Let me explain:

Like everything else, our ability to communicate well depends on our choice of words and how we choose to arrange them. This is even more so, when one is writing their résumé. Here, one is faced with a variety of challenges, including how to make your message stand above the noise, how to convey your accomplishments without bloviating, and how to make your message forward looking–letting the reader conclude that you are capable of doing much more than what you have already done, even perhaps in an entirely new direction!

Despite a seismic shift in the overall job market during the past decade, in the employment scene, and in how people are hired from an ocean of possible candidates, not much has changed in how résumés are typically written. This blog is about a radical concept that I came up with nearly 10 years back, when I became a career coach and found then, when everyone in the Silicon Valley was struggling to reinvent to go in a new direction, that traditional résumé design was woefully inadequate to convey a fresh message that helps through this reinvention. This new concept, now proven with over 10,000-plus résumés is called an Inductive résumé. An Inductive résumé is a forward-looking message, not historical, which is the essence of a traditional résumé.  The Inductive part “induces” the reader to consider new possibilities that may not be apparent from a typical backward-looking message that traditional résumés present.

The New Design:

A typical résumé starts with a Summary at the top and then goes to describe Career Highlights, followed by Experience, which is a showcase of the person’s chronology. At the end there is the Education and Awards section, which complete a typical résumé.

The new Inductive résumé consists of the following elements, instead: Career Objective, Leadership Profile, Unique Skills, Technical Skills, Accomplishments Chronology, Education, and Special Achievements. The headings thus named for the key elements of an Inductive résumé transform its very ethos.

Let us now explore how each of these elements torques your résumé message in a forward direction and in an exciting way:

By replacing the Summary section with a Career Objective you are making your résumé forward looking. In this Career Objective you state what you plan to do tomorrow for the employer in a forward-looking message. The Career Objective statement is no more than a two-lines of your intent, aligned with the job description; it must be more about them than it is about you. Recruiters often object to this element by arguing, Who cares about what you want, just tell them what you know and have done. This specious argument is trumped by how the Objective is phrased and its focus (“them” and not you)!

The second element of the Inductive design is the Leadership Profile, which takes place of the typical Career Highlights. The difference between the two is that the latter merely summarizes you assignments and experiences, whereas the former captures a summary of your leadership stories (see Accomplishments Chronology, below). These are 4-6 bullets that summarize your leadership successes, not assignments! Some clients, who are not yet a manager question the naming of this element by arguing that they are not a “leader” yet, so this is section is not appropriate for them. WRONG!

A leader does NOT need an imposing title, but an ability to provide thought leadership and to create followership by virtue of their thoughts and actions that create value. Just remember, Gandhi, Mandela, and King had no titles, but we remember them as great leaders!

The third element of an Inductive résumé is Unique Skills. These are skills that define your verbal brand and showcase what you have done that differentiates you from everyone else. They typically stem from the stories that are presented in the Accomplishments Chronology section of your résumé. They are a two-word (typically verb-noun) pair bolded phrase, followed by a one or two-line descriptor of that phrase to explain your uniqueness in that dimension. Typically five Unique Skills capture a good cluster of competencies to differentiate you. From the one Accomplishment bullet crafted below a Unique Skill can be derived as follows (please read that section first!):

Ø  Inspire Teams: Organize and lead highly productive, curious teams by creating clear mission statements, accountabilities, and by allowing them to take calculated risks. Reward teams.

Technical Skills are presented in the same way as they are in a typical résumé, so there is nothing unique about them in the Inductive design.

The Accomplishments Chronology section replaces the Experience part of a traditional résumé. By naming this section differently you are forced to present your accomplishments, not just your assignments when presenting your chronology. Although they will be headed by the company name, your title, and the times when you held that title, the actual bullets will reflect accomplishments, not just your duties. So, let us look at a typical example:

• As a manager heading a team of 15 engineers, carried out budget, annual reviews, and other administrative duties. Reporting to the Director, communicated department matters up/down to keep communication flowing. Motivated the team through good reviews.

