An executive job search is often an arduous journey, which can take up to several months to complete. However, like any journey, you’ll reach your destination when you have a clear plan for how you’re going to get there. Crafting an action plan for your executive job search may seem tedious, but it’s necessary in order to expedite the process. If you don’t know where to begin, professional resume writing services can help get you on the right track. You can also check out our four tips below for developing your action plan.
1. Know Your Target
If you don’t have a specific target, you have nothing to shoot for. Identify not only the industries you’re interested in, but also the companies or people involved in those industries. The key to writing resumes that get you hired is targeting them toward certain people or companies. Be specific, but realistic, when it comes to identifying your target. Consider the industry, the company, the culture, location and even the salary you desire to help you narrow down your options.
2. Make Your Message Consistent
Some people tend to forget that they’re selling themselves when they’re on an executive job search. Your message about yourself and what you want to accomplish should be consistent across the board. If it’s not, you will eventually be exposed and could damage your reputation. Any of the best professional resume writing services can help you create a consistent message for your professional brand.
3. Determine Your Search Strategy
In general, there are search strategies that work and some that don’t. Of course, everyone can be successful in their own way, but it may not be the easiest way. Networking is the best way to search for an executive job, even if it’s not one of your strong suits. You could also call or visit different companies in person, search for recruiters on LinkedIn or other websites, or post your executive resume on different job boards. Networking and targeting individuals or companies usually yield the best results, but you may have to find your perfect mix through trial and error.
4. Track Your Progress
Whether you’re creating your action plan or putting it into place, tracking your progress is helpful. Checking off different boxes from your plan will give you some added self-confidence to help you continue pushing forward. Just remember the target you identified earlier so you can know what you’re aiming for.
At Professional Resume Services, we take pride in our ability to help executives with their job search, even if it just means putting together the best executive resume format. If you need assistance with your action plan for your executive job search, feel free to contact us at any time.
Networking is one of the most valuable actions any professional or executive can take for a variety of reasons. Whether you have a job you like or are seeking a new one, networking has plenty of value. However, if you don’t network properly, you could find yourself frustrated at the lack of success it’s getting you. Networking can work for everyone, but it doesn’t mean you can just go through the motions and land your dream job as a result. Here are some of the most common mistakes executives make in their networking efforts.
Not Warming Up Your Contacts
It can be easy to lose touch with your professional network. With such a busy schedule, combined with not personally seeing your connections frequently, contacts can quickly and easily go cold. However, the key to c-level personal branding is to always work on improving your image and brand.
Any LinkedIn profile development professional will tell you if you reach out to a cold contact and act like you just saw them yesterday, your efforts won’t yield very good results. Just like you have to build a relationship with any new contacts you make, you have to warm up the relationship with current contacts.
Being Too Vague
When you visit the best executive resume writing services, they aren’t going to tell you to be vague on your resume. The same goes with networking. If you don’t enter a networking event with a clear goal in mind of why you’re going, you’ll leave with an empty feeling. Before you even attend an event, write down a list of things you want to accomplish, and most importantly, what you’re looking for in your career. Anticipate questions people may ask you so you know how to answer.
Networking With The Wrong People
It’s also possible you’re simply talking to the wrong people. In most cases, if you’re new to an area or industry, you can’t talk to your past connections and expect to get anywhere. That’s why LinkedIn profile development is so critical in networking, since you can make connections no matter where you are. There are plenty of LinkedIn groups available to help you get acquainted with the right type of people before you even meet them.
Professional Resume Services provides not only the best executive resume writing services, but can also help with your LinkedIn profile development. Feel free to contact us if you are struggling with your networking efforts in any way.
The LinkedIn Influencer program has been around for several years and has only gained in popularity. “Influencers” are generally people who have succeeded in business and life; however, their footprint could be expanding soon. The program helps those people boost their brand, and it also helps followers and readers get some valuable insight into their minds and professional expertise. Any member of LinkedIn can read their posts, and it doesn’t take a LinkedIn profile service to figure it out. However, what exactly was the LinkedIn Influencer program designed to do? Here is some great information.
Diversity in Both Influencers and Readers
The diversity in the Influencers program means there is also great reader diversity. Any given article an Influencer posts can reach tens of thousands of unique views in a short amount of time. With a few hundred Influencers in the program, regular followers can get some valuable insight from a variety of sources.
Reach Larger Audiences
Entrepreneurs and executives who are a part of the LinkedIn Influencer program have reaped the benefits of gaining new followers. They can reach a new audience simply by posting their professional thoughts on LinkedIn. However, this also gives a chance for followers to interact with those Influencers and their followers as well. Before you get too active in the conversation, though, be sure to get with a LinkedIn profile writer to polish up your online presence.
