Have you made yourself the STAR of your career story or do you languish in anonymity and prioritize your employer over yourself?
Don’t let the employer be the STAR of your career journey! When you write your resume, avoid emphasizing the name of each employer, often displayed on a resume in bold and/or capital letters. When people scan your resume, yes they want to see the name of your employers but more importantly they’re interested in the positions you held.
Write accomplishment-based bullets, or what I call STAR stories. Future employers aren’t interested in your job duties and responsibilities but they are highly interested in your career contributions. Seduce the reader by filling your resume with short, snappy bullet statements sharing the impact you made in each position, ideally using metrics portraying the positive results you delivered either to the company or client.
Here’s an example of how you can write to make yourself the STAR of your career:
Introduced Six Sigma and lean methodologies to extract $750,000 in production costs and boost daily output by 60% while maintaining a 99.5% quality rating and 100% on time delivery.
In the age of digital recruitment, starring in your resume isn’t enough. You also need to be the STAR of your online reputation. More and more companies, and all executive recruiters that I know, use the Internet to find or vet candidates. If they entered your name in a Google search, would they uncover your profile or would the response be “search not found”?
At a minimum, create a profile on LinkedIn then use the helpful online prompts to expand your online content until you achieve a LinkedIn “All-STAR” profile rating. Three key elements of an “All-STAR” profile ranking include: a business appropriate profile picture; a complete career history replicating the STAR stories from your resume; and at least 3 recommendations from people in your network who can eloquently speak to the positive impact you made.
Future possibilities are endless when you seize every opportunity to make yourself the STAR of your career story.
This article was syndicated from Business 2 Community: Are You The STAR Of Your Career Story?
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