The person that has focus is the person that wins.
Yet it is hard to focus. We don’t want to focus. It’s almost in our nature to be distracted by what is in front of us at any given moment.
Let’s take resumes for example…
How is a hiring manager supposed to decide who to call in for an interview? All the resumes look basically,… well,… the same!
Each person has a good resume. They formatted it right, spelling is right, they all have similar experience and backgrounds. It’s like everyone has done the same general things at the same general companies. These resumes are all generic… they all lack that thing called focus.
What makes a person stand out? The fact that they focused on something special…
“Earned Top Insurance Sales Person at my company and won a ski trip to Vail.”
“Established a new sales territory that has already brought in over $250,000 in revenue.”
“Over the past 5 years have helped a family owned business change from a half million dollar company into a multi-million dollar firm.”
Who is this guy?
Well, he is just the sales guy I want to hire! Bring him in for an interview!
I can hear the excuses now…
“But I don’t have any type of experience like that”
“Thats for sales, what I do will never sound like that”
“That person isn’t really focusing, they did three different things”
Yes you do have experience that I am sure you can build on…
Yes your expertise will sound like music in the ears of the right person…
Yes everything that person did built upon a smaller achievement in their past and is exactly what focused people do…
So what should you focus on?
Make a list that looks like the one above. It should include as many things as possible including, “I won my 5th grade spelling bee”, if that applies.
You should have at least 10 and hopefully more than 25 big or small achievements you can list.
Now start looking for the pattern… Do you see it?
This exercise isn’t designed to finalize any answer for you, but it is designed to point you in the right direction.
Keep walking that way and things can only get better from there!
Great advice. So often when someone is in need of a resume, it is a hurry up, rush job. While this approach may get your resume out there sooner, it is the slower, more thoughtful resume that gets noticed. Kind of like the tortoise and the hare.
Hi Carrie,
Thanks for being the first commenter. I am curious as to how you found me. I am just getting this site up and running and haven’t marketed it at all yet.
Cheers,
Jeremy
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i always seek career advice from my parents and from industry professionals::-