Writing a resume should take a while due to the detailed nature of it. However, if you have more questions than answers as you’re writing it, then it could be taking longer than it needs to. It’s only natural for executives to have questions when crafting their resume, and a professional resume writing service can help answer all of them. No question is unreasonable, and here are some of the most frequently asked questions we hear.
What Length Should My Resume Be?
A common misconception is a resume should never be more than one or two pages. While this could be true for some professions, it’s acceptable to make it a little longer if you’re applying for a senior level position. The key is formatting the resume so it is easy to read, highlights your important attributes and doesn’t have big chunks of text. A professional resume writing service can help you trim some of your words, so each one is meaningful no matter how long the resume ends up being.
How Can My Resume Represent Me?
Focusing on your personal brand is the best way to make your resume give a true representation of who you are. Your resume gives you the opportunity to tell about your skills and accomplishments, as well as your soft skills like leadership ability, personality and more. Another way for your resume to be a true representation of you is to target your audience and write to them specifically.
What’s The Purpose of A Biography?
An executive resume biography shouldn’t simply summarize your resume, contrary to popular belief. Instead, it should be used as a tool to tell a story about your accomplishments and expand more on your soft skills. The goal with an executive resume biography is to provide employers with a vision of how you can help their company by expanding on your resume.
Is A Cover Letter Really Necessary?
Sometimes employers will read cover letters and sometimes they won’t. You never know which side the company is on, so it’s always best to just write one. When you work with a cover letter writing service, you can easily accomplish this and actually enhance your chances of landing an interview. Sending in a cover letter with your resume won’t hurt your chances, as long as it’s written appropriately. But not sending in a cover letter could get your resume thrown out immediately.
Professional Resume Services is here to answer all of your questions pertaining to executive resumes and more. We enjoy helping job seekers with their resume and understand there are many questions throughout the process. If you ever have a question about your resume, cover letter or anything else, don’t hesitate to reach out to us and we will help you in any way we can.
Landing a c-level executive interview is difficult enough, but the challenges aren’t over. No matter how many times you’ve been a part of one of these interviews, they are never easy. Luckily, just like you prepared for writing an effective resume, you can also successfully prepare for a c-level interview. Simulating an interview is beneficial, but it’s also important to be flexible since you don’t know what questions will be asked or how much pressure you’ll be under. Here are some of our best tips for preparing for a successful c-level interview.
Think of Your Own Questions to Ask
Sprinkling in your own questions throughout the interview process has many benefits. It demonstrates you’ve done your homework on the company, if you ask those types of questions, and it also relieves some of the pressure from you. Your professional resume writing service can help you come up with effective questions if you are unsure what to ask. Just be sure to only ask a few of them throughout the entire interview so you don’t overdo it.
Practice A Calm Tone of Voice
Your tone of voice can change when nerves and anxiety take over. A cool and calm demeanor when answering questions will demonstrate your ability to handle pressure well and earn their trust. Always talk in a positive tone and present solutions to problems brought up in the interview. Never give off the vibe of being frustrated or negative, as these characteristics are clear and easy to identify.
Know How You’ll Address Salary Negotiations
The best executive resume writers can help you think about strategies when it comes to negotiating your salary. It’s best to be as general as possible, so you don’t end up with a lowball offer. On the same hand, you don’t want to demand so much that they don’t even consider hiring you. You can do this by giving a wide range you’re looking for, or even telling the interviewers roughly how much money you’ve made in the past few years. Just like with writing an effective resume, how you present yourself during the salary negotiations makes a big difference in whether you get the job or not.
Anticipate Questions
To best anticipate questions, take another close look at your resume. Your professional resume writing service likely helped you present yourself as an expert in the industry, so chances are several of the interview questions will come straight from the resume. For example, if you include some statistics or dollar amounts on your resume, you can expect to be asked about how you achieved those numbers. It’s hard to predict exactly how the questions will be asked, but you can get a good idea of the types of questions that could be asked just by looking at your resume.
