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Presenting the concluding excerpt from the excellent blog post, Ten Reasons Why Your Resume Isn’t Working by our colleague, Barbara Safani. Here’s her final reason your resume may not be working:

Your resume is overwhelming to the reader. If your resume is more than two pages it probably fits into this category. Examine your resume and edit, edit, edit. Do you really need to list the 7 management classes you took in 1987 now that you have been a CEO for the past 10 years? Do you really need to dedicate a full page to your employment experience before 1990? Probably not. Frequently with resumes, less is more.

Not sure how you could benefit from a professional resume writer? Check out Joan's experience: "I cannot believe what a difference this made. I have had 3 calls for interviews and just accepted a job that pays me 15% more than I made before!" See Joan's resume before -- and after -- the pros at Quintessential Resumes and Cover Letters transformed it into a powerful marketing document. Get a FREE resume evaluation from Quintessential Resumes and Cover Letters, powered by About Jobs Resume Writing Service. Or order a resume, cover letter, or other career-marketing document.

Here’s the final strategy (of three) our colleague, Laura Smith-Proulx discusses in her excellent article on Careerealism entitled 3 Strategies for Writing a Bold, Branded Executive Resume.

Compare yourself to leadership peers.

Comparative analysis is one of the best ways to frame and express executive achievement, which helps to highlight your leadership brand value versus your competition.

For example, you might have brought in changes that were critical to company growth or customer perception - with bottom-line results. Look at each job for evidence of the following:

• New operational procedures that saved time or money
• Comparisons to your predecessor in the same role
• Performance measurements against colleagues with the same job title and function
• Industry comparisons for others in a similar role

Here, you’ll want to ensure the comparisons made are clearly conveyed on your resume, as in this example of a CEO in the pharmaceutical industry:

“Revitalized product sales with 65% growth after taking over sales team—despite lackluster results during preceding 2 years.”

If you were specifically recruited because of the results you could deliver (and surpassed other candidates in the hiring process), be sure to note this in your executive resume.

Not sure how you could benefit from a professional resume writer? Check out Joan's experience: "I cannot believe what a difference this made. I have had 3 calls for interviews and just accepted a job that pays me 15% more than I made before!" See Joan's resume before -- and after -- the pros at Quintessential Resumes and Cover Letters transformed it into a powerful marketing document. Get a FREE resume evaluation from Quintessential Resumes and Cover Letters, powered by About Jobs Resume Writing Service. Or order a resume, cover letter, or other career-marketing document.

Presenting the penultimate excerpt from the excellent blog post, Ten Reasons Why Your Resume Isn’t Working by our colleague, Barbara Safani. Here’s another reason your resume may not be working:

Your resume is made up of big blocks of text that no one wants to read. Imagine going to a website looking for information and being confronted with a homepage with a huge paragraph of text. Would you stay on the site and read everything word for word or would you quickly navigate away in search of a site that enabled you to find the information you are looking for quickly. My guess is you would opt for the later. People who read resumes feel the same way. If they have to muddle through big chunks of text to figure out if you are a potential fit for their job, they will probably navigate away from your resume quickly. Use bullets, bold, shading, or text boxes to highlight critical information and help your reader figure out what you are all about in just a few seconds.

Not sure how you could benefit from a professional resume writer? Check out Joan's experience: "I cannot believe what a difference this made. I have had 3 calls for interviews and just accepted a job that pays me 15% more than I made before!" See Joan's resume before -- and after -- the pros at Quintessential Resumes and Cover Letters transformed it into a powerful marketing document. Get a FREE resume evaluation from Quintessential Resumes and Cover Letters, powered by About Jobs Resume Writing Service. Or order a resume, cover letter, or other career-marketing document.

Here’s the second of three strategies our colleague, Laura Smith-Proulx discusses in her excellent article on Careerealism entitled 3 Strategies for Writing a Bold, Branded Executive Resume.

Merely mentioning the scope of your duties isn’t enough.