The problem with this bullet is that it merely states your duties (done poorly at that!), which means that if you did not do them you should have been terminated. That is not the message you want on your résumé. Instead, try writing the following:

• Upon onboarding, quickly discovered that the team of 15 engineers was demoralized because of previously delayed/failed projects. Redirected the team on a new project, creating clear accountabilities. Worked-out four non-performers and cross-trained the rest, promoting a star player to Team Lead. The smaller team delivered the project two months (of 14) ahead of schedule, a team first!

With bullets that carry this much power you do not need many such bullets, despite their being slightly longer.

For any given position you must showcase bullets with stories (such as the one shown above) that have different leadership threads. For example, the bullet above can be classified as having an Inspiring Teams thread. In fact, that could be a title of one of your Unique Skills in the third element we presented earlier, as demonstrated above. The Unique Skills must be derived from these pithy bullets.

The Education section lists your formal degrees. You can also include any certifications that are relevant to your job that you are pursuing.

Special Achievements list your proud kudos that enhances your value in the job you are after. These can include a Project Management Award or special recognition that you received from a customer.

A résumé is your proxy; it must represent you in the most positive light with enough intrigue to get you in for an interview. One reason why so many people dissemble on their résumés (estimates are that 39% of résumés have lies in their message) is because they do not know how to craft them with the right attention-grabbing messages, as I have presented here with examples. With the Inductive design described here you can use this strategy to not only get attention of a potential employer, but to also change the direction in which you want to change your career! And, in so doing you can be completely truthful about what you have done, and get what you want!

Good luck!

Traditionally, résumés (in French it means Summary) are seen as a historical chronology of one’s past with little room to show how you can take that history to move you in a different direction, such as in your re-invention. Also, a résumé is usually seen as a job-seeking tool, nothing more. Actually, a résumé can be an even more effective as a career management tool.

How?

If you learn how to pre-ordain your résumé by claiming a bullet that captures your accomplishments the way you want them to appear for a hiring manager, who wants to hire a candidate to a fill a position you are after, you can shape the work and outcome on that assignment even before you begin your task. This strategy, together with how an Inductive résumé is written,  create a forward-looking value proposition based on your past and based on creating a bridge between the past and the future. An Inductive résumé compels the reader to think beyond the obvious; it induces them to be intrigued by your message.

Here are the résumé game changers that have worked for my clients and for me in my own practice:

1.     Shift the value message from yesterday to tomorrow: You do this with a one- or two-line Career Objective at the top (not a Summary, which is always backward-looking). This statement must be focused on the employer and NOT on you! Find a way to grab the reader about “tomorrow” for them in this statement and throughout your résumé. Don’t listen to the recruiters who say, “Who cares what you want? Just state what you have done (Summary).”

2.     Verbalize your genius at the top of your résumé (“above the fold”) that showcases uniqueness about you. I call them your Unique Skills. They come from the leadership stories that you narrate in the Experience section below in your résumé (“Yesterday”). This part is your chronology with bullets.

3.     In the Experience section tell only your Aha! stories of leadership in 3-4 lines, and not just list your assigned tasks in a transactional way with dry numbers that typically do not have context. These bullets are now your leadership narrative.

4.     Use only those bullets that showcase your uniqueness, without listing all your tasks from each job. A well-written résumé is NOT a kitchen sink! This (the Aha! stories) makes the résumé concise and compelling.

5.     Learn how to transform a bullet of a routinely assigned task into a Hollywood version of your hero story! Always tell the truth; you’ll be surprised how compelling a really well-told true story reads like!

6.     Keep your résumé to two pages, no matter how many jobs you have had. Even for a fresh graduate this can create a more compelling message. Most have only one page; so you are immediately differentiated!

7.     Keep your résumé laser focused on your Career Objective and remove all clutter, no matter how important it is for you! Remember your résumé is NOT about you, but it is about the job you are after!

8.     Keep your LinkedIn Profile synched up to your résumé message. This way you have ONE message!

9.     Keep looking for opportunities to bolster your evolving résumé by seeking challenging assignments. Don’t just be an order-taker.

10.  If you have posted your résumé on a job board (because you are out and looking), refresh your résumé every week and re-post it. When a search by a recruiter provides a list of candidates they are ranked by posted dates.

Good luck!

Why is that?