Professional Resume Services not only helps executives with writing an effective resume, but we also help throughout the job search process. C-level interviews can be stressful to prepare for, but we are here to help relieve some of the stress so you can feel confident throughout the process. Feel free to contact us at any time for tips or advice on preparing to have a successful c-level executive interview.
When you think about personal branding for senior level managers, it’s only natural to think about your own career and how it benefits you. However, the company you work for also plays a large role in your own branding and vice versa. An important and overlooked factor in c-level personal branding is exactly how it impacts your current or potential employers. The strongest companies today have the best leaders at the top whose brands align with the company mission and values. Here are a few ways executive branding can benefit your employers.
Boost Your Company’s Brand Recognition
Associating a person with a company is becoming more common nowadays. Consumers want to be able to relate and engage with a brand. So when you have established a solid brand for yourself, the company you work for will benefit from it as well by having a cohesive brand recognition. An interesting concept is when an executive leaves one company for another, and how the move impacts both companies. Most of the time the actual person isn’t affected much, but consumers have a decision to make whether to follow a person or to be loyal to a company.
Create Trust For Everyone
Trust is essential to boost your c-level personal branding. There’s no surefire way to damage your company’s reputation than by being seen as an untrustworthy person. On the other hand, when a company has a reputation of trustworthiness, and your brand is aligned with those values, everyone as a whole will benefit. Authenticity is essential in today’s business world, since consumers can identify a fraud from a mile away. The more people who believe what you say, the more trustworthy you and your company will be.
Expand Reach Through Connectedness
One way to boost personal branding for senior level managers is by being engaged with your LinkedIn profile. Connecting with others online is a great way to increase brand recognition, trust and expand your company’s reach. Simply being active on social media in engaging ways will naturally improve your brand. Just be careful with everything you put on the Internet, since one misstep can damage the brand you’ve worked so hard to build.
Professional Resume Services is here to help executives with their c-level personal branding. Whether it’s by optimizing your LinkedIn profile or creating a stellar resume for a networking event, we are here for you when you need us. To learn more about executive branding and how it can benefit you and your company, feel free to reach out to us at any time.
When you first sit down to write your resume from scratch, it’s normal to sit there for several minutes before you write your first word. Where to begin writing an effective resume is difficult, especially in today’s competitive world. But even if you have a resume you’ve used in the past, chances are some significant adjustments need to be made if you’re searching for a new job.
This brings up the point of targeting your resume to match the specific job description you’re looking at. You probably have heard from an executive resume service that it’s important to do so, but in what ways are you supposed to match them? Here are some tips to consider when writing your resume.
Focus on Keywords in The Job Description
The best professional resume writers will print out a job description, grab a highlighter and mark each keyword they can find. These keywords should describe the particular candidate the employer is looking for, as well as the strengths and skills you possess. Once you identify them all, plug them into your resume as high on the page as possible. Include as many keywords as you can, but be careful not to stuff too many of them in to make it sound unnatural.
Think About How A Potential Employer Reads Your Resume
It’s easy to talk about your past experiences and accomplishments. The biggest mistake professionals make is talking about previous achievements that aren’t relevant to the job they are applying for. When writing an effective resume, you have to write it while thinking about how a potential employer will read it. They want to see what value you bring to the table specifically for their company, and don’t necessarily care about anything else. By looking closely at the job description, the best professional resume writers can identify what’s appropriate to mention and what should be avoided.
Discover What You Truly Want From A Job
A common misconception about writing an effective resume is it should be more general instead of focused. The idea is the more general your resume is, the better your chances are of landing another open position, even if you don’t qualify for the one you really want. This can lead to a sloppy resume and an unfocused job search effort. Taking the time to truly discover what you want from a job, from a salary standpoint, cultural standpoint, work/life balance and more will help you target your resume.
Professional Resume Services is an executive resume service that helps professionals write resumes that stand out. We will always ask for the job description of any job you are interested in and tailor your resume to match it. Our professional resume writers have experience in many different industries, so never hesitate to contact us if you need assistance with yours.
