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Resume and Interview Tips

Career Advice - Beyond Your Resume, What's Exciting About You?
By:A. L. Torres

Don't let your resume be the most exciting factor when you interview with a potential employer.

There are literally millions of resources on the internet when you search for help on writing a resume. Hours and hours are spent in editing and revision time. The resume is then given to friends and family for their opinion. All of this, in the hopes that your resume will jump out from the crowd.

If you are called for an interview, your resume has made enough of an impression that they want to meet you in person. Your success in that initial meeting can largely be managed by good preparation and research.

There are three things you can do to excite your future employer during the interview process.

First, think strategically about your future employer. During the interview you are likely to be asked the question "What do you know about our company?" Most of the time people will respond with statistical information such as location, industry, number of employees, services, products and key managers. All of this data is relevant and unfortunately is rehashed in every interview. One of the best ways of generating excitement in this situation is to answer the question strategically.

Instead of providing them with a data dump of what they already know. Do your research on a strategic level. Understand if they are currently the market leader in their industry, who their top competitors are, what their vision is and what major obstacles are in the way. The best way to get this information is to simply do an internet search and read articles, press releases and forums that discuss your future employer.

Second, brand yourself. People, even future employers, identify with brands. The research that you completed in studying your future employer should give a relatively good feel for how to brand yourself. This research will give you a hint as to how you should dress, how to speak, hot topics to avoid, how to display confidence.

Every word you say, intonation, pace and emotion displayed creates a vision of what and who you are. Your potential employer creates that vision from their own biases and experiences. You can manage that situation by branding yourself consistently to the culture of the company.

Third, showcase your breadth of knowledge. Employers are impressed with the skills, qualifications and credentials you put down on your resume. They are much more impressed if you can intelligently talk about and demonstrate those skills under pressure in an interview.

As your interview goes along, take the opportunity to offer them "nuggets of gold" from your breadth of knowledge. If you are discussing a certain operational process they currently find challenging, like employee motivation for example, you can offer up your experience as different way to approach the matter. Be careful not to say that yours is "better" as that may come across as arrogant. Simply offer a perspective on how you have handled it in the past. This will allow your employer to envision you working at their company already.

Your resume is a critical part of getting your employers attention and motivating them to call you in for an interview. To get them really excited about who you are, remember three things: strategically analyze your potential employer, brand yourself to their culture and demonstrate your breadth of knowledge.

About Ascend SQ, LLC:
Author A.L. Torres is a business strategist and entrepreneur who provides career-life strategy development, marketing and guidance through his company Ascend SQ, LLC. To sample one of the company's free workshops or learn more about them please go to go to http://www.ascendsq.com





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