There are many reasons why you may be thinking about moving to a new industry for your career. You may have simply burned out on your current career, landed your dream job or just feel like you need a change. No matter how excited you may be about the switch, it’s only natural to feel a little stressed because of the transition. However, before you spend hours writing and rewriting your executive bio to make it sound attractive to a new industry, here are some tips to consider.
Know Which Skills Transfer Over
You’ve developed many skills in your current job, but some of them may not be useful in your new industry. If you aren’t sure which skills naturally fit with your new industry, check with an executive resume service. They work with people with all different backgrounds to find careers in multiple industries. They will be able to help you identify your pertinent skills related to your new industry, so you can write your executive bio accordingly.
Network and Volunteer
The more people you know in your new industry, the easier time you’ll have finding the job you desire. When you don’t have some of the specific skills and experiences for your new industry, it doesn’t matter if you have the best executive resume format or not. However, going out of your way to network and volunteer to make solid business connections can overshadow some of the lack of skills you may have in the industry you desire.
Take Your Time to Find The Right Fit
Before you leave your current industry, make sure your finances are in good enough shape to allow you to take your time with your transition to a new industry. The last thing you want to do is add to your stress level because you’re running out of money. You may end up settling for a job you don’t want just to pay the bills. Take your time as much as you can. Visit an executive resume service to make sure you have the best resume possible to hand to recruiters. By taking your time and being patient, you’ll be more satisfied with the end result and the process of getting there will be less stressful. Professional Resume Services is here to help you make a smooth transition to a new industry if you’re looking to do so. Writing a good executive bio will help, but there are many other factors to consider as well. Feel free to contact us at any time if you need help with your executive resume or need answers to any career-related questions you may have.
No matter how you look at it, getting laid off from your job is never fun. You may have been expecting it for weeks or months, or you may have been caught completely off guard. Regardless of the circumstances, there are some things you should do and shouldn’t do immediately following a layoff. You may be tempted to send out dozens of resumes and cover letters frantically in an attempt to find a new job as quickly as possible, but that could possibly be the worst strategy you can use. Instead, here are some do’s and don’ts to consider if you’ve been laid off.
Don’t Feel Sorry For Yourself
Feeling sorry for yourself and telling others about it doesn’t move you forward. Getting out of your rut of being laid off can be difficult, but it’s a necessity. If you must, take a day to reflect on the situation, but then let it go. Visit an executive resume writing service for professional help on brushing up your resume. The professionals there can give you words of encouragement based on experience, since they work with all types of clients and have plenty of success stories to share.
Take a Break Before Starting Your Job Search
You should take a little break before immediately jumping into your next job search. It’s human nature to take a little while to rebound from a layoff, so you need to make sure your mind is in the right place before you start talking to potential employers. This downtime would be the perfect window to optimize your LinkedIn profile, but give yourself enough time to recover before making connections.
Reconnect With Your Network
Reconnecting with your network is something you should do even before you send out dozens of resumes and cover letters. Be sure to optimize your LinkedIn profile first, though, so your connections know exactly what you’re up to when you reach out to them.
Take Time to Devise or Revise Your Career Plan
You may have been taken by surprise with your recent layoff, so take some time to come up with a new career plan. That may involve incorporating multiple streams of income or switching industries completely. Your opportunities are endless, so take all the time you need to put together your next career plan! Professional Resume Services works with people who have been laid off all the time. Our executive resume writing service excels at helping people get back on their feet and into the jobs they want. Feel free to contact us if you need help following your layoff.
The Executive Job Search Burnout Guide: Avoidance Tips
Burnout is a real thing executives face when they are going through a job search. Depending on how long you’ve been unemployed, the signs of frustration and depression may be visible to recruiters when you meet with them. You have to understand an executive job search takes time, so looking at examples of cover letters for resumes can give you some pointers on what to do while you’re looking. But what else can you do to prevent burnout? Here are some great tips to consider.
Seek Advice
If you think your resume may be the reason why you aren’t getting interviews, then seek the expertise of executive resume services for advice. You could also get feedback from former colleagues or mentors to see what you could change about your approach. If nothing else, the positive comments you receive from them will keep your spirits up as you keep plugging away.
Make Adjustments
Many executives go insane thinking the same approach will eventually work. That’s a perfect recipe for burnout. When writing an executive bio, think of new things to write about yourself. Talk more about experiences that changed your perspective on the industry or anything else that really made an impact on you. When you talk about your passions, your energy will naturally rise.
Take a Break
Sometimes you just have to take a step back and put the job search on hold. But only consider doing this for a day or two to refresh yourself. You may choose to spend a day solely researching cover letters for resumes, just to get new and creative ideas. A quick refresher can give you a boost of energy to keep you going.