No matter how strong you think your resume is, there’s always room for improvement. Even the top rated resume writing services will write, proof and edit any given resume multiple times before it gets into the final form. Sometimes it only takes some minor tweaks, but other times a complete overhaul is necessary. In order to make your resume stand out, here are some secrets to strengthen it.
Utilize Keywords Properly
Potential employers look for keywords at the top of every resume. When you’re writing a professional resume, it’s important to use unique keywords that stand out, rather than using general ones used by every other applicant. Instead of saying you are a “team player,” write about a specific project in which you were a team leader and had to collaborate with others in your organization. The exact keywords can come from either the job description or the industry you work in, but the focus should be specific and unique.
Balance The Design of Your Resume
The best executive resume format will stand out, but not go overboard. The perfect balance incorporates white space and not having big blocks of text. Your goal is for your reader to glance quickly at the resume and notice something different about it. Even a two-second pause is enough time to get the reader to think about reading more. Bullet points are also critical components when writing a professional resume, and it’s easy to incorporate them when you have more than two sentences in any given section.
Control Where Your Reader’s Eyes Go
The top rated resume writing services you use will help you dictate what the reader actually looks at. The strongest resumes have two different parts to them, even though it’s just a single resume. Having a quick visual appeal when the reader glances at it is the first part. But then the content has to be interesting and relevant for the reader to continue reading – the second part. Using bold text, italics and underlining are easy ways to draw your reader’s attention to important points you want them to see. Without these small visual cues, the information you want them to see may get looked over without a second thought.
Professional Resume Services is one of the top rated resume writing services for a reason. We are always looking for ways to improve the resumes of our clients, even if we created them from scratch to begin with. By incorporating these secrets into your resume, you’ll have a stronger and more engaging document for a potential employer to read. Feel free to contact us at any time for more tips on how to improve your executive resume.
You’ve worked so hard on your job search to find a perfect fit for your career and it’s finally paid off. Now that you’re at your new job, what are you supposed to do? Depending on the nature of the job, you may be thrown right into the fire and be slammed with work right away. However, most employers will ease in a new executive and allow them to get a feel for their new position, their co-workers and the overall culture in general.
The first month of your new job is critical for setting the standard of your work and becoming familiar with systems and processes you can’t develop or learn through a LinkedIn profile. Here are some things to do during the first month of your new job.
Fit In With The Culture
You likely did some research about the culture of your new company during the job search. It was important to learn about the culture while writing an executive bio, and the professional resume writing service you used likely took the culture into consideration as they crafted your resume as well. However, there’s nothing like getting first-hand knowledge and experience to learn how people operate on a daily basis. You should have a basic knowledge of the company’s culture before you even begin your first day, but taking further steps to ensure you fit in as much as possible will benefit you as well.
Make Internal Connections
Connect with anyone you can within the office during your first month. You may have seen some of your coworkers’ LinkedIn profiles, but stop by and have a short conversation whenever you have a chance. This goes for anyone outside of your department as well. Connect with them on a work level and a personal level as appropriate so they will get a sense of who you are and you will establish your reputation along the way.
Build Your Credibility To Set The Standard
Your professional resume writing service helped you build credibility in your resume, but now it’s time to show it. Go above and beyond the job duties given to you during the first month. Building this credibility right away will help set the standard and give others the impression they can rely on you to get the job done.
Don’t Be Overly Ambitious
Just be careful about being too ambitious, since you don’t want to show up anyone during your first month. This goes for questioning internal policies and procedures as well. It’s ok to make suggestions at times, but it’s also important to understand every company operates differently and some of these things need to be accepted without rocking the boat.
Professional Resume Services is here to help you throughout your job search process and beyond. While we are known as a professional resume writing service, we are well rounded in our experience working with executives throughout their career. To learn more about how we can help you at any stage of your career, feel free to contact us at any time.
