Simply listing out your career accomplishments and highlighting your experiences on an executive resume isn’t enough to get recognized today. In a way, writing resumes that get you hired is all about how you display the information and what keywords you use, no matter how experienced you actually are. You generally only have about six seconds to impress a recruiter with your resume. And that’s assuming you’ve already passed the automated trackers using the right keywords to even get your resume in the hands of the recruiter. Here are some insider tips about executive resume writing you may find useful.
Unused Keywords and Basic Formatting Issues Can Hurt You
One of the keys to writing resumes that get you hired is using the right keywords throughout the resume. The best way to find these keywords is to look directly at the job description or the list of requirements from the job posting. Identify certain keywords from those places and use them early and often in your resume. Another aspect that can make or break you is not using the best executive resume format. Use should use bullet points, bold text and indentations to your advantage to make the resume look clean. No one likes to spend a lot of time reading a resume, so the fewer words you can use to get your accomplishments highlighted, the better off you’ll be.
Many Companies Use an Applicant Tracking System
The main reason why keywords are so important today is many companies use an applicant tracking system to filter through resumes. Any given job posting could generate thousands of applicants. The only way a recruiter can narrow them down efficiently is to use technology to identify certain keywords. If your resume doesn’t have the keywords they are looking for, it won’t even make the cut to be looked at by human eyes.
Professional Writing and Feedback is Critical
Receiving objective feedback is important when writing resumes that get you hired. You can get feedback from family, friends, colleagues or even professional executive resume writers. A professional resume writing service can look at a job description, identify the keywords and incorporate them into your resume to optimize it as much as possible. Professional Resume Services is here to help executives by providing services from some of the top professional executive resume writers. Whether you need to start from scratch with your executive resume, or if you only need a final proofread, we are here to help you. Feel free to contact us at any time for more insight into executive resume writing and how we can help you.
Reasons You May Want to Avoid Job Boards for Your Executive Job Search
Executive job boards have a purpose, but the chances of you landing your dream job from them are very low. Spending a significant amount of time on your executive profile is great, but the best way to display it isn’t necessarily on an online job board. Hundreds and thousands of jobs are posted on job boards every day. So when you look at the success rate of even landing an interview, you will quickly see your time and resources can be spent better elsewhere. Here are some of the top reasons why you should avoid job boards for your executive job search.
The Job May Already Be Filled
Sometimes HR managers forget to take down a job posting once the position has been filled. It’s natural to assume a job posting is active, but that’s simply not the case. If you’ve spent a lot of time on your executive profile, spending time searching and applying for non-existent jobs doesn’t make sense.
Job Descriptions Could Be Inaccurate
When a company posts a job opening on a job board, they sometimes use the same posting as they did previously, even if job duties have changed. As a result, you could take your resume to a professional resume writing service to optimize the keywords and language, but it won’t even matter. The best way to know the exact job description of a position is to actually speak to someone.
Your Executive Resume Could Be Lost
Any given executive job posting could get more than a hundred applicants. You may be the most qualified executive, but if your executive profile doesn’t have the exact keywords the company is looking for, you won’t even be considered. It’s much easier for your resume to get lost in the shuffle when you apply for a position on a job board. The better option is to hand your resume to a recruiter at a networking event.
Success Rate of Landing A Job is Low
When you look at the amount of applicants applying for any given position, you can clearly see your chances of getting the job is low. You have a better chance of getting a job if you spend the time on your LinkedIn profile development and connecting with HR managers or recruiters via the LinkedIn platform. Time is critical, so spending it wisely when searching for an executive job will benefit you in more than one way. Professional Resume Services can help you optimize your executive profile, no matter what avenue you choose to use for your job search. While executive job boards aren’t necessarily the best option, we will support you and help you as much as possible if you choose to use them. Feel free to contact us at any time if you need a professional resume writing service to help you land your next job.
The Top Ways to Safeguard Your Executive Online Brand
You can significantly help your executive job search if you have a positive online brand. Many employers today will do an online search for a candidate’s name. If you have a lot of negative things about you, or don’t have much of an online presence, you’ll hurt your chances of landing an interview. The importance level of personal branding for senior level managers is very high. Companies want to hire executives with a positive online brand, since they are viewed as an advocate for the company. Here are some of the top ways you can safeguard your executive online brand to ensure you have a positive image.
Search For Your Name Online
You should do an online search for your name at least once a week. The best way to protect and enhance your c-level personal branding is to know what information is out on the Internet for everyone to see. If a potential employer is going to search for you online, you should also take the time to do it yourself and clean up anything you don’t want to show up in the results.
Your Online Brand Backs Up Your Claims
If you’ve already talked to a potential employer, chances are they are going to search for you online to see if they can verify any claims you made. Don’t tell them you worked for a certain company or have a certain level of experience if it’s not displayed on your LinkedIn profile or other places. Even worse, inaccurate or contradictory information will deem you as being untrustworthy and can damage your personal brand even more.