Those in the consulting space are often hired as “Idea experts,” who can brainstorm with their clients and provide some thought leadership in the area that is important to their client. Thought leadership entails out-of-the-box thinking and looking at their needs with a perspective that is not obvious to those close to their work. Usually, in such engagements the consultant provides a hypothesis, the analysis, and sometimes an action plan that can be implemented. Consultants usually do not hang around to see the implementation of their plans or to see the results of how well they work. This important work is often left for the client to do, which often results in surprises or even defeats!

Why this happens can be explained by recognizing that that there are two dichotomous needs to get anything done: A good idea and a way to execute that idea well. One without the other simply leaves the entire initiative incomplete or unrealized. A good idea not executed can become an unrealized dream; a bad idea executed well can become a nightmare! I have found that calling the Idea part of the initiative as “Greek” and the Implementation part as “Roman” have helped my clients understand how they need to present their message appropriately so that they can come across as someone who can get the job done.

The “Greek” label comes from the philosopher-thinkers from the ancient Greek culture (Plato, Aristotle) that provided us the philosophical underpinnings and thinking foundation for thoughtful plans. Nothing changes unless these ideas are actually implemented in an organization. This requires people who understand execution and who are masters at it. Romans, with their superior military prowess and fighting skills won the battles by their abilities to execute well on the battlefields. The Greeks did not carry weapons, nor did the Romans serve as thought leaders to kings; to make it simple, the Greeks thought and the Romans fought! In the corporate world we need to understand that one without the other does not get the results for a change initiative.

So, what does a consultant need to do to pursue a corporate job in their field of expertise? They must be careful in assembling the right message in their résumé (and everything that they create: LinkedIn Profile, Facebook entry, and their Tweets!) to make sure that their consulting narrative also includes the “Roman” part of their experience. Unless they are able to dig deeper in their engagements and see how they helped their clients beyond merely providing the ideas for a change, they stay as “Greeks,” and will be unable to convince a corporate hiring manager that they can execute and produce results.

So, what is some of that language?

Let us take a concrete example: A consultant had advised her client to develop a new market in an emerging space by analyzing the demographic and its preferences. She then helped the client create a message to get the attention of that group. Her story of that stint would have ended there with very strong “Greek” overtones. But, to complete that story, we decided to dig deeper and explore how the client followed the recommendations and what adjustments had to be made to realize the desired outcomes. So, when she called the client and asked how that initiative worked out, as a follow-up, the client was candid in telling her what worked and what did not. She explained to the client why certain parts did not work as well (using her “Greek” mindset) to explain a “Roman” action, and what the client could have done or still could do to improve on the implementation of that plan. She also got some results from those discussions that were relevant and even impressive for this story. Having this ammunition provided the needed “Roman” torque to the overall story on her résumé. She got through and was invited for an interview for the marketing job that she was after.

Without this complete story the résumé remains a consultant’s message and lacks the essential “Roman” component. This often results in the candidate not getting invited for an interview. To carry this further when you are invited for an interview you must continue chipping away at your “Roman” side by providing enough stories that convince the hiring manager that you can deliver both thought and action leadership.

So, when you are making a transition from a role that requires more ideas and thought leadership to the one that requires delivering results, make sure that you have enough mix of ideas and execution that moves the hiring manager to take interest in you as a potential candidate.

Good luck!

Why?

When we want something badly and we fear our losing it we often resort to lying with the hope that we would get what we desire. Lying also happens in social situations when you want to avoid an unpleasant encounter with someone. “I was late because my car broke down; too much traffic, etc.” Some of these “fibs” are just that; benign statements of our inability to be honest about our shortcomings. Nevertheless, they provide an interesting window into a person’s make-up.

My first (and my last) encounter of lying in a professional setting occurred over 40 years ago in my very first job. I was on a company trip by train to New Delhi in 1967 and I was to do a number of things in one day, which alone was challenging, despite careful planning based on the best-case scenario (no waiting at government ministries!). Telephones and the ways of getting across the vast stretches of New Delhi were quite primitive then by today’s standards. As I was about to depart, my boss gave me a personal errand to pick up some special medicines for him from a store in Old Delhi, which was a much crowded and chaotic place to visit, with traffic snarls. Since I put high priority on my boss’ personal errand I was simply unable to complete the last business errand to see someone by paying him a courtesy visit.