Appreciate Small Victories
Don’t look at an interview without a job offer as a failure. Instead, look at it as a compliment that the company was impressed enough with you to grant you an interview. There were likely dozens of other candidates applying for the same position, but they chose to learn more about you. These small victories can keep you going. Professional Resume Services can help executives when writing an executive bio or just need a little boost of energy to keep the job search going. We are here to help you at any stage of your job search, so feel free to reach out to us at any time, even if you just need support.
Thought Leadership: What It Is and How It Can Help You With Your C-Level Job Search
Many people include thought leadership as an attribute on their executive resume, but employers will quickly expose them if it’s not true. Any executive who embraces thought leadership will show evident qualities in their work habits, thoughts and other skills. If you believe you have these characteristics, the best executive resume writing services can help you incorporate them into your resume to help you get noticed. Here are some ways thought leadership can be tied to your c-level job search.
Thought Leadership is Creative Innovation
It’s important to understand thought leadership has nothing to do with experience, expertise or knowledge in any subject area. Instead, it’s how you look at different facts and come up with innovative ideas. This could be from a product or productivity standpoint, or it could simply be leading people. The creativity is exactly what executive resume services want to see from c-level executives, since it will be much easier to craft a solid resume and lead to a potentially great job.
How Thought Leadership Applies to Executives
Since c-level executives are seen as leaders in an organization, thought leadership applies to them more than most other employees. As a thought leader, you have to get ideas from different sources, gather all the facts, think about them creatively and come up with innovative ideas for applying them to the marketplace.
When a leader of an organization possesses these qualities, they will be looked upon much differently and will have higher chances of success in the executive position. It’s important to also note these qualities don’t come overnight, and some executives don’t spend nearly as much time as they should practicing thought leadership. However, with a little drive and determination, the best executives can acquire the skill.
Connecting Your Job Search With Thought Leadership
Even the best executive resume writer will need some examples of times when you displayed thought leadership. If you have multiple examples, they can be incorporated creatively in your resume where they will get the attention of a potential recruiter. The hiring manager will undoubtedly ask you about your thought leadership skills in an interview, so be prepared to go in depth about your experience and how it helped your previous company succeed. Professional Resume Services is one of the best executive resume writing services for people displaying different levels of thought leadership. We enjoy working with these executives, so feel free to contact us at any time if you need help connecting your job search with your thought leadership skills.
How to Sweep the Cobwebs From Your Executive Resume Just in Time for Spring!
Spring is the most popular time of the year to get some cleaning done in and around the house. But it’s also a great time to clean up your executive resume! This is one of the busiest times of year for professional executive resume writers, so if you plan on using a resume service to clean up the cobwebs for your resume, now’s the time to make an appointment. However, if you want to learn how to tidy up your executive resume on your own, here are a few tips to consider.
1. Highlight Only Relevant Skills
Your last resume may have been filled with a lot of different skills in hopes of the relevant one getting recognized. Any executive resume writing service today will tell you to highlight only relevant skills, because hiring managers won’t take the time to read through them all. You’ve got six seconds to impress a recruiter, so make them count.
2. Remove any clichés
Words like “passionate,” “reliable” and “dependable” all may describe you perfectly, but the reality is everyone believes those words describe them as well. Do yourself and your resume a favor and remove these clichés, since they don’t add any value to your executive resume.
3. Update Dates
Depending on your age, you may need to update or remove a significant amount of dates on your executive resume. Dates are good to use to an extent, but if you are attempting to highlight experience from 30 years ago, chances are it won’t help you land your next job.
4. Be More Focused
The best executive resume services want you to target your resume more. The days of creating one general resume to send out to many different companies are over. Companies today want to see a resume tailored to their needs, so you need to comply if you want to have a chance.
5. If All Else Fails, Start from Scratch
Updating an old resume can take more time than just starting over from scratch. Sometimes even the best professional executive resume writers will suggest starting over with a clean slate. This will help clear your mind from all of the older accomplishments and experiences and allow you to focus on the more current experiences you can remember. Professional Resume Services exists to help executives like you clean up their resumes for the next career opportunity. When you’re ready to do some spring cleaning on your executive resume, feel free to reach out to us at any time.
One of the biggest questions for many executives is whether it’s worth bothering with referrals when searching for a new job. Some people feel it’s unnecessary, especially if you have a lot of work experience. However, with the importance of networking in today’s business world, referrals ultimately go hand-in-hand. Even executive resume services will tell you to find the best referrals you can and combine them with networking to accelerate your job hunt. Here are answers to the common question of whether referrals are worth it.
The Right Referrals Can Help
You can’t just ask anyone for a referral and expect them to help you get the job. The best cover letter writing service will suggest to reach out to someone you know and trust, like a former boss, co-worker or simply a professional contact who knows you well. The secret is to not only find referrals you know well, but also find people who have a mutual connection within the industry or company you want to work in. Companies want to hire people who they know or think they know well. Having a mutual connection is the best way to create that spark.