Have A Professional Social Media Presence
The best way to enhance personal branding for senior level managers is to have a positive and professional social media presence. Employers today look for candidates who are active on social media, so they can be valuable for finding new business or even new candidates. A positive social media presence is critical for c-level personal branding today, so don’t take it lightly. Be active as much as you can and always portray yourself as a professional. Professional Resume Services is here to help you, whether you need assistance in writing an effective resume or improving your personal brand. Our experienced professionals can help you with every step of your job search process, so never hesitate to call or email us at any time for assistance.
Making a mistake in your executive resume can be detrimental to your success in landing your next job. Even if you use the best executive resume format imaginable, a typographical errors shows you could lack attention to detail, which is an important characteristic of any executive. Proofreading your executive resume is essential, but proofreading it the right way is even more important. When you’re working on your resume for several hours, it’s easy to overlook a mistake. Here are some of the top ways you should proofread your resume.
Proofread Out Loud
When you read your resume out loud to yourself or to someone else, you’ll be able to identify some obvious issues. Whether the issues revolve around the overall flow of your resume or a word that simply doesn’t make sense, sometimes reading it out loud will help identify problems you overlook when reading it silently.
Don’t Skip Sections
The key to writing resumes that get you hired is to treat every section of your resume with equal importance. If you have a references section, proofread the phone numbers or other contact information. It’s easy to skip sections like this, but it will look unprofessional if your potential employer calls a wrong number when trying to reach your reference.
Have a Peer Review Your Resume
Your peers can play a big role in your effort to create resumes that get you hired. Ask a friend or family member you trust to look over your executive resume in detail. When you’ve looked at your resume for several hours over the course of a few days, sometimes it’s easy to overlook minor details. Having a peer review your resume can help identify these minor issues to clean up your resume overall.
Hire a Professional Resume Service
Hiring a quality professional resume writing service to proofread your resume should be your last step before finalizing your resume. But just because it’s the last step doesn’t mean it should be skipped. With the highly competitive job market today, having a professional proofread your resume can ensure it is in the best shape possible for improving your chances of getting an interview. At Professional Resume Services, we can help executives not only write their resumes, but proofread them and provide constructive criticism and suggestions to make it better. If you are pleased with your resume, but want another set of experienced eyes to review it, feel free to reach out to us at any time.
LinkedIn can be an extremely valuable tool for executives. However, not knowing how to use it properly can also damage your reputation without you even knowing. LinkedIn isn’t difficult to use, but there are some unwritten rules about etiquette that many executives overlook. If you’re going to spend the time to write your executive profile on your LinkedIn page, you owe it to yourself to be familiar with these unwritten rules executives sometimes violate.
Personalize Your Connection Requests
When you connect with someone on LinkedIn, you could use the default message LinkedIn provides, or you could personalize it. Personalizing the request is valuable in many ways. You could state how you met the person, just in case it was at a networking event where they met dozens of other people. Or you could simply say you’re impressed with their profile and admire their work. Either way, a personalized request makes a much better impression.
Adjust Settings When Updating Your Profile
When you need to optimize your LinkedIn profile, you’re likely going to change a lot of different sections of it. What you may not know is all of your connections will see each and every change you make if you don’t update your settings accordingly. Go into the Privacy Controls of your profile and turn off update notifications to spare your connections from dozens of notifications. Turn it back on when you’re done updating it, so your connections will only see the important changes going forward.
Give Endorsements and Recommendations
The top resume writing services will tell you not to put too much emphasis on endorsements and recommendations through LinkedIn. However, giving and receiving the proper ones is important. Don’t ask for an endorsement from someone you didn’t work with directly. On the other hand, it’s not appropriate to give an endorsement or recommendation to someone you didn’t work with closely. These should be personalized and well thought out, so make them meaningful.
Connect With The Right People
If you’re actively searching for a job, connect with people who work in the same industry as you. With LinkedIn groups, you don’t even have to make a connection request until you get to know them as part of the group. It takes a little time to get to know someone through LinkedIn, but a single quality connection is much more valuable than a dozen connections from people you never met or have any association with at all. Professional Resume Services is one of the top resume writing services for many reasons. We not only help with writing executive resumes, but we can also assist with cover letter writing, developing LinkedIn profiles and helping out with job searches in general. Feel free to contact us at any time to learn more about the written and unwritten rules of LinkedIn or anything else pertaining to your executive job search.
There are many different tools you need to have as an executive looking for a new job. Using these strategies will keep you on par with your competition, and your job search strategies can put you over the top. However, without utilizing every resource available to you, there’s a good chance you’ll be left behind. Whether it’s updating your LinkedIn profile or optimizing your resume, there are certain things you must have with your job search.
Executive Biography
Your executive resume biography tells a story and is more conversational than a resume or cover letter. This is your opportunity to go into detail about a particular situation that highlights your skills, brand and personal attributes. Some executives focus more on resumes and cover letters, but a strong executive biography can tie everything together.
Executive Resume
Writing an executive resume today is much more difficult than it was a decade ago. With so many automated systems used to identify keywords, you have to be precise with the words and phrases you use. Many times, executives will leave the resume writing to professional resume writing services to ensure their resume gets noticed.
