Personal Branding

The Hidden Benefits of Hiring an Executive Resume Writer

An executive resume writer is a major asset to execs searching for a new career, providing clear benefits throughout their job search. A certified master resume writer (CMRW) knows how to tweak your personal brand to land you an interview, whether that means nixing buzzwords to make your resume more dynamic or choosing appropriate verbiage to transform an unorthodox career history into an asset instead of a liability. But there are other, less obvious benefits to hiring a professional writer to update your executive resume.

3 Hidden Benefits of Hiring an Executive Resume Writer

Define your career trajectory. Many professionals realize that they’re unsatisfied at work, but have no clear path to finding career fulfillment. Our resume writers ask thought-provoking questions to help shape your professional documents and define your ideal career path — a crucial step in attaining your professional goals.
Determine your core messaging. Just as big brands have to determine the most marketable aspect of their products or services, an executive must determine their most marketable quality to promote their personal brand. Honing in on your marketable skills with a professional executive resume writer will help you identify the core messaging that will win you networking opportunities, job interviews and, eventually, a new job.
Practice for interviews. Resume writing services include consultations and informational interviews which function like job interviews. Prior to your consultation, you should dig up qualitative data about past initiatives, including specific metrics to highlight your successes. Discussing the facts of your career wins with us, we’ll help you better articulate them in actual interviews.

Learn what a CMRW can do for your resume. Contact Executive Resumes Atlanta for a free consultation.

Colleen Reyerson

How Busy Execs Can Engage on LinkedIn

A well-rounded LinkedIn account is crucial to personal branding in the digital age. But it’s not all about getting recommendations and preventing your boss from catching wind of your job search. LinkedIn has outpaced its original purpose of “online networking tool”, helping execs put their best foot forward before first contact even occurs. Not only does an active account make you an attractive prospect to executive recruiters, it helps you be found; the more you refine your brand on LinkedIn, the happier their algorithms will be, and they’ll show their appreciation by putting more eyes on your professional profile.

3 Ways to Advance Your Brand on LinkedIn

Be present. You can’t succeed if you don’t show up. If you’re not active online, recruiters will question your commitment to your career. Elevating your personal brand on LinkedIn can be as simple as sharing an interesting article—with a quick commentary to highlight your proficiencies and encourage engagement—or as advanced as writing regular blogs on topical issues in your field. Just don’t forget about LinkedIn’s roots! Network within your industry by engaging with posts made by other execs.
Be dependable. Every executive can empathize with a busy schedule, but long periods of inactivity on LinkedIn followed by bursts of updates are a sure way to undermine your credibility. Sporadic posting makes potential job candidates seem flaky and unfocused or, at the very least, desperate for a career change. If you find yourself relegating LinkedIn updates to the backburner, add it to your weekly calendar. Consistency is key, and as few as fifteen minutes a week can show recruiters that you’re serious about your professional brand — and your career.
Be real. Not every post needs to be a scholarly essay tailored to turn heads and influence recruiters. One of the most impactful ways to engage with followers on LinkedIn is to drop the professional facade. Talk about what matters to you, even if it’s not work-related. Many of the most successful execs on LinkedIn have made a name for themselves by giving followers a glimpse behind the curtain, proving themselves to be highly motivated in every aspect of their lives.

LinkedIn has transformed the world of professional advancement forever. Is a lackluster profile hindering your executive job search? Call Colleen at Executive Resumes Atlanta for a complimentary assessment of your LinkedIn profile.

Colleen Reyerson

5 Ways to Become a More Likable Leader

Leaders often face the challenge of choosing between success and likeability. Unfortunately, choosing corporate effectiveness over office culture can cause a dip in motivation for your subordinates. Learn to increase your likeability without sacrificing the leadership qualities that earned you the job by improving your emotional intelligence.

5 Ways to Connect with Subordinates

Make connections. This isn’t simply an effective networking tip, but also a way to develop kinship with your team. By sacrificing an hour of your time at the next corporate event or team meeting, you’re presenting yourself as a human being who cares about the day-to-day of each employee, regardless of position or tenure.
Stay steady. Want to build confidence with your employees? Practice steadiness during times of trouble. Whether you’re reacting to a workplace dispute or a quarterly failure, people respect leaders who can keep their head in a crisis.
Invest in individuals. If an executive were to spend time encouraging every employee in the company, their own career would fail in no time flat. However, engaging with individual employees proves that a leader has a heart for the company and a team-player mentality. Invest in one or two promising leaders and ask each member of your team to do the same. Over time it will trickle down to entry-level employees as well as aspiring leaders.
Practice integrity. Nothing undermines subordinates’ confidence in their leader faster than getting caught in a gray area. Demonstrate integrity in all aspects of business, whether that means taking responsibility for a failure, treating each team member equally, or praising another leader for proactive thinking.
Keep it in perspective. Likeability helps leaders achieve greater success, but focusing too much on subordinates’ opinions will undermine executive effectiveness. Focus instead on building strong character and good work ethics. The rest will follow.

