagree with this, and recommend that you consider describing your volunteer or unpaid accomplishments as if you achieved them in a regular paid job. As long as we state that our work experience was volunteer-based or unpaid (such as by putting the word “(Volunteer)” or “(Co-Op)” after the job title) then it’s perfectly fine to include highly-relevant volunteer work in your experience section. “Highly relevant” means that it helps you to describe specific skills and experience you’ve gained through that volunteer or unpaid work that overlaps or matches with the required qualifications as stated in the job posting. The employer is interested in what hands-on experience you gained from your work experience, both paid and unpaid. Often, paid work experience is preferred over unpaid because of the added accountability and responsibility. However, unpaid work experience can also contribute to and significantly strengthen your resume, especially if you are a younger applicant or re-building or changing your career. Give yourself full credit for the skills, experience and knowledge you gained in these relevant volunteer positions. Resume Ideas: Ask for Help from a Trusted Friend, Family Member or Professional Coach Another way to help yourself discover and remember is to ask a trusted friend, family member or professional coach to ask you lots of specific questions to help you bring out long-forgotten accomplishments from your employment, school and community or volunteer work. They might also help you to remember skills and knowledge learned in the domestic sphere or enjoying hobbies! Any time you took action and took a risk to learn more. It all counts, especially for your summary of qualifications section. But please be sure to develop the resulting skill and knowledge keywords and accomplishments statements in your own words, not somebody else’s. The resume is always more powerful and persuasive that way. I’ve experienced amazing results from these awareness-building techniques with many of my clients. One client started our coaching sessions thinking that she had no work experience related to her field of interest – grief counselling. During our 3rd coaching appointment she shared that she had spent time with patients when training for her previous occupation in healthcare. I asked her more questions, eventually narrowing the pertinent information down to specific and meaningful words and numbers. It turned out that she had worked what is the equivalent to a 2100-hour unpaid co-op placement in her country of origin, Ukraine over several years, assisting people with special mental health needs on a range of issues that are clearly applicable to settlement counselling. That’s the equivalent of over a year of full-time transferable experience! Another client also struggled with his resume ideas. He shared with me only general information at first about his community development work. Uncertain exactly what he meant, I asked him several specific questions, and discovered that he had previously arranged a 6-day conference for professionals, featuring attendance of at least 700 participants each day. Wow! Both of these clients thought that they lacked significant transferable experience to offer a new employer because they lacked awareness of their specific accomplishments. More Resume Ideas: Skills and Sub-Skills In my next article, I teach you how to break larger skills into smaller sub-skills that you can then easily integrate into your resume using "teamwork skills" as a specific example. You can then take this information to greatly improve and expand not only your experience section but also your objective/headline and summary of qualifications.
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