With the Olympic Games fast approaching, athletes from across the world will all be vying to be the very best in their chosen sport and take home a gold medal. In events such as swimming and athletics it is usually only seconds that separate first and last and with competition so strong, a tiny mistake can often be the difference between winning gold or missing out on a medal. Just as an athlete will have to prepare and train in order to win gold, a job seeker needs to ensure that their resume is worthy of winning a gold medal! Although competition for a job may not be as fierce as competition for a gold medal, the same rules apply. A simple spelling mistake could lead to your resume being deleted and you missing out on your dream job. Preparation is key for any athlete and the same applies for any job seeker. Going online and using an out dated resume template which you complete in 10 minutes will not stand you out from your job seeking competitors. Before you even begin writing your resume, you need to have an understanding of the type of positions you are going to be applying for, and the type of skills and experience that will be required for that particular position. With this understanding, you will be in a far greater position to target your resume towards the types of jobs you are applying for. Market your Skills on Page 1 of the Resume: Reports suggest that hiring managers spend between 10-20 seconds when first reading through your resume. In this short time you need to grab the reader's attention. Introducing a qualifications profile or career summary is a great way to show off your skills to the reader within the first 2-3 lines of the resume. Rather than opening your resume with an objective statement (telling the reader what you want out of the job) -introduce a qualifications profile where you tell the reader the value-added skills that you can offer the business. From a hiring managers perspective which resume would you rather read? Highlight your Achievements: Your resume is your marketing document. Don't be afraid to highlight your achievements, awards, skills and expertise. If you are a manager include how many people you manage. If you received a promotion or award, point these out in the resume. The more quantitative examples you can provide the greater. Remember that your resume may be competing against hundreds of other resumes. Although you may be the most qualified or the most talented, if you are unable to portray your achievements throughout your resume than you greatly reduce your chances of being selected for the interview stage. Just as an athlete needs everything to go right on their day in order to win gold, a job seeker is the same. There is not one most important aspect that makes a professional resume but a lot of smaller details that goes into preparing a gold medal winning resume. Marketing your skills and highlighting your achievements will give you a strong advantage over your competition and help you stand out from the crowd.

If I had a dollar for every resume I saw that did not include "key achievements", I would be a very wealthy resume writer! Failing to include key achievements throughout your resume is a recipe for disaster and will cause your resume to be put straight in the deleted folder and never to be seen again. The job market is competitive, and if you're going to prove to the hiring manager that you are the best candidate for a job, you need to show off every key achievement and skill that will stand you out against all the other job candidates. Remember the golden rule of resume writing - your resume is a marketing document and, as such, needs to market all the great things that you can bring to a potential job. Providing achievements that are backed up with quantitative evidence will guarantee that you will stand out from the other job seekers. The best written resumes adequately sell the person's achievements, skills and personality. Do this correctly and I guarantee that you will find success. What Types of Achievements should you include in your resume? Employers want to know the value you are going to add to the business and therefore want to see examples of your past behaviours to indicate your future behaviours. Types of achievements to include are: • Ways you saved the company money • Examples of how you reduced costs • Examples of new ideas or implementations that resulted in positive outcomes • Special awards or recognitions you received (e.g. voted #1 salesperson for two consecutive years) • Training, hiring, mentoring, leading, managing staff • Resolution of problems or issues that led to a positive outcome • Training courses, seminars, workshops that you successfully completed Tricks and Tips to turn your resume into a selling tool: Use strategic keywords throughout your resume to catch the reader's eye. Strategic keywords will ensure that your resume will be picked up by employers using software programs that help eliminate candidate resumes Go through the job requirements to find out exactly what the employer is looking for in the right candidate and incorporate these directly into your resume. For example, if the job is looking for someone with leadership skills, make sure you provide examples about the leadership you performed either in your past jobs or through community involvement or extra-curricular activities Including responsibilities and duties in your resume are important because it shows the reader what you actually do on a day to day basis. However, in order to take your resume to the next level and stand out against the competition (and get the highest possible salary!), you need to focus on value added achievements.

Unless you are being recruited by a family member, friend, or close acquaintance, every single hiring manager will want to look at your resume before they call you in for an interview. I cannot stress enough how important it is to have a cover letter accompany your resume EVERY SINGLE TIME you send it in and to make sure that it's tailored specifically to the job you're applying for. Think about it from a hiring manager's point of view. They can receive hundreds of applications for a single job position that they need to fill in just a short amount of time. On top of their regular job duties, they need to sift through all of the applications and find the top 5% to call in for an interview. It's just not possible for them to look at every single person's application. So what do they do? They narrow down the field by using the easiest and fastest tool they have - first impressions. Let's relate this to a different topic - sports. You're a coach and need to "recruit" the best players possible for your team… You're coaching a soccer team and need to pick 15 members for your squad out of a potential 100 and you only have 2 hours to do so. It's impossible to take a good look at every single player's skills in only 2 hours, so you need to quickly narrow your search before you can study the players further. In order to do so, and without knowing anything about the players, you're going to rely on your first impressions to make the first cut. Take a look at the players standing before you - are they all wearing proper soccer attire and equipment? Do they look excited and enthusiastic about being here? Think about it - if there's someone dressed in a soccer uniform and cleats and another one wearing jeans, a t-shirt, and sandals, one of them definitely appears to be more interested in joining your team than the other. Building on that, and only considering first impressions, one looks a lot more capable than the other. While there may be a hundred explanations for this difference, it really doesn't matter when you have a limited amount of time - the ones who don't look interested are not going to make the first cut. Consider the above situation and think about it from a hiring manager's point of view. You have 50 applications before you and you need to call 5 people in for an interview. You have a limited amount of time to decide, so you need to eliminate some applications quickly. What can we see without even reading the details of each application? Some have cover letters along with the resume and some do not. The applications without cover letters are a little bit like the people showing up to soccer tryouts with jeans and no equipment. They make a terrible first impression - they don't appear as interested as the other ones, so why should anyone bother with them? Applications without cover letters are always the first ones discarded. The presence of a cover letter shows a genuine interest in a job position because you actually took the time to write it. The current economic climate is not exactly one that is overflowing with jobs; it's not like companies are hiring for the sake of it. Make sure you show a hiring manager that you have taken the time to merely write a letter to show your interest in their job position. If you don't bother showing an interest in them, the hiring manager will have no interest in you.

