Personal Branding: 4 Quick Tips to Update Your Resume
“What do I need to do to get out of this rut and get my dream job?”, is a question I’m often asked. Over the years, I’ve spoken to many employees who are in this predicament where your daily job is almost becoming a chore – something that you dread doing or you find it monotonous. Day in and day out, weeks and then months or sometimes years go by and you trudge along. And then, one day you decide, “Enough, I want change.” So you start writing your resumes, you do a professional makeover and get a nice photoshoot done, you look up the classified ads or online job portals for your dream job. And you’re disappointed – either everything appears the same or the career change just doesn’t seem to be happening.
What then is the magic when you are on your job search?
You need to “Up Your Effort”. We’ve all heard the famous saying by Einstein, “if you do the same thing expecting different results, it’s insanity.” So if you want to a different result, it’s time to do something drastically and significantly different. It’s just like PokemonGo craze from 4 years ago – a new concept of playing a game online while on the move adding to the excitement of playing beyond the confines of the gadget and a couch that took the world by storm because of the novelty.
When buying a gadget, like a mobile phone, you don’t go out and buy the first thing you see, do you? You will carefully select the item – you will assess its features like the size, the functions, the ease of use, the colour and of course the price. You have a criteria. When you eventually make that purchase, you can be assured that the manufacturer had put in a lot of thought, discussion and months of fine-tuning before coming up with the product worthy of sale. Nothing goes to the stores just by chance. Neither should you go on to the job market by chance.
So why then would a new employer “buy” you? What are the added features you have that make you irresistible to future employers? Remember the mobile phone always has Version 1, 2, 3 etc. So you need to have an updated version of yourself too and here are 4 quick tips on how to Up your Effort and market yourself for that job
1. List at least TWO new SKILLS that you have acquired over the past 5 years.
2. List at least TWO new ATTITUDES your have obtained in the last 5 years.
3. List at least TWO new CHALLENGES you are willing to take in the next one year.
4. List at least ONE new weekly COMMITMENT to do something outside your comfort zone.
And now you can start working on that new resume and start selling an updated version of yourself for that much desired career change.