Don’t Focus Solely on the Job With Referrals
If you don’t have any mutual connections off the top of your head, you can use a service like LinkedIn to find them. The best resume writing service can help you locate different leads to get started with the process. You just have to remember these potential connections are people, too, and you won’t seem very approachable if you start talking about yourself right off the bat. Instead, take a personable approach and give the person compliments on their profile, accomplishments and anything else you see. You’ll likely get a better response as a result and can talk more about achievements and how they got there before talking about yourself.
Talking to a Hiring Manager About a Referral
When you have a solid referral or two, you’ll have to talk to the hiring manager about them. A cover letter writing service can help you say all the right things about your mutual connection in the cover letter, but it’s up to you once you get an interview. Figure out what common traits you share with your mutual connection. If the hiring manager feels like they are hiring someone they know, you’ll be more likely to get the job. Professional Resume Services has helped executives get the best referrals to expedite their job search. If you’re unsure whether you have the right referrals, or if you need the assistance of executive resume services, feel free to reach out to us at any time.
An executive job search can be exciting and stressful all at the same time. Like any job search, it can seem like you’re on a daily roller coaster of emotions until you finally land a job. If you take some strategic steps and avoid common mistakes, you’ll be able to reduce the length of your search. Using executive resume services is a good first step to get you on the right track, but before you do that, be sure to heed some of these common mistakes executives make with their job search.
1. Failing to Target Your Search
At first, it may seem like a good strategy to cast your net far and wide. However, this method doesn’t produce great results most of the time. The top resume writing services will suggest tailoring your resume to specific companies, rather than trying to write a general one. Resume targeting is a key aspect in an executive job search, but it’s also one of the things executives fail to do.
2. Not Networking
The days of sending in a resume online and getting a call for an interview the next day are virtually over. Executive resume services suggest handing your resumes to people in person at networking events, rather than replying to an online job post. The power of networking should never be underestimated, but you would be surprised at how many executives don’t see the importance.
3. Being Unprepared
Always be prepared, whether you’re networking or doing anything related to your job search. Being prepared means cleaning up your social media profiles, enhancing your online presence, visiting with executive resume writers and more. You need to be prepared if a potential employer decides to contact you.
4. Not Changing Strategies
Just like you have to adapt to the ever-changing business world, you have to change job search strategies occasionally also. Doing the same thing over and over again can get frustrating when you continue getting similar results. Be open to changing your executive job search strategy if you aren’t getting the results you desire.
5. Spending Too Much Time or Not Enough Time
Searching for an executive job is a full time job itself. However, just like an actual job, spending too much time or too little time doing it can lead to underperforming. Find a good balance and speak with executive resume services if you find yourself hitting a rut in your search. Sometimes executive resume writers can help you avoid mistakes in your job search before you make them. Feel free to contact us with any questions about other mistakes to be aware of.
Should Your Linkedin Be the Same as Your Executive Resume?
The short answer to this question is no! You definitely don’t want to make your executive resume and your LinkedIn profile the same for a variety of reasons. Most professional executive resume writers can help you distinguish the differences between each and why the differences are important. We’ve also given you some more details on the differences below.
LinkedIn Should be More Informal
Recruiters and HR managers will go to your LinkedIn profile to learn more about you as a person. This is generally evident in your writing style, so be sure to make it more informal to give it some voice. There are big differences between resumes that get you hired and your LinkedIn profile, and it’s important to distinguish the two. Also, don’t mistake an informal voice for being unprofessional. There are creative ways to make your LinkedIn profile professional and informal. If you struggle with that aspect, executive resume services can help.
Executive Resume Summaries Should Be Short and Targeted
Executives tend to make their summaries extensive, because who doesn’t like talking about themselves? However, your executive resume summary should be short and to the point. LinkedIn is the place to talk more in detail on your summary. Summarize your entire career, your accomplishments, strengths and anything else to make you stand out. Most professional executive resume writers will tell you to put just enough information in your executive resume summary to make a recruiter or potential employer want more information about you.
Recruiters Want to See Different Information
Your chances of landing your next executive job will take a big hit if your executive resume and LinkedIn profile are identical. It could signal to a recruiter that you’re lazy, not creative, or just don’t understand what LinkedIn is used for. Generally, an executive resume should talk about business details, while LinkedIn should be more conversational about how you accomplished certain things. In a nutshell, your executive resume and LinkedIn profile should combine together to give an employer a clear picture of who you are both professionally and personally. There’s a fine line between crafting the perfect executive resume and writing a solid LinkedIn profile. Many executives use executive resume services to help distinguish the two. If you’re struggling with finding the right balance, feel free to contact us at any time for help.