What to do as a Follower
There are a couple things a follower, who isn’t an Influencer, can do to take advantage of the program:
- Find Influencers relevant to your situation. You don’t have to limit yourself to the amount of Influencers you follow, but you can easily find a handful you relate to. When you follow them, you’ll be able to easily see what they write and can check out their past and current posts.
- Get involved with conversations. You can comment on posts, reply to other followers’ comments and more. You may or may not receive a reply from the Influencer themselves, but being active in conversation will get your name recognized without even having to use a LinkedIn profile service.
At Professional Resume Services, we understand the value in LinkedIn profile development services, and can help you navigate the Influencer program for your benefit. If you’d like more information, or need a LinkedIn profile writer for any reason, feel free to contact us at any time.
Coming up with a marketing plan at the beginning a job search can sound a little intimidating, even for professionals and executives. It sounds like it would involve an extensive process that would take a lot of time away from the search itself.
However, any top rated resume writing services will tell you not to underestimate the value of a job search marketing plan. It’s much better to learn and understand today’s job search techniques before you get started, rather than just trying different things until something works. Here are the important concepts of a job search marketing plan.
Know How to Distinguish Yourself
If you’re going to advertise yourself, you need to know what different companies and recruiters are looking for. Any executive knows the importance of c-level personal branding, so you need to know how to brand yourself to fit the current market. How you portrayed yourself a decade ago is likely much different in today’s job market. Figuring out what characteristics leads to a successful job search is the first part of developing a good marketing plan.
Figure Out What Your Job Search Will Entail
When writing a professional resume, it’s better to be specific and target certain companies or industries rather than being too general. This just means you need to do a little homework upfront before you even start crafting your resume. You may need to do some online research, attend networking events or even visit some companies to get more information. Come up with a plan of what you’re willing to do and what you need to do based on your resources.
Develop a Plan and Stick With it
When you come up with a plan, you need to stick with it. Your plan is obviously to succeed, so adjustments may need to be made along the way in order to achieve your goals. To improve your c-level personal branding, this could mean attending one networking event each week. It could also mean you need to send out one resume to a different company every day after you’ve done your research on them. Set aside time every day to work on the plan you set in place and stick with it religiously.
Professional Resume Services is one of the top rated resume writing services to help you develop a job search marketing plan. If you need any assistance with creating your perfect plan, feel free to contact us at any step along the way.
If you aren’t familiar with LinkedIn endorsements, they are much more important and different than getting a “like” on Facebook or Twitter. With endorsements, your LinkedIn connections can confirm your skills with just a couple of clicks, rather than writing a detailed review about you. Any LinkedIn profile writing service will tell you not to put too much stock in endorsements when it comes to advancing in your executive career. Still, there are a few things you should know about the importance of LinkedIn endorsements.
Choose Endorsements Wisely
Endorsements from former bosses or colleagues are better than those from family members. While it may look great to have a ton of endorsements when trying to optimize a LinkedIn profile, a recruiter will see right through them. Most recruiters will search through your endorsements to find the most credible ones, so it won’t do you any good to clutter your page with them.
Endorsements From The Right People Are Valuable
LinkedIn profile writing services usually suggest asking higher-ranking people from your company or former workplace to endorse you. While an endorsement from former colleagues is valuable, an endorsement from the CEO of your company will rank higher.
One tip to help your chances of getting a LinkedIn endorsement from high-ranking people is to endorse them yourself. It’s human nature to return the favor when one is given, and this principle is no different with LinkedIn.
Quantity Isn’t Too Important
As mentioned earlier, you should focus more on the quality of your LinkedIn endorsements rather than the quantity. Check with a LinkedIn profile writing service to see if you have too few or too many endorsements on your profile. You can easily hide certain endorsements if you don’t think they are credible.
Endorsements Should Tell a Story About You
When a recruiter views your LinkedIn endorsements, they should be able to know exactly who you are and what you have to offer from a professional standpoint. Your endorsements could display your ability to communicate effectively both in writing and speech, work well with others, your proficiency with technology and many other characteristics. If you have a lot of random endorsements, it will be tougher for a recruiter to see what type of executive you really are.
At Professional Resume Services, we have a team of professionals who know how to optimize a LinkedIn profile with endorsements. Feel free to contact us if you have any questions about how to manage your endorsements to help create a stronger profile.
LinkedIn has recently made some changes to their platform, and executives need to know about them. Some of these changes are minor and won’t affect how you use the website, but it’s always good to minimize surprises. We understand some executives don’t spend a lot of time on LinkedIn, so it’s important to get assistance from LinkedIn profile development services at the very least. This will help ensure your online presence is as up to date and professional as possible. Here are some of the changes you should be aware of, whether you develop your LinkedIn profile personally or not.
Gauging Profile Effectiveness
If you frequently viewed your profile ranking based on your connections, you may notice the feature is removed. This was a great tool to allow users to gauge their profile effectiveness. The most current way to determine profile effectiveness is to look at the amount of activity generated. Any LinkedIn profile service can quickly determine how effective your profile is and what you can do to give it a boost.