Updated LinkedIn Profile
If you don’t have a LinkedIn profile, it’s time to get one. If your LinkedIn profile isn’t up-to-date, it’s time to update it. Recruiters and HR managers will sometimes look on LinkedIn to find candidates. Other times they will look on LinkedIn after they’ve viewed a resume to get more information on a candidate. Your LinkedIn profile gives you the opportunity to go beyond the information on a resume, so take it seriously and don’t just rehash your resume.
Networking Card
There’s a difference between a business card and a networking card. When networking, you need to have a card that displays your personal email address, cell phone, branding statement and social media accounts. A traditional business card may not be the best for networking with new people to find new opportunities. Having both could be beneficial, but a specific networking card is unique and will help you stand out. Professional Resume Services is here to help ensure you have everything you need to be successful with your job search. Whether it’s writing an executive resume biography or just giving you tips on how to approach your job search, contact us any time you feel like you need a boost.
With the world of automation today, it can be virtually impossible to get your executive resume into human hands if you only submit it online through job boards. It may be much easier and convenient to send in your resume online, but there’s no guarantee it will ever been seen. Recruiters will scan resumes for certain keywords and keyphrases using technology in order to eliminate as many as possible. If yours isn’t formatted perfectly, or if you don’t use the right words, it will be quickly brushed off. So how can you write resumes that get you hired, but have a better chance of getting them into human hands? Here are a few tips to consider.
Optimize Your Keywords
Keywords are the most essential component of any effective resume. Any executive resume writer will look at your skills, qualifications and accomplishments and simply reword them to use appropriate keywords for your industry. This is the best chance you have at getting your executive resume through the automated keyword filter.
Look For Connections
Sometimes the best way to get your resume into human hands is to bypass technology completely. When you make connections with people in your industry, you may not even have to send in a resume online. You still have to focus on writing an effective resume, so don’t think your connection will guarantee you an interview. It’s just one of the best ways to get around the initial resume submission stage.
Be Short and Concise
No one wants to read a long resume. You have an average of six seconds to impress a recruiter or HR manager. The first thing an executive resume writer should do is look how to tighten up sentences and sections. Try to keep your resume to two pages or less, but the shorter the better.
Choose Your Approach Carefully
Whether you choose to submit your resume online or in person, following up with the company is important to know where you stand. Sometimes your resume is filtered out right away because of keywords, but sometimes it could have been lost in the shuffle. Without checking in periodically, you may never know. Just be careful not to follow-up too much to the point where you look desperate. Professional Resume Services helps executives with writing an effective resume every day. Our skilled professionals know the tricks to getting resumes into human hands, so if you are struggling with the process or need assistance in any way with your job search, feel free to contact us at any time.
Choosing the Right Executive Professional Resume Service
With the widely known importance of writing an effective resume, more companies are popping up claiming they write the best ones. Choosing an executive resume service is a big decision relating to your executive career. It’s easy for these services to claim to be the #1 service, but how do you really know they aren’t just using a standard template and switching things around to make yours look unique? There are plenty of ways to distinguish a legitimate executive resume writing service from a fraud. Here are some things to consider when you’re looking for one.
Make Sure They Are Experts In Your Industry
If the resume service doesn’t indicate specific industries they have experience in, then you may need to look elsewhere. Resumes have to be very specific and specialized. If they aren’t, recruiters will see right through them.
Ask For Credentials or Certifications
When you contact an executive resume service, the writer should be able to provide you with one or more certifications. Those certifications could include:
Certified Expert Resume Writer (CERW)
Certified Professional Resume Writer (CPRW)
Certified Master Resume Writer (CMRW)
Certified Executive Resume Master (CERM)
While these aren’t the only certifications and credentials available, your resume writer should be able to show proof of at least one of them.
Check Out Any Samples
Any executive resume service should have an abundance of samples to provide you. Sometimes the key to writing a professional resume is incorporating different ideas from other resumes into your own. This is a good practice for writing your own resume, but the best resume writing services will treat you as a unique individual instead of just another resume. Samples should be available, but only for your own benefit.
Talk to An Actual Resume Writer
It’s always important to call an executive professional resume service prior to hiring them. If you talk to a sales person who only offers you their different services instead of learning about you, then you need to look elsewhere. A good company will ask you insightful questions about your career, accomplishments and achievements to get a complete understanding of your background. This could be in the form of an online survey, a phone interview, an in-person interview or a combination of these. The more questions they ask you, the better you should feel about their service. At Professional Resume Services, we take the time to get to know the backgrounds of each of our executives. We can’t write your executive bio unless we know your complete career history, accomplishments and aspirations, so gathering as much information as possible before getting started is key. Feel free to contact us to learn more about our services and how we can be the right executive resume service for you.
Simply listing out your career accomplishments and highlighting your experiences on an executive resume isn’t enough to get recognized today. In a way, writing resumes that get you hired is all about how you display the information and what keywords you use, no matter how experienced you actually are. 
