Have you ever lost an interview opportunity to someone who was less qualified? This happens quite often and it is not necessarily a result of discrimination. Sometimes, it is due to poor branding and mediocre marketing. Most of the times, hiring managers view your marketing documents before they even speak with you. When I say marketing documents, I am referring to your resume, value proposition letter, and even your LinkedIn profile. You can be one of the top three best-qualified candidates, but you might not be able to personally share your achievements. The reason for this trickles back to the infamous resume, your branding image and marketing document.
How much time have you spent updating your resume and making it look good? Probably a significant amount of time. Before I dive in and create a branding new resume for my clients, they confess having updated their resume hundreds of times to no avail. Now, we can all probably agree with the famous expression, time is money. The more time you spend without a job, the more time you spend without earning money. The brand image your resume is portraying is affecting your earning potential. For this reason, you should focus on having a strong branding resume that will place you in the spotlight. You cannot afford to send out your resume and lose the opportunity for interviews, especially when your qualifications meet the job requirements.
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The image you convey subconsciously creates a perception of quality in the viewer's mind. When you shop for an item or service, you can most likely quickly tell its level of quality by its appearance, packaging, and personalization. These three components will easily communicate the price bracket of the product or service.
Your resume should do the same; it should quickly communicate to the hiring manager an image of professionalism and high caliber.
- Emotional Appeal - Your resume must be visually appealing through its layout, format, and design strategies.
- Logic - Your resume must be presented in a logical way by quickly telling your relevant assets to employers.
- Credibility - Your resume must support your logical claims with a background full of results and achievements.
Your resume will probably be the first component of your personal brand seen by your target employer and the last part they see before making you a job offer. Every time a hiring manager sees your resume; their decision to extend a good job offer to you should be reinforced. What type of compensation and benefits package would you like your resume to attract? Remember, your resume is the suit you wear when you are not in front of your employer; therefore, it needs to be elegant, eloquent, and enticing.
To accomplish this, it is important to be cognizant of your audience. Who is your target audience? Are you trying to target the information technology, financial, or pharmaceutical industry? Then your resume should be developed with these industries in mind. Knowing your target audience will make it easier for you to create a branding resume that establishes a sense of trust, which leads to credibility, and a quality job offer.
If you are an executive, your target employers will expect to receive a resume up to par with your professional caliber, as opposed to a resume that appears to have been written in high school. The latter will create a discrepancy between your career and your resume image, which will lead to a lack of trust, credibility, and personal connection between you and the hiring manager.
Once you have a powerful branding resume that exemplifies you as a major asset to employers, start pursuing jobs in a higher salary bracket. If you were at an $80,000 annual compensation, start submitting your resume to jobs with a salary of $100,000. This is a $20,000 increase resulting from a resume that truly captures the highlights of your career background. Remember, time is money, so start revamping your brand image now.