Upon my return to work the next day I pleased my boss by giving him what he had asked me to bring for him and then he asked me about my business. When he specifically asked about meeting that last person, Mr. Patel, on the list of people to visit, I simply did not have the courage to tell him that I ran out of time and could not see him. I wanted to impress him with my uncanny efficiency. So, instead, I lied and told him that it was a productive meeting and that the person did not have anything significant to tell me about the ongoing business. My boss paused, for a period, what seemed like eternity, and then stared at me with a knowing look, and asked, What did he exactly say? I suddenly realized that I was unable to continue this charade any longer without further humiliating myself, but did not have the courage to tell him the truth and to recover from the lie I had just perpetrated. Within just a few more exchanges my boss realized what had happened, but did not push to humiliate me further. At that moment we both knew what was going on. Ever since that incident, relationship with my boss was never the same!

Breach of trust is the biggest casualty in a lie. Once that trust is gone it is often impossible to regain it and it becomes an uphill battle, causing much wasted effort and grief. People often think that telling a lie is as easy as having a normal truthful conversation. They are wrong! They are even more wrong when they convince themselves that it would be easier to sell that lie when they carefully fashion a convincing script to make that lie sellable.

Why?

What most do not realize is that our brain is working at both the conscious and subconscious level simultaneously. When we are telling a deliberate lie, only our conscious brain is engaged in that lie. The subconscious brain is doing its thing independently (that is why it is called the subconscious brain) and the disconnect between the two brains manifests as unavoidable, out of synch signals that betray your lie. Studies have shown that for every neuron working in the conscious brain, about a million neurons are working at the subconscious level. To project a unified message from the verbal, tonal, and body-language faculties is virtually impossible when you are fighting this million-to-one battle within your own brain. Thus, when you are telling a lie every fiber of your being is betraying what is going on and the person at the other end can easily spot that without much difficulty. The same situation applies when you are communicating on the phone. Studies have shown that it is even easier to spot a lie in a phone conversation than it is in a face-to-face interaction. To make matters even worse, when you make a deliberate script to tell a lie the time you spend communicating that lie increases and so do your chances of exposing yourself by your betrayed body language and your tone. So, carefully scripting a lie does not absolve you from its negative impact; it actually increases it, instead.

Studies have shown that the verbal communication provides only about seven percent of your message. The tone provides about 45% and the body language the remainder (48%). This makes it nearly impossible for anyone to manage their brain to synch up their conscious manifestation with their subconscious one, no matter how clever they are!

So, what is the best way to present your case when you are coming short?

The answer is quite simple: Tell the truth in a way that serves you and make the truth that they are looking for irrelevant in the context of you overall message.

Let me explain what I mean. In my own case from 40 years ago, I should have told my boss, “No, I was not able to see Mr. Patel as I simply ran out of time that day to catch my train back, but I called him this morning and explained to him the reason for not being able to see him. He was quite gracious about that and said, ‘we should continue our ongoing marketing campaign by looking for other avenues’.” I am quite sure this would have worked and, more importantly, I would have retained my dignity even without coming across as being super-efficient about my time in New Delhi. Here, once Mr. Patel’s message was known, my actual visit to him became irrelevant in the context that I was facing and what was needed. Then I was too naïve to analyze the situation in these terms.

The same logic applies in a job situation. When you do not have a particular attribute that the employer is looking for it is best to say, I actually bring something even more valuable than that because in the current state of this project you do not need more Java experts (you can contract them), but you need someone who knows how to manage a complex project and work with off-shored resources to bring it back on track quickly. I have done this well many times!

So, before you are tempted to make a statement that is not true and that is unsupportable by facts, find some avenues to make that statement irrelevant and, instead, find how to present other possibilities that they have not considered! This approach will make you stand tall, sleep better, and even get you that job you are really after!

I have a different approach!

What makes you unique should be something so central to your value proposition that you MUST know what that is. This concept does not just apply to fresh graduates, but to everyone who is managing their career or life, in this job market or not! If you do not know (and this is the norm) what your uniqueness is, then you must discover what that is, own it, and learn how to verbalize it in a compelling way on your résumé with supreme confidence. So, how do you find out your unique gifts and how do you build a credible value proposition that is the centerpiece of your résumé?