Messaging Changes
The InMail feature is no longer free. So if you used that feature often, you’ll have to upgrade to a paid membership. You can still message people who aren’t your connections for free, but you’ll have to do some research to figure out how to email them directly. The messaging feature for your connections has gone to a similar platform as Twitter and Facebook. The key to messaging people you aren’t connected to, without InMail, is to be in the same groups as them so you can then message them directly.
Learn to Adapt to Change
Change always happens in business, so it’s no surprise LinkedIn has had to make some necessary changes to their platform. Most of these changes are self-explanatory, but if you need a LinkedIn profile writer to help you navigate them all, don’t hesitate to hire one.
The best LinkedIn profile development services will help you understand what changes are most important and how you should adapt to them. Decide what you use LinkedIn for to determine whether a paid membership is worth it with these new changes in place.
Professional Resume Services keeps people up-to-date on latest developments of LinkedIn, so professionals and executives won’t be taken by surprise. If you feel the need to utilize a LinkedIn profile service to help you adapt to the recent LinkedIn changes, feel free to contact us at any time.
LinkedIn is a powerful tool for professionals and executives—when used correctly. One of many ways you can properly utilize LinkedIn is by participating in different groups. Joining a few groups can boost your LinkedIn profile development, since you’ll naturally gain more connections as a result. However, you have to be careful with how you approach these groups. Here are some great tips on how to optimize your LinkedIn profile and expand your network by joining groups.
Choose Your Groups Wisely
You can join up to 50 groups on LinkedIn, but you don’t have to actually join that many. Consider joining groups related to your industry, your social life, interests, hobbies, school affiliation and other similar groups. The more groups you join with relevance to your interests, the better chance you’ll have of expanding your network properly with people you can relate with.
Observe Group Conversations
Once you join a group, you might not want to jump right into conversations. People in groups are generally familiar with one another, so they may not like it if you barge in on their discussions. Instead, sit back and observe conversations for a few days or a couple of weeks. See how the group members interact with one another, so you’re able to fit in more naturally once you become more active in the group.
Introduce Yourself
After you’ve made your observations and determined the group is a good fit, make a nice introduction to the group. Tell them to visit your LinkedIn profile to learn your background, but also tell them things about yourself that aren’t on your profile. The more you tell about yourself, the wider range of people you’ll be able to relate to. When you’re trying to boost your LinkedIn profile with more connections, relating to people is the best way to go.
Be Active
When you’ve introduced yourself, be sure to reply to any comments welcoming you to the group. From that point on, people are at least familiar with your name and would enjoy having you in discussions. One mistake people often make is not being active in a group, so other members will forget about you. Activity in LinkedIn groups is the best way to expand your network.
Professional Resume Services is dedicated to helping professionals and executives boost their LinkedIn profiles by giving the best tips on LinkedIn profile development. Feel free to reach out to us any time for tips on how to optimize your LinkedIn profile and expand your network at the same time.
It’s widely understood that you have approximately six seconds to make an impression on a hiring manager with your resume—even for executives. The challenge is making the absolute most of those six seconds in creative ways without being too over the top. In some aspects, it’s good to have a traditional resume, but it won’t hurt to modernize it a bit. Of course, writing an effective resume in today’s competitive executive world can be difficult, so here are some tips for modernizing your resume for 2017.
Focus on the Top Third of the Page
This is a key factor for any resume, whether they’re traditional or modern. Modern resumes, however, allow for more creativity. For instance, consider adding a splash of color. When you talk to executive resume writers about the jobs you’re applying for, they may suggest using colors only for headings or in your personal information section, but not in your achievements. The top third of your resume is what recruiters see first, so it’s important for it to stand out.
Use the Right Amount of Creativity
Most professional resume writing services will tell you to avoid using vibrant colors for your resume if you’re applying for an executive position. If you overdo it, it will look like you’re applying for a graphics or marketing job. Executive recruiters tend to like traditional resume formats, so using the right amount of creativity to get noticed can be difficult. Instead of using bright colors, use different text sizes and bolding as an alternative.
Consider the ATS System
Many executive resume writers tend to shy away from a lot of creative things like tables, text boxes, charts and other similar objects. The reason is if an employer runs your resume through an ATS system, it may not be able to recognize keywords. You can still modernize your resume by using a larger text size, bolding, italics, underlining, highlighting and other features to highlight specific accomplishments. This will ensure your keywords remain intact and you’ll also have a resume that stands out among the rest. On the other hand, not all companies use an ATS system and you want to add a bit of formatting creativity to appeal to human eyes as well (i.e. human resources, recruiters, hiring managers, etc.).
Writing an effective resume takes some time and skill, and that’s exactly where Professional Resume Services excels. If you’re looking to modernize your executive resume this year, feel free to contact us at any time.