The best way to market your career for employment is through your resume. It is your first point of contact and first impression, and in today's society first impressions count! If you want to get noticed and to leave an impact, your executive resume needs to be written perfectly and professionally. In accordance with the human resources experts, there are five basic concepts on how to write the executive resume. An executive resume must be able to market your skills and highlight your qualifications and experience. As an executive, it is expected that you are able to perform the duties and responsibilities. It is also expected that you have the experience in this type of role, and therefore simply listing your basic duties is not enough to stand out as an executive. The executive resume must focus on the intangible skills that you can bring to the job and it needs to reflect your visions and skills. Before you sit down to write your resume, imagine that you are the person reading it. So, this implies that you need to put yourself in the shoes of an employer. For every job application, your resume needs to be targeted and directly written towards the job you are applying for. If there is a great emphasis on leadership, then the executive resume needs to highlight leadership examples and areas of your past work history where you displayed leadership, supervision and managerial expertise to lead and guide employers. Using examples and quantifiable numbers will aid your resume. Rather than a broad statement such as "exceeded sales targets on a monthly basis", turn this statement into an accomplishment statement that uses evidence to back up the statement: "Exceeded sales targets by 25% over a 12 month period while working in highly competitive markets, leading to an overall increase in expected revenue by $100,000" The ten steps in drafting the perfect executive resume Step 1: The first step is to read through the job vacancy profile and begin to draft job objectives. Of course, they must be responsive to the position you are applying for Step 2: Identify what knowledge, skills, and experiences will suit the job position best Step 3: Create a shortlist of your qualifications and experiences that will reflect your suitability for the position Step 4: Draw from your past experiences and search for accomplishments that prove you can effectively perform the job responsibilities Step 5: Elaborate on your brief accomplishments that emphasize your abilities in handling the position you are applying for. It is also very important to emphasize how your work has benefited your previous employers Step 6: Prepare your work history in chronological order, emphasizing your achievements. Concentrate on areas of how you added value to that positions (increased profit, reduced costs, implemented a new proposal, increased accuracy, project work, employee development, leadership initiatives, awards and recognition). Step 7: Don't forget to list your educational qualifications, especially those that are relevant to the position. As an executive you have probably completed relevant training courses or leadership workshops that will further aid your resume application Step 8: Presentation is crucial and the key is consistency! Step 9: Target your resume with relevant information that will aid you in getting the job. At the executive level, the hiring manager is looking at your overall history - the tangible and intangible elements that make you an executive who can lead the business forward in a positive way. As mentioned previously, employers are looking for more than just work history when making personnel decisions at the executive level Step 10: Don't forget to use strategic keywords throughout your resume and even include 10-12 keywords to highlight your key skills. Examples of strategic keywords include: Strategic & Tactical Planning, Relationship Management, Employee Development, New Business Development, Team Building, Training and Mentoring, Client Vendor Relations, Account Retention, Lead Generation, Presentation & Negotiation.

In today's society your resume is the most important document you have to get yourself an interview. Including power resume words will increase your chance of getting hired by 80%! When a hiring manager is seeing the same old resume time and time again which includes the cliché words and phrases such as "highly dedicated individual" or "great team player" you are guaranteeing yourself that your resume will be deleted. Poorly chosen words and clichéd phrases can destroy the interest of the reader. Power words when chosen correctly can have the opposite effect of motivating and inspiring the reader Power Resume Words will make help you stand out from your competition and increase your chances of getting hired! Top 100 Power Resume Words Advanced, Assigned, Assessed, Absorbed, Accelerated, Attained, Attracted, Announced, Appraised, Budgeted, Bolstered, Balanced, Boosted, Bargained, Benefited, Beneficial, comply, Critiqued, Closed, Collaborated, Designed, Delegated, Demonstrated, Developed, Detected, Efficient, Enhanced, Excelled, Exceeded, Enriched, Fulfilled, Financed, Forecasted, Formulated, Generated, Guided, Granted, Helped, Hosted, Implemented, Investigated, Increased, Initiated, Influenced, Integrated, Innovated, Instituted, Justified, Listed, Logged, Maintained, Mentored Measured, Multiplied, Negotiated, Observed, Operated Obtained, Promoted, Presented Programmed Provided Projected, Qualified, Quantified, Quoted, Recommended, refine, revamp, reacted, Retained, Recovered, Reinstated, Rejected, Sustained, Skilled, Saved, Scheduled, Supported, Secured, Simplified, Screened, Segmented, Streamlined, Strengthened, Triumphed, Troubleshot, Taught, Tutored, Translated, Trained, Uncovered, United, Unified, Updated, Upgraded, Validated, Viewed, Worldwide, Witnessed