One of the main benefits of looking for a new job while currently employed is you will generally be more attractive to employers. However, one of the risk includes someone finding out that leads to you getting fired or damaging your reputation. Balance is key when going through a situation like this. Even your LinkedIn profile development has to be done with caution so you don’t tip anyone off at your current workplace. Here are some tips to consider for balancing your job search and your current job.
Time Your Job Search Perfectly
Minimizing the amount of competition you have is always beneficial. Try holding off on your job search until the late summer months, since there are typically fewer applicants for jobs during that time frame. You don’t want a job search to drag out very long when you already have a job, so timing is critical to make the process go as quickly as possible.
Keep Your Search Confidential
It’s usually not the best idea to let your boss or anyone else in your organization know you’re searching for a job. However, you also don’t want to lie to your boss. When you work with the best resume writing service, your visits will be confidential and you won’t have to worry about your job search being leaked. Just do whatever you can to keep your search confidential and you won’t have to answer any tough questions.
Network Outside of Work
Attending networking events is a great way to expedite any job search. Having morning coffee meetings or evening social gatherings can go a long way in developing relationships, while not having to worry about someone from your current job seeing you. Throughout your LinkedIn profile development, you may consider joining groups that can lead you to some valuable events to attend.
Be Careful With Social Media
Although you may want to find a new job as quickly as possible, it’s not the best idea to announce it on social media. That is one nearly guaranteed way you can get in trouble with your current job, and potentially damage your job search as well. Keep your actions private throughout your LinkedIn profile development as well, so you won’t inadvertently announce your intentions to your connections who may currently work with you.
Be Selective With Who Receives Your Resume
An executive resume writer will always tell you to be selective with who you give your resume to. Tailoring your resume to a particular employer is a great way to be noticed and will also better ensure it doesn’t fall into the wrong hands. It’s also important to tell the recipient that your job search is confidential, so they don’t contact your current employer.
Professional Resume Services is here to help you with any aspect of your job search. We take pride in being the best resume writing service for executives, but we also enjoy being involved with your searching and networking efforts. If there’s anything we can help you with along the way, don’t hesitate to contact us at any time.
Too many executives today aren’t getting the results they expected as they go through their job search. Most of those times, the job seeker either didn’t prepare enough or prepared the wrong ways. When you visit executive resume writing services, the importance of a strong resume will be stressed. However, it will also be expressed that a quality resume isn’t the only thing to help you land an interview. There are many different variables in any given job search today, so here are three ways to help you prepare.
Identify Organizations of Interest
Targeting your job search is the number one thing executive resume writing services will tell you. Without a target, you have nothing to aim for. Make a list of a dozen or so organizations you have interest in working for. Once you develop your list, narrow it down by researching each company individually to ensure there’s the possibility of a mutual fit. Take note of the culture, the qualities, skill sets required and more. You can eliminate some organizations quickly and focus on the ones that seem like the best fit for both sides.
Know What You Bring To The Table
You may have years of experience, but your next employer wants to know what value you bring to them. Through your own LinkedIn profile development, take a look at the profiles of employees of the companies you’re interested in. See what skill sets they have and how they present them in their profile. These can give you some good ideas to start from or build on if you have similar experiences. Being able to present relevant skill sets will help you stand out on your resume, LinkedIn profile, when networking or anywhere else.
Focus on Personal Branding
The concept of personal branding for senior level managers is more important now than ever before. Employers want to hire executives who are leaders, will fit into the culture and bring innovative ideas to the workplace. You can boost your personal brand by focusing on your LinkedIn profile development and demonstrating unique soft skills. Your confidence in your personal brand will be clearly evident in your writing and speech, and will help you stand out.
Professional Resume Services is here to help executives at any part of the job search process. Preparation is critical for any job search, and not spending enough time on it can lead to results you don’t necessarily want. Our executive resume writing services will provide you with assistance every step of the way, so never hesitate to reach out to us for assistance.
