What's Your Specialty?
One of my co-workers gave me an excellent piece of advice: "Never be a journalist; be a specialist." This is excellent advice that doesn't just pertain to the field of journalism. It's actually very common advice in business wisdom that you shouldn't try to be all things to all people, because that does very little to distinguish you.
We grew up consuming mass marketing, listening to car companies and Coca-Cola using classic rock in boring commercials to sell us stuff. So, we're all under the impression that the most effective communication is to create a generic message about ourselves on our resumes and email it to as many people as we possibly can, in the hopes that one of them will get noticed by someone who wants to interview and ultimately hire us.
Think about it from the employer's perspective...the employer out there who really needs you, and would happily pay you to do what you excel at doing. If you write your resume to speak to that small handful of employers, then you just might pop off the page the next time HR is thumbing through a stack of resumes and cover letters that are all made of ticky-tacky.
We grew up consuming mass marketing, listening to car companies and Coca-Cola using classic rock in boring commercials to sell us stuff. So, we're all under the impression that the most effective communication is to create a generic message about ourselves on our resumes and email it to as many people as we possibly can, in the hopes that one of them will get noticed by someone who wants to interview and ultimately hire us.
Think about it from the employer's perspective...the employer out there who really needs you, and would happily pay you to do what you excel at doing. If you write your resume to speak to that small handful of employers, then you just might pop off the page the next time HR is thumbing through a stack of resumes and cover letters that are all made of ticky-tacky.