Our uniqueness stems from our innate gifts that allow us to do things in ways that clearly differentiate us from others. I call those gifts our genius. The dictionary definition of genius is, the tutelary or attendant spirit in classical pagan belief allotted to every person at birth, or to a place, institution, etc. that gives it special powers and protection. So, there is both, good genius (A Picasso) and evil genius (A Charles Manson) as either of the two mutually opposed spirits or angels supposed to attend each person. Hence, genius is a person or thing that powerfully influences another with the power of this spirit. Talent, on the other hand, is something that evolves from applying efforts to grow in a particular way (musical talent, artistic talent, etc.).

In this blog we are going to explore how to discover your genius and how to verbalize it in your message to differentiate yourself in a crowded market. I call it your verbal brand. Since your genius is a tutelary spirit that is always present to protect you, it allows you to create outcomes that have an immediate Aha! to it. It is this Aha! that gives us the window to discover our own genius.

So, how do we uncover our genius, given this genius and its Aha! connection?

One way is to reflect back in your various past efforts that have resulted in outcomes that created those Aha!s. You do not need to ask others what they were, but you know within yourself that when you worked on something and created an outcome that there was that inescapable Aha! Once you are able to see these episodes clearly, then you can classify them in different categories and find a way to verbalize them. This is how you verbalize your genius. Your genius is thus a cluster of a few unique skills that are crisply verbalized to appeal to the reader.

When these unique skills are showcased on your résumé, they must be packaged to align with your intended job pursuits. So, having a way to artfully verbalize these unique skills, torqued in the direction of the job’s needs is the important first step in building a strongly branded résumé. The reader of your résumé can now relate to how you create value in the context that they are looking for, because now it becomes manifestly obvious to this reader. All of this can sound simple, but it is not easy!

Why?

We live with our genius every day. So, to step back and to look at how we create those Aha!s in our everyday pursuits is something that needs special effort to objectify it in ways that becomes easily owned and communicated. One way is to write stories of our accomplishments in a detailed format. In one of my previous blogs I talked about your leadership narrative (So, What is Your Leadership Narrative, blog of July 18). We must learn how to narrate our story of a leadership success. Once that story is verbalized it is much easier to extract your genius from that story so that you can own it. This is the hard part of the entire process. Because we live with our genius every day it is hard for us to see it. It is these stories or leadership narratives that allow us to peek into that window to give us the insights we need about verbalizing our genius.

Most spend a few hours crafting their résumé to look pretty and to capture their stints, sometimes even their accomplishments. Many often seek the help of a professional résumé writer to make their résumé more presentable. No amount of money you can pay to such a writer will get you that insight about your own genius unless you do your own story telling and go through this trouble to extracting your genius as we discussed here. Writing a genius-based résumé is much harder and takes much longer. But, once this process is conquered your verbal branding will be much stronger and highly differentiated. Once you own this outcome you do not have to rely on others, including your mother, to tell you what your genius is!

Good luck!

Most prospects and some clients often approach me and ask why they are not able to get any upward movement in their careers. Those out of work think that it is the job market, those stuck in their careers think that it is the internal politics, and others simply wait for their manager to promote them when the timing is right! In the last instance, frequently, their manager goes away in a year or so and that cycle begins all over again, often thwarted by the new manager’s bringing their own protégé with them!

In most cases the simple reason for this cycle of hard work, promises of advancement, and new manager (or being suddenly laid-off) continues and many professionals surrender to this reality by blaming everything external to their plight: bad economy, cutbacks, bad manager, too much politics, and bad timing! Although some of their reasoning has merit, most get sidelined for reasons entirely created by their own handling of their career and how they project their message of leadership through their work, résumé, and their everyday behaviors at work.

Let me explain:

As an employee of your company you have an obligation to create value for your company and grow in the process. This growth, in turn, creates greater value for your company, creating a virtuous cycle. This does not mean that you must get increasingly more challenging tasks or greater responsibility to demonstrate your potential. What it does mean, however, is that you show initiative in understanding your own mission for continually creating greater value for your group, department, the organization, and ultimately, your company. This requires that you not merely take orders from your manager to comply with each order, but that you show initiative to descry what is not happening around you and find avenues to make that happen. This undone or ignored work must connect to improving the customer experience, making things better in your own organization, or advancing the state of knowledge in your area of work. This is what leadership is and this is what one is expected to do; not just do the work from your Job Description!

