Career Thought Leader Conference TakeAways

After spending my week at the Career Thought Leaders Conference in Baltimore, I have so many take-aways and experiences that I could write posts for months. Several of my Twitter friends are anxious to find out what I learned.

I am a very experienced resume writer with way more than 15 years of resume writing experience who has read, learned, and mastered the craft of resume writing. Yet, I was blown away by the strategies and information given in this conference on even the first day dedicated to resume writing.

The overall theme was write shorter, tighter, and leaner as I mentioned in my Moving Online to Real Life post. The impact of Twitter on the resume writing field is not so much that your resume moves to 140 characters but that every word has to count. This has always been true but as we adapt to reading tweets and communicating in short bursts it becomes crucial.

One of the strategies that I have been using already but that was emphasized by Wendy Enelow and Louise Kursmark in their presentations is to: use a specific headline which provides immediate focus, coupled with subheadings/keywords which will immediately establish areas of expertise.

Example:

Business Analyst | Project Manager | Executive

Management Protocols | Strategic Initiative Implementation | Revenue Growth
New Product Development | Customer Complaint Resolution | Operations Analysis

Emphasis was placed on finding the “WOW” Achievements that differentiate you from other candidates and inject personality and uniqueness.

Example:

Researched and implemented several new revenue strategies, resulting in 9% decrease of overall fee waivers in 2003 compared to 2002 YTD. Examples:

• Fee waiver preservation – $6.2 million favorable to original plan ($51.2 vs. 57.4 million)
• APS revenue in 2003 – 102% of plan through August month-end ($33.1 vs. $32.4 million

What will I change when working with my clients after the conference? I am sure that I will implement multiple changes but I did have a great deal of validation upon reflection of the lessons learned and in addition, I was amazed at the number of colleagues who were familiar with my work and gave me kudos. I have equal admiration for my talented colleagues and consider many of them to be more than exceptional. I found it interesting how diverse the industry is and how much specialization there is in niche markets.

What should you change if you are thinking of writing your own resume or leading your own job search strategy without the aid of a professional? Do your homework! The competition among job seekers is at a greater level than any time in recent history!