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Tuesday, 01 September 2009 |
Did you know the average manager spends less than one minute reviewing your resume? What can you do to get your resume to stand out from the crowd? Dave Drummond is an award-winning Canadian book designer. Dave helps his authors sell more books through his creative and eye-catching designs. In our conversation, he shares some simple ideas that you and I can use to strengthen our professional packaging.
I can contribute the idea of interviewing a book designer by a question that my daughter asked recently: "Dad, which book do you think is a better book?" She was holding up two books that she had recently read. She was asking the age-old question; can you judge a book by its cover? In this particular case, the book with the poorly designed cover was the better book. My daughter comes by her love of books honestly: our house is full of books. Some people love wine; we love books. Rightly or wrongly, we do judge a book by its cover, that is why publishers value the services Dave Drummond provides.
The reason I reached out to Dave specifically, was because of a personal experience I had with his work. I was in a bookstore recently not intending to buy any books when a particular book cover caught my eye: This is Your Brain on Joy. I have to say it is one of my all-time favorite book covers. The cover got me to pick up the book. Now it was up to the author to convince me to spend my money buying this book and my valuable time reading it. Dave shared, "Great covers are all about getting noticed,” which is critical to understand since there are thousands of new books published every year, and consumers have short attention spans. Similarly, in the job market, there are thousands of new employees on the market each year, and managers have short attention spans.
Here are 3 ideas to improve your one-minute window of a potential new job:
1. Packaging matters. It will get people to stop, notice, and move to the next step. A great resume will get people to call you in for an interview;
2. Tell the truth and nothing but the truth. Make sure your resume, Linkedin, Twitter and Facebook are consistent in their design and messages. Don’t oversell or undersell;
3. Packaging will only take you so far. A great resume will get you the interview. It is up to you to get the job; people hire people not paper.
When you combine a great book with a cover that catches your eye and is consistent with the core message of the book, that is the sweet spot in putting together a winning combination. From your resume to Linkedin to Twitter and Facebook, employers do judge you by your cover. This week, take time to update your resume and invest some time in your digital brand: you never know when opportunity will knock!
PS Need help with your resume? Click here to get a professional resume written by one of our experienced resume coaches.
Alan Kearns, Canada's Career Coach, is the founder of CareerJoy: The Career Coaching Company. He is one of Canada's foremost experts on all things relating to careers. Alan has more than 17 years of experience coaching professionals with successful career decisions. Alan was voted one of the Top 40 entrepreneurs under the age of 40 and is the author of Get the Right Job.
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