Executive Resumes & Career TRANSITION STRATEGIES

Here are a couple of easy ways to add sizzle to your LinkedIn profile. Perhaps the most immediate impact you can make on your profile quality is to add an engaging and professional-looking profile picture. While you’re at it, here’s another quick and easy boost you can give your LinkedIn profile’s impression on visitors…

As an executive resume writer for over four decades, I take this responsibility very seriously, and suggest these 10 tips to help ensure you have a successful, positive collaboration with your resume writer.

Using online job boards is one strategy in a well-rounded job search plan. Sites like Indeed, Monster, SimplyHired, etc. can help job seekers identify specific opportunities, find growing companies that are hiring, and even research salary and benefits.

Following is a checklist for executives (and other workers) that will help you navigate a job search as our nation’s and the world’s economy struggle to recover and the great reopening begins.

Unfortunately for many, the glowing, complimentary, or at least noncommittal reference you expected to receive from one or more of your previous employers could be sabotaging you. In the case of job references, what you don’t know definitely CAN hurt you!

An option some of my executive clients have considered in the COVID business environment is to stop waiting for the next job opportunity and create it themselves by becoming an entrepreneur or consultant. The great thing about making this change mid-to-late career is that you already have a lot going for you.

Once you have an offer on the table for an executive job, here are some things to consider carefully before accepting, negotiating, or declining.

Many people are out of work because of the coronavirus pandemic, and many more will likely lose their jobs as the economy continues to struggle. Here is some guidance on ways to help make ends meet when you’re between jobs.

Even if you have a dynamite executive resume and LinkedIn profile, there are plenty of basic mistakes you can make that will slow or even bring your executive job search to a screeching halt.

Here are some ongoing trends that you may need to take into account as you manage your executive career or write your executive resume in 2020.

There are many advantages to running a home-based business in retirement. You get to put your skills to good use, learn new things, and generate some income along the way.

Whether you plan to write your resume yourself or engage a professional executive resume writing service, your winning recipe will have these ingredients, and be prepared as follows… Your perfect executive resume starts with the right ingredients, in the right quantities, blended well, and tastefully presented.

Recent LinkedIn blog posts and a CBS This Morning interview with LinkedIn’s Editor-In-Chief Dan Roth tell us that October is the month with the highest number of job openings on LinkedIn’s website. And amazingly, 89 percent of hiring managers fill those open positions in less than four weeks! With the unemployment rate at a 50-year low, it is a candidate’s market, and your competition for one of those openings will likely be lower as a result.

This is the 14th year for “International Update Your Resume Month.” Because you never know when you’ll need an updated resume “yesterday,” this serves as an annual reminder for professionals and executives to review and update their executive resume, LinkedIn profile, and other career documents.

It is the sales/marketing aspect of the executive resume that stops many executives cold. You may feel like you are being cocky or a braggart if you persuasively recount your accomplishments and lay out your capabilities in a way that captures your prospective employer’s interest. Yet mastering the art of the humble brag is absolutely critical to positioning yourself effectively in a competitive executive job market.

As an executive resume writer with over four decades of experience, my answer to the executive resume length question, in a nutshell is: “Your resume should be as long as necessary to effectively communicate your qualifications, experience, and value proposition.” It’s as simple as that! But you may ask, what is the best length for my executive resume?

Perhaps the most indispensable part of your executive resume is a certain category of personal information – the kind that tells the reader who you are and how to contact you. But there are also certain kinds of personal information that you will want to leave out.

Many casual users and even some frequent users of Microsoft Word do not realize that the metadata that Word keeps about your executive resume document under “Properties” is very extensive and can reveal a lot more about you than is wise.

When you boil it all down, what a prospective employer is looking for when reviewing an executive resume is the right combination of hard and hard skills that will enable a candidate to deliver the results the company needs. But what ARE those "hard" and "soft" skills?

Most executive resume writers and careers professionals would advise that a powerful summary or profile section supplant the dated, traditional “objective” statement. Particularly since most objectives are candidate oriented (what I want or need) versus employer oriented (what the employer wants or needs), the business-case style summary or profile is generally much preferred.

Since your executive resume is in most cases going to be your foot in the door to a new opportunity, it is critical to ensure it makes a dramatic positive impression on the reader, whether that may be a recruiter, hiring manager, or HR resume screener…. If your resume fails to meet criteria that person or system is looking for—and quickly—it may be discarded, never to be seen again.

The greatest executive resume in the world will do you no good if the person responsible for making the decision to hire never sees it. The executive candidate who identifies and gets to the hiring manager first is most likely going to be the winner, so make the extra effort to find and contact that person!

A key question to consider is whether a photo will make you stand out in a positive or negative way. Even in those cases where the picture (or the whole executive resume) is not immediately discarded, think of the possible outcomes. Notice that only one out of the five possibilities listed is favorable.

For a successful executive-level job interview, here’s how to research the company thoroughly beforehand. It is so easy nowadays to find a wealth of information about a company you are considering or one that you are scheduled to interview with that there is just no good excuse not to do so!

Way back when I first started writing resumes, I realized that when you analyze it, job search is really a marketing activity – self-marketing, that is. So is overall executive career management. In reality, we all have a career brand – what others see as our essence.

Gain valuable insights into what recruiters see when your LinkedIn profile comes up on search results, what they like and don’t like to see…. the fact that there are 500 million plus LinkedIn members means that it is easy to become lost in the crowd!

Ageism in hiring and in the workplace after you have been hired is nothing new… Here are some anti-ageism steps to take in your executive job search and career management.

Cover letters can either excite a potential employer or bore him or her to tears. A major reason that your cover letter may be boring is that your language makes you come across as pompous or nineteenth century. Avoid overly formal or stilted language! Other things to watch out for…

There really is no good reason for prospective employers to insist you reveal your salary requirements or history… You can “Just Say No” to demands for salary history information. As a matter of fact, recent court rulings in many states have made it illegal to ask a person’s last or current salary, primarily in an effort to combat gender discrimination through wage disparity.