Have you ever connected with someone new, enjoyed the brilliancy of their smile, the ebullience of their voice and the mutual passion for a hobby? Have you experienced such instant-connections abruptly taking a nosedive? That was me last night as my husband and I sat at the bar in our boathouse, basking in the glow […]
Executive Careerist: Beware the Hypothesizers + Deducers. Take the Helm of Your Career
Executive Careerist: BEWARE the hyphothesizers, deducers and stern pragmatists who insist that their marketing expertise or digital guru-ism applies neatly + perfectly to your career resume story. The strategy for building your value proposition and aiming it as an influential message to your target audience, which ultimately is a hiring executive, board member, etc., is […]
The Heart of Your Value Proposition
In its most basic sense, a unique value proposition is defined as, “a clear statement that describes the benefit of your offer and what distinguishes you from the competition.” It’s a positioning statement that explains what benefit you provide for who and how you do it uniquely well. In some circles, “unique value proposition” is […]
Quit Being a Career Lightweight
By Jacqui Barrett-Poindexter Your career is organic. It is a living, virtually breathing organism that needs to be nourished and exercised. Without attentive, continual care, you cannot expect your career heartbeat to remain vibrant and strong. To prevent career malnourishment, consider applying these five activities to your daily routine: 1. Stop Weighing Down Conversations. Too many people, especially […]
Are There Cracks in Your Career Communications Strategy?
By Jacqui Barrett-Poindexter Shedding light on your target audience, becoming intimate with your own value and drumming up muscular career stories that transport your reader all are essential action steps to forge a rock-solid resume. This foundational aspect of today’s job search helps prevent job-search flops and missteps and keep your career messaging infrastructure solid. […]
Are You Just One of the Herd? The “LinkedIn-Is-Your-Resume” Debate Continues.
By Jacqui Barrett-Poindexter “My goal — and what attracted me to your website — is that you can portray the essence of who I am. It’s not just skill, but it is everything else that I bring to the table – my attitude – all of the life experience, the drive, the energy that I […]
Employers Don’t “Care”
By Jacqui Barrett-Poindexter In collaboration with my colleague and Career Collective co-coordinator, Miriam Salpeter, and a group of prolific careers bloggers and friends, I introduce my December blog post contribution. This month’s collective topic involves Human Resources / Job Search Misconceptions. Hat tip to Dawn Bugni for the idea. Please visit my colleagues’ posts on the same topic, […]
R-SQUARED: Repackaging & Reframing the Resume Rules
Alright, so ‘career experts’ are continually repackaging and reframing the rules of resume writing and job search. For fun, let’s call this R-squared. My resume writing business focuses heavily on serving the senior manager and executive client. Except for the multiplicity of vehicles [MS Word, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, SlideShare (hat tip to @ErinKennedyCPRW for her recent […]
MATCH(.COM) YOUR WAY TO A NEW JOB!
FIRST IMPRESSIONS MATTER First impressions matter in dating and job search. I know this all too well as I have moved through dozens of first-date impressions during the seven years following my divorce and before I remarried in 2008. My husband, Rob, and I met online via Match.com. Besides the first-impression story he wrote in […]
Six Tips to Hit Your Job-Target Bullseye
After a recent consultation with a job seeker, I was inspired to post the following on Twitter (via @ValueIntoWords): Often hear re: job target, “I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up.” Take a stand, be somebody~focus on a bullseye. Harry Urschel, also a Twitterer via @eExecutives and founder of the recruiting […]