So you’ve managed the P&L and helped create revenue growth. You’ll be up against numerous leaders with similar achievements—making it harder for you to stand out.

Distinguishing yourself on an executive resume requires that you specify the setting behind each of your accomplishments. To mine your background for this context, answer the following questions:

• Did you take on challenges within the company, such as frequent turnover, negative PR, or market volatility?
• Were your roles broader than what was typically required? In other words, did you take on the role of CFO and CIO simultaneously, or step into a Manager-level position to help out subordinates?
• Was the company experiencing rapid growth - putting pressure on you to hire or standardize procedures?
• Were you required to turn around a challenging situation or address looming obstacles that threatened profits?

This example of a CFO resume achievement demonstrates the candidate’s ability to take on a wider level of authority:

“Served as CFO and COO administering $23M annual revenue and sustaining operations during restructuring, with 18% drop in facilities costs from newly renegotiated vendor contracts.”

If any of these situations apply to your career, be sure to describe background detail when noting the scope of your achievements. The ability to gain results in these scenarios is highly sought after within the executive suite.

Not sure how you could benefit from a professional resume writer? Check out Joan's experience: "I cannot believe what a difference this made. I have had 3 calls for interviews and just accepted a job that pays me 15% more than I made before!" See Joan's resume before -- and after -- the pros at Quintessential Resumes and Cover Letters transformed it into a powerful marketing document. Get a FREE resume evaluation from Quintessential Resumes and Cover Letters, powered by About Jobs Resume Writing Service. Or order a resume, cover letter, or other career-marketing document.

Presenting another excerpt from the excellent blog post, Ten Reasons Why Your Resume Isn’t Working by our colleague, Barbara Safani. Here’s another reason your resume may not be working:

You are uploading a Word version of your resume into a database that requires a text version. Many people make the mistake of taking their formatted Word document and uploading it into a text box on a company website. The format is generally not preserved when you do this, and your document will end up looking sloppy and unprofessional. Here are instructions on how to create a text resume.

Not sure how you could benefit from a professional resume writer? Check out Joan's experience: "I cannot believe what a difference this made. I have had 3 calls for interviews and just accepted a job that pays me 15% more than I made before!" See Joan's resume before -- and after -- the pros at Quintessential Resumes and Cover Letters transformed it into a powerful marketing document. Get a FREE resume evaluation from Quintessential Resumes and Cover Letters, powered by About Jobs Resume Writing Service. Or order a resume, cover letter, or other career-marketing document.

Our colleague, Laura Smith-Proulx, has an excellent article on Careerealism entitled 3 Strategies for Writing a Bold, Branded Executive Resume. Here’s the first of her three strategies:

Demonstrate strategic, not tactical, value.

Employers are not only looking for your leadership skills — they’re intent on finding an executive champion that will impact growth, retain top talent, and impress their competitors.

Therefore, your executive resume has to take your brand message a step further than just results, and talk about context.

Consider whether the following situations apply to your background:

Heading a new growth strategy

Conceptualizing and leading the release of new products

Reacting to the threat of competition in the industry

Addressing the effect of the economic downturn

Next, write a short success story that pulls in the challenge and explains the reasons you got involved, plus the outcome, as shown in this example for a COO resume:

“Produced 142% increase in net income by transforming focus to life sciences markets; won contracts at AstraZeneca, Eli Lilly, and Johnson & Johnson.”

Repeat this exercise for different situations, and create condensed summary versions of each story for your executive resume.

Not sure how you could benefit from a professional resume writer? Check out Joan's experience: "I cannot believe what a difference this made. I have had 3 calls for interviews and just accepted a job that pays me 15% more than I made before!" See Joan's resume before -- and after -- the pros at Quintessential Resumes and Cover Letters transformed it into a powerful marketing document. Get a FREE resume evaluation from Quintessential Resumes and Cover Letters, powered by About Jobs Resume Writing Service. Or order a resume, cover letter, or other career-marketing document.