Now, once you are able to change your mindset to understand your responsibility to create greater value for your organization, that accomplishment must be presented in a narrative that captures your leadership and shows how you think, how you find opportunities, and how you deliver value above and beyond your mission. This, now, becomes your leadership narrative. Without this leadership narrative, you are just a cog in the wheel and are there at your place of work for a paycheck!  Looking at the above definition of “narrative,”  having this story with a constant thread of insightful actions stemming from how you see your work, not as merely following orders your manager gives, but as an endless mission of creating increasingly greater value to please the customer (or to please yourself if you do not have a direct customer connection).

So, what are some of the behaviors you must embrace to be able to showcase your leadership narrative in your own everyday work? Here are some suggestions:

1. Understand what business your company is in and how that translates into the work that your immediate work group does. Find out how what you can do makes a difference to the end user or customer. The answer to this question may not always come as doing more work faster, but as doing different work differently! Find a greater purpose in your own area of work.
2. Look at what you do and find out new avenues to do that work. Look at the workflow and see how the input and the output from where you sit affect those at the two ends of the mini-supply chain. Reach out on both sides and see if you can optimize that loop.
3. See what your group is struggling with in everyday work. If it requires a new process, take it on as an assignment; if it entails approaching someone higher-up to get them to rethink what has already been decided, then learn how to get your point across and influence their thinking to make a change; if it is miscommunication between groups find out ways to create a better communication process. The opportunities are endless!
4. When looking for opportunities for improvement start with the ones that affect what you do the most. That way you can claim a bullet about that in your résumé. A bullet that reads, Discovering that analyzing field failure data took too long to incorporate that into the ongoing design improvements for the next product release, decided to go to the source and gave Field Engineers an online method of capturing data, eliminating the paper entries, and making each entry available in real-time, will put a shine on your otherwise dull résumé! Similar bullets with such stories will now make up for a strong leadership narrative.
5. One way to motivate your actions is to foreordain a bullet on your résumé and then take on that task to honor your commitment to yourself.
6. Frequently meet with your manager and review your “above-and-beyond” contributions, so that they are aware of your value. Also, send out an email to those that matter touting your accomplishments. If such emails are written in recognition of the work others did to support your cause it becomes politically more acceptable and those who helped you will get due credit in the management’s eyes. Remember, the real hero here is YOU!
7. Compare your résumé with those of your peers (especially those seen as stars) and see how your narrative compares with theirs. If you cannot compete with their formidable, raw talent and the depth of their technical contribution, trump them with your perspicacious business outlook and value added to it by improving how things happen! If you do not have access to their résumé, looking up their LinkedIn Profile can be an acceptable proxy to this. Always keep your LinkedIn Profile current.
8. Look for the job description for next level of promotion and try to bring that language in your résumé as you do your current job. It is much easier for your manager to champion you if you are already performing at a level where the opening lies or can be created to accommodate your desire to get promoted.
9. Always keep yourself marketable and become a passive candidate. Manage your LinkedIn Profile and spruce it up with strong Recommendations from those that matter.
10. Do not get too attached to your own job. If you follow this approach you’ll become highly marketable as you do your everyday work, without even having to look for another job to get yourself promoted!

Good luck!

A man was walking by. He took a few coins from his pocket and dropped them into the hat. He then took the sign, turned it around, and wrote some words. He put the sign back so that everyone who walked by would see the new words.

Soon the hat began to fill up. A lot more people were giving money to the blind boy.

That afternoon the man who had changed the sign came to see how things were. The boy recognized his footsteps and asked, “Were you the one who changed my sign this morning? What did you write?

The man said, “I only wrote the truth. I said what you said but in a different way.” I wrote: “Today is a beautiful day but I cannot see it.”

Both signs told people that the boy was blind. But the first sign simply and factually said that the sign’s holder was blind. The second sign told people that they were so lucky not to be blind.

Should we be surprised that the second sign was more effective?

The reason that it was effective and got different results because that change in message moved passers-by to act from their hearts and not from their brains. Facts merely appeal to the brain as to their veracity. Most decisions come from the heart!

