National Society of Leadership and Success

Are you thinking of getting an internship while finishing your degree? Or maybe you’re getting ready to graduate and starting to look for that perfect career launch. Either way, a stunning resume is required to start you off on the right foot.

Creating the perfect resume can be intimidating. Once you get going, you’ll find it much easier to write about your experience professionally and with confidence. Here are some tips to start you off down the path to the right resume for you and your ambitions.

At minimum you want to include 3 pieces of information: your first and last name, telephone number you can be reached at, and a professional email address.

If you are a current student, your .edu address will suffice. It’s very easy to create a new email address on email hosting sites like Gmail. Make sure once it’s out there that you are checking it often and use it to connect with job prospects.

It’s not required to include your address on a resume. It can work to your advantage in some cases though. If you’re applying for a position where your school is located or where you are from include that address to show you live nearby.

Lastly, you can include a URL to your LinkedIn profile. It needs to be up to date if you decide to include it. What would you think if you saw an amazing resume on your desk and an average LinkedIn account that doesn’t boast the same accomplishments?

Your parents probably had an objective statement on their resume. They might even still have that objective statement. Like many other things in the world, strategies used to apply for jobs evolve, and objective statements are on their way out the door. Even Lily Zhang from The Muse says, “Pretty much everyone agrees that objective statements are out of fashion.”

Space on your resume is prime real estate and shouldn’t be sold to just any information if it’s not going to benefit you the most. Consider not including an objective or summary statement. This can give you another two to three lines of precious space on your resume.

Check out Lily’s article on The Muse to read about the one reason an objective statement may be a good item to include.

How you describe your work history and experience is guaranteed to go a long way. You’ll want to include how and why a certain responsibility was carried out to give future employers a better idea of what skills you possess that they are looking for to fill their job opening.

Here’s an example for a retail position. Before: Organized clothes displayed in store

After: Managed 30-40 clothing displays in store by organizing merchandise and returning unsold

items in an orderly manner.

See how the second statement paints a stronger picture of what skill is being represented and how it contributed to the store’s success?

Select the right action verb to start your achievement statement. Katharine Hansen, Ph.D. and writer for LiveCareer.com, says, “Action verbs form the heart of resume experience sections, with most bullet points in these sections ideally kicking off with powerful action verbs.

Action Verb matched to desired skill + Job Responsibility + How/Why it is important and shows the desired skill = Powerful Achievement Statement

Here’s a great video to help with selecting which skills to put on your resume and how to make them stand out.

Ever heard that no two jobs are the same? Well, the same is true when it comes to your resume. Using the same resume for multiple job applications will not give you the results you expect. The extra effort taken to tailor your resume will make it stand out from the rest of applicant pool.

Applicant tracking systems are become more and more common, so there is a good chance that your resume is going to be read by one before any person sees it. These systems assess whether you have used certain keywords the employer is looking for and if you meet other requirements they are looking for. The system tells hiring managers who the best candidates are to fill the position, so tailoring your resume gives you a higher chance of making that list.

Use verbs from the job description. This is one time where words are not just words. “Design” and “create” may be synonyms, but there’s a good chance the applicant tracking system is going to pick up the one that is used in the job description. So, if the description reads “design a business plan”, then your achievement statement should begin with that same action verb.

Revise, not rewrite. When you’re changing out action verbs that doesn’t mean rewriting the entire achievement statement. It is perfectly fine to revise only the action verb. However, you may need to write new achievement statements if a job description is calling for different skills from a previous position you’ve applied for.

Save all your achievement statements. As you’re drafting different versions of your resume to meet different skill sets for employers, save all your achievement statements written about your work experience in a master resume. This will give you an arsenal of achievement statements to choose from and revise to make tailoring that much easier in the future.

Here’s a short video from Nicole Williams, a career expert, with some tips on using a company’s website to further tailor your resume and why it’s important.

As you’re drafting your resume, you may want to have another set of eyes to look it over. Visiting a career advisor or any advisor on college campuses is a great option to get additional information and editing assistance. Employers from various industries share what they are looking for on resumes with career centers, so schedule an appointment at yours to take advantage of that knowledge.

If you’re unable to schedule an appointment with a career advisor, consider using other resources online. There are countless resources available at your fingertips.

That resume isn’t going to write itself, so get to it! These tips are guaranteed to get you a great first draft of your resume and the rest is up to you.

By Susan Ward on Nov/02/2017

Do you feel the need to be more organized and/or more productive? Do you spend your day in a frenzy of activity and then wonder why you haven’t accomplished much?

Time management skills are especially important for small business people, who often find themselves performing many different jobs during the course of a single day. These time management tips will help you increase your productivity and stay cool and collected.

No matter how organized we are, there are always only 24 hours in a day. Time doesn’t change. All we can actually manage is ourselves and what we do with the time that we have.

Many of us are prey to time-wasters that steal time we could be using much more productively. What are your time bandits? Do you spend too much time ‘Net surfing, reading email, Facebook posting, texting, or making personal calls?

Tracking Daily Activities explains how to track your activities so you can form an accurate picture of how much time you spend on various activities, the first step to effective time management.

Remember, the focus of time management is actually changing your behaviors, not changing time. A good place to start is by eliminating your personal time-wasters. For one week, for example, set a goal that you’re not going to take personal phone calls or respond to non-work related text messages while you’re working.

Think of this as an extension of the third tip. The objective is to change your behaviors over time to achieve whatever general goal you’ve set for yourself, such as increasing your productivity or decreasing your stress. So you need to not only set your specific goals, but track them over time to see whether or not you’re accomplishing them.

Whether it’s a Day-Timer or a software program, the first step to physically managing your time is to know where it’s going now and planning how you’re going to spend your time in the future. A software program such as Outlook, for instance, lets you schedule events easily and can be set to remind you of events in advance, making your time management easier.

You should start each day with a session prioritizing the tasks for that day and setting your performance benchmark.

If you have 20 tasks for a given day, how many of them do you truly need to accomplish?

In my experience, delegation is one of the hardest things to learn how to do for many business owners, but no matter how small your business is, there’s no need for you to be a one-person show — you need to let other people carry some of the load. Determining Your Personal ROI explains two ways to pinpoint which tasks you’d be better off delegating or outsourcing, while Decide to Delegate provides tips for actually getting on with the job of delegating.

While crises will arise, you’ll be much more productive if you can follow routines most of the time.