My resume is Complete. Now What? Part 1

If you have reached a point where you are happy with the resume you have, whether you created it recently or not, there are still a few steps you really should consider including before beginning your job search. This month we will address two of these steps.

Gather Feedback: I don’t mean immediate family members, but trusted colleagues or coworkers, a trusted manager, or maybe even an ex-manager with whom you are on good terms. Even Aunts or Uncles that are in the professional workforce may provide an unbiased critique. Why is this step so important? Here are three reasons.

1 – Their reception of your document will give you a really good idea of how your document will be received once you begin using it. If the person providing the feedback is or has been in a hiring role, that person has already seen a ton of resumes, and knows what to look for, so in turn, they can provide lucrative advice which ultimately can help you tweak your document to completion.

2 – If the person you have asked is someone who has worked with you in the past, they may recall projects, recognition, or examples of high performance and measurable accomplishments which you forgot to include.

3 – The grammar expert in your selected reviewers will surely find those typos and mistakes you missed. When working hours on end on any document, most times, you become so familiar with the content that little mistakes in grammar, punctuation, and even formatting gets missed. All the extra eyes will definitely eek out the mistakes, allowing you to perfect your document even further.

Leverage Your Network: Together with your resume, using your network to the fullest advantage can help reduce your job search and eek out those opportunities before they are posted, or others that you might have otherwise missed.

Know who you will be contacting. Contact your friends, past employers, present and past coworkers, and people you’ve met at networking or other social events. All the people in your network and also in their connections can be used to your advantage.  

Implementing these two tips can help give your job search direction. Next month we address two more steps that will bring greater clarity to your job search.

Thank you to our resume expert, Jasmine Marchong, for this article and the resume tips.