Presenting another excerpt from the excellent blog post, Ten Reasons Why Your Resume Isn’t Working by our colleague, Barbara Safani. Here’s another reason your resume may not be working:

You have no clue what keywords are. Keywords are the buzzwords or industry terminology that is relevant to your job function or industry. You can source keywords by reviewing job descriptions for positions you would consider applying to and looking for the consistency in these keywords from posting to posting. Many employers use ATS or Applicant Tracking Systems to source candidates and they will only find your resume if the words in your resume correlate to those posted in their job specs.

See also our article Tapping the Power of Keywords to Enhance Your Resume.

Not sure how you could benefit from a professional resume writer? Check out Joan's experience: "I cannot believe what a difference this made. I have had 3 calls for interviews and just accepted a job that pays me 15% more than I made before!" See Joan's resume before -- and after -- the pros at Quintessential Resumes and Cover Letters transformed it into a powerful marketing document. Get a FREE resume evaluation from Quintessential Resumes and Cover Letters, powered by About Jobs Resume Writing Service. Or order a resume, cover letter, or other career-marketing document.

Today’s resume establishes a brand relevant to targeted employers. The branding expressed in your resume should capture your career identity, authenticity, passion, essence, and image. With objective statements currently unpopular with hiring decision-makers, job-seekers and resume writers are turning to branding techniques, especially branding statements, to sharpen the focus of resumes. Several methods of communicating your personal brand on your resume are available. Look for more about them on this blog in the upcoming days, or read our article Branding Your Resume.

Not sure how you could benefit from a professional resume writer? Check out Joan's experience: "I cannot believe what a difference this made. I have had 3 calls for interviews and just accepted a job that pays me 15% more than I made before!" See Joan's resume before -- and after -- the pros at Quintessential Resumes and Cover Letters transformed it into a powerful marketing document. Get a FREE resume evaluation from Quintessential Resumes and Cover Letters, powered by About Jobs Resume Writing Service. Or order a resume, cover letter, or other career-marketing document.

Presenting another excerpt from the excellent blog post, Ten Reasons Why Your Resume Isn’t Working by our colleague, Barbara Safani. Here’s another reason your resume may not be working:

You don’t show a clear connection between your past achievements and your future direction. If your resume merely represents your chronology it may be difficult for a hiring manager to understand how your past experience relates to their current position. This is especially true if you are trying to transition to a new job function or industry. Your resume needs to be idiot proof. Be sure to connect the dots between past performance and future value to the organization (I recommend a profile at the top of the resume to accomplish this). No one will connect the dots for you. Take the time to create a clear roadmap from past accomplishments to future value.

Not sure how you could benefit from a professional resume writer? Check out Joan's experience: "I cannot believe what a difference this made. I have had 3 calls for interviews and just accepted a job that pays me 15% more than I made before!" See Joan's resume before -- and after -- the pros at Quintessential Resumes and Cover Letters transformed it into a powerful marketing document. Get a FREE resume evaluation from Quintessential Resumes and Cover Letters, powered by About Jobs Resume Writing Service. Or order a resume, cover letter, or other career-marketing document.

Executive resume writer and branding specialist Deb Dib notes that “the best use of the Web from a job-seeker’s point of view will be to research companies for networking and interview purposes.” In the Q&A interview Dib did with Quintessential Careers, she observed, “With the proliferation of company Web sites, it [has] become increasingly easy to become acquainted with companies’ power structures, corporate cultures, directions, and challenges. Interviewees who want to out-compete the competition have only to do their homework and interview armed with suggested strategies to help meet corporate challenges.”

Not sure how you could benefit from a professional resume writer? Check out Joan's experience: "I cannot believe what a difference this made. I have had 3 calls for interviews and just accepted a job that pays me 15% more than I made before!" See Joan's resume before -- and after -- the pros at Quintessential Resumes and Cover Letters transformed it into a powerful marketing document. Get a FREE resume evaluation from Quintessential Resumes and Cover Letters, powered by About Jobs Resume Writing Service. Or order a resume, cover letter, or other career-marketing document.