A REAL PRO

A friend of mine sent me his resume to look over, I opened the file and it was a little scary. I know this person and I know that he is a real professional, but his resume made him look like he was a real rookie.

As I read over his resume it shocked me as to how bad it really was. I read the summery, but couldn’t figure out what he had done in the past, what he was doing now, or what he was looking for. As I read over his past positions, I knew what they were because of our friendship, but reading the resume I wouldn’t have known what he did, was responsible for, or what he had accomplished up until now.

About the only thing that I recognized on his resume were his references and they shouldn’t be on his resume!

If you are going to put out ANY information about yourself that is open to the public it MUST be professional, it must be accurate, it must be up to date, and it must be something that conveys who you are and the type of person you are professionally and personally.

I can honestly say that if I had received this resume from an applicant it would have been thrown into the trash after reading the first 10 words.

How about you? Maybe you are not looking for work so you don’t have a resume to worry about, but you still have a business card, maybe a web site, possibly a blog or a Face Book page, a LinkedIn profile, or even a tweeter account. If a prospect were to see any of these what message would they get?

Professionally you need the whole package to be perfect. If someone finds you on LinkedIn and follows your blog link they shouldn’t be surprised at either one. They should be extensions of one another. This is true for any and all of the media, printed or on line, which you produce or have produced for yourself.

I called my friend and gave him my suggestions about his resume. At first he was very defensive, he didn’t want to admit that what he had wasn’t great, but as we talked he started to see that he had a lot of work to do.

Take a look at everything that you have about yourself. Look it over as if you a third party and ask yourself, what does this say about me? If it doesn’t say, this is the best person in the world and the most professional sales rep in the world, you have some work to do also.

Lorin