Moral:

Be creative. Be innovative. Think differently and positively. Appeal to people’s hearts through their minds!

As a career coach I see the same mindset that professionals carry when they create their marketing message. It is steeped in factual data about their accomplishments and about how great they are at what they do. What they fail to see is how what they are stating as facts affects the reader, a decision maker, in how they respond to their message.

In the above story the change in the direction of the message, from “me” to “you,” made all the difference in the outcome. Not only that, it made passers-by even feel good about their generosity!

The same is true about any message you create about yourself that you want to result in some benefit to you. To achieve that goal you must first see the benefit others get from what you are offering. So, in the case of your résumé if you move the message from “me centric” to “reader centric” by finding their pain and then their gain by their engaging you, you will have a response very similar to what that blind boy experienced at the end of that fateful day!

Enjoy this beautiful day!

“Your reach should be greater than your grasp.”—Ralph Waldo Emerson

You do not have to go far to realize that the job market today is really tough these days! What makes it even tougher for those who are already out and looking and for those who are on the verge of a layoff is that they see no hope for them to overcome their plight because there are fewer and fewer jobs of the kind that they did before. They are scared to try something else, either because they do not know how to create a message that allows them to launch a credible campaign in a new direction, or that they are simply out of ideas!

Traditional résumés are constructed using deductive reasoning. It is iron-clad by virtue of its logical power. It is also historical, so no one can doubt your veracity, unless you chose to overtly lie to get away with something just to claim what you do not deserve. In my experience with nearly 4,000 clients across the globe in a variety of situations is that most underestimate their worth and overestimate their value! This statement looks like a contradiction, but let me explain:

Our worth is what we are capable of doing (“reach” in the Emerson quote, above). Whereas our value is what we can transactionally extract when engaged in what we typically do (our “grasp.”). For example, working in our jobs we often believe (and feel) that we can do a much better job than what our boss is doing. We also believe that we deserve a much bigger raise for our contributions at work. This is our dented sense of proprioception about ourselves that prompts us to believe that our value is much greater than it is as perceived by others or than how it is rewarded. Emerson also wrote: We judge ourselves by what we are capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done! This is normal and many of us spend agonizing hours brooding over how undervalued we are because of this very fact! We go through all kinds of contortions to get a measly one percent higher raise than the next guy!

Worth, on the other hand is something that is intrinsic to us and it reflects what we can be if we reach out and apply ourselves in different and unusual ways. In the context of your transactional engagement (such as you current or previous job) it requires a different mindset for you to leap into a position that allows you to apply yourself in a new direction. Such a campaign requires a message that is different from what your typical résumé conveys.

How can one do this?

Well, you do not have to go far to see how this is done. Candidate Barack Obama successfully overcame his résumé to craft a message that got him the job he was after. To develop a message that is different from your résumé requires an inductive résumé (my phrase). An inductive résumé creates a forward looking message that takes you from the known to the unknown; quite a change from the linear, deductive résumé that everyone is used to and knows how to do well!

An inductive résumé is what can propel you in a new direction in this market. Despite its gloom and doom the current job market is rife with interesting, even exciting, possibilities. All you have to do is show a target employer (of your choosing) what is not happening for them in the realm that you have interest in and how you can make it happen for them. This requires some research, some fortitude and enormous self-confidence to pull it off. As a career coach I have done this myself five times (this is my fifth career) and have done this for my clients nearly 4,000 times across the globe. These are my proof points. If you do not believe these, go to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. in Washington, DC and have a session with Barack himself!

Making an inductive leap requires the following elements:

A clear vision of what you want to do

Owning your genius that allows you to craft a verbal message that translates what you have done into what you can do

A few compelling stories that link your genius (Unique Skills) to your achievements in a direction that makes your claim of value creation in a new direction credible

A campaign that is highly targeted and moxy that is second to none!

Good luck!

As up-and-coming managers seek increasingly higher titles and responsibilities in their ongoing career growth, how they present their value proposition to the prospect employer becomes increasingly important. A resume is your proxy in a job search, and, regardless of how your connections help you get in to see the decision makers, it is your resume that establishes your credentials. True, a senior executive can bring you in because someone has recommended you or that they know you personally. Nevertheless, once you walk away from that encounter your resume that you leave behind is what is circulated for further review and actions. If it does not project the right message, you may not be able to sustain the welcome that was accorded by those whom you knew!

So, what makes the message on an executive resume stand out and what projects that je ne sais quoi that everyone is looking for? Well, the answer is simple, and, yet, it is elusive for most.

One thing for sure that is a “maker” in an executive resume is the progression of responsibilities and accomplishments in the specific area of your expertise. For example, if you want to be a senior executive at a retail conglomerate, you must show progressively greater span of responsibilities and accomplishments in the retail space. At very senior levels, e.g., CEO, this matters less. But, for most senor executives specific vertical experience in an industry is central to moving ahead.

The “breaker,” then, is the inability to build consensus and relationships across broad constituencies. A single ‘breaker” can negate many “makers’ for moving ahead in an executive selection process. One major breaker for senior executives is their “soft skills.”

So, what are soft skills?

Soft skills is a phrase that some HR person concocted in the late ‘70s to describe attributes that round out leadership skills of those who are otherwise technically very proficient (It is probably the same person who came up with the word empowerment, a little later!). Most leaders (managers and executives) grow in their careers by parlaying their technical expertise in an area into becoming a people manager. Here, technical implies the subject matter in which they are an expert (SME). SMEs can be in any field, not just in  technology, as is often mistakenly perceived. You can be an SME in corporate law, forensic testing, or a language, etc. As they grow in this role as an SME, they realize that the skills that they practiced to be a top technical contributor are very different from the ones that make them a top manager. To be a good leader and a manager of resources you must learn how to inspire others to achieve results. In its original framing, whoever conceived the idea of soft skills envisioned them as a disparate layer of attributes that round out one’s leadership capabilities. Although this may be true to certain extent, a true leader accomplishes what they set out to do by integrating their technical and soft skills in an intertwined way. They are not separable. If you try too hard to portray your soft skills (through affect), especially during the screening process, you can undermine your leadership force and come across as a weak leader.

What are some of the soft skills that are important in a leader’s role and as a manager? The following list may provide a glimpse:

1. Quickly grasping the gravity of a situation (also known as lateral thinking)
2. Being a visionary
3. Leading/Inspiring teams
4. Crisis management
5. Public speaking
6. Being approachable
7. Having composure
8. Ethics and values
9. Respect for other
10. Empathy
11. Integrity
12. Listening skills
13. Conflict management
14. Morale building
15. Decision-making
16. Critical thinking

Although this is not an exhaustive list of soft skills, they represent a good sampling.

In a resume it may be fatuous for you to present yourself as a “Highly ethical and moral leader with great conflict-management and decision-making skills who respects others and treats them as true equals regardless of their age, sex, race, and accent.” However, it may be entirely apt to tell several stories that reflect leadership achievements, which would not be possible without these soft skills and which are anchored to your Unique Skills.

For example, this resume bullet tells a great deal about a leader who can deliver: Was recruited to turn around a foundering project with key team members leaving and the customer threatening legal action. Discovered that the original project was ill conceived, without specific deliverables. Met with the customer and redefined project, re-scoped entire effort, regrouped team, and led the new effort to completion, exceeding customer expectations.

Such a bullet, although a bit longer than its traditional counterpart, (Delivered a critical project on time), speaks volumes about a leader’s true capabilities: hard skills, soft skills, political skills, and each of the 16 listed items above and then some, when anchored to a Unique Skill(s) and placed on a resume! Traditional resume writers exhort their clients to write about their soft skills because they do not know how to present their clients’ leadership stories that embody their entire suite of valuable skills. In such cases, a listing of mere “soft skills” looks almost gratuitous and inapt.

To continue the above illustration, a relevant Unique Skill can be Inspire Teams: Re-ignite demoralized and dysfunctional teams by providing hands-on leadership and establishing accountabilities. Build new teams from the ground-up and inspire them to achieve unprecedented outcomes.

So, what is the take away from this article? If you are positioning yourself as an executive through your resume, make sure that you have a good assortment of stories that provide a glimpse into your leadership window from different perspectives and that capture different aspects of your hard and soft skills. Writing such stories in a concise, compelling, and intriguing way, of course, requires a skill that is worth developing.