For assistance building your executive career, contact Colleen at Executive Resumes Atlanta.

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Colleen Reyerson

Overlooked Aspects of the Executive Job Search

Executives are well-versed in the world of tracking progress. They spend their careers measuring successes, marking failures, and determining how to improve upon mediocrity. So it comes as no surprise that many executives overlook their less quantifiable successes when writing resumes, networking, and preparing for interviews. If your “best of the best” professional persona isn’t cutting it in the job market, try these often-forgotten tips to help you reach new levels of career success.

Stick to Your Area of Expertise

The longer the job search continues, the easier it is to get discouraged. Many executives fall into the trap of broadening their horizons until they’re no longer visible. Although most executives are adaptable, snatching up a job you’re dispassionate about simply because it’s available never pays off. Think carefully about how to expand into a new industry without abandoning the skills and qualifications you’ve earned over the years. If you’re breaking into a new field, extrapolate past experiences to show how your history has made you a viable candidate for a new industry.

Be Specific in Your Job Search

Do most of your networking queries go unanswered? Is your resume failing to impress? Is your LinkedIn account filled with “viewed your profile” alerts with no follow-up connection requests?

Specificity may be your issue. Too many executives generalize their work experience, professional skills, and future goals in the hopes of impressing a broader audience. More often than not, unspecific job searches simply make executives seem inexperienced or unreliable. Craft your LinkedIn profile, resume, and query emails specifically for a single industry or opportunity. When emailing a new contact, always specify the goal of your correspondence, how they can help, and what you can offer in return.

Hire a Professional Resume Writer

If your executive resume lacks the panache to impress hiring directors at your desired firm, it may be time to call in the professionals. Executive Resumes Atlanta has over 15 years of experiencing crafting resumes for C-suite professionals in the Atlanta area. Our professional writers have vision, clarity, and in-depth knowledge of the current job market, allowing them to unfold each professional history in a way that’s crisp, compelling, and wholly unique.

For help writing a professional executive resume or LinkedIn profile, contact Colleen at Executive Resumes Atlanta.

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Colleen Reyerson

How to Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile

In today’s digitally-driven job market, creating a strong LinkedIn profile is secondary only to presenting a well-rounded executive resume. Unfortunately, many executives lack the experience or expertise to create an impactful profile without stealing lines from their resumes. Cloning your resume on LinkedIn gives recruiters a redundant (and often lackluster) perspective on your executive experience. Although they may seem similar at first glance, LinkedIn and professional resumes have distinct purposes in the executive job search. To fully utilize each job search document, executive resumes and LinkedIn profiles should differ in several key ways.

Why Not to Clone a Resume on LinkedIn

Sharing the same content on LinkedIn and your executive resume is redundant.
Any tangible job leads will invariably result in sharing your resume. A LinkedIn profile teases the full scope of your executive experience, encouraging recruiters to contact you for the full narrative. If you’ve cloned your resume on LinkedIn, you lose an opportunity to share additional information.
LinkedIn and resumes serve different functions. While LinkedIn profiles do display executive history, skills, and recommendations, it is primarily a networking tool.

How LinkedIn Profiles and Executive Resumes Should Differ

Create a distinctive personal brand by playing to the strengths of each job search tool.

Resumes should have a highly professional tone and focus. LinkedIn profiles shift into the networking sphere, allowing professionals to show more of their personalities when discussing career narratives.
While a resume tells a complete professional story, a LinkedIn profile should be crisp and concise, with an additional focus on keywords pertinent to the specific job search.
Executives should filter proprietary information out of their LinkedIn profiles, which are public to any professional.

For assistance creating an impactful executive profile on LinkedIn, contact Executive Resumes Atlanta.

Colleen Reyerson

Craft an Expert Holiday Sales Pitch

The holiday season offers myriad chances to extend your professional network and mine new career opportunities. Every December executives are inundated with invitations to work parties, social functions, and a number of other superlative networking opportunities. Whether your job search is active during the holiday season or temporarily on hold, take advantage of your holiday social circle by developing a strong elevator pitch for this year’s holiday functions.

Why Form an Elevator Pitch?

Self-promotion is a challenge in the best of times, but at a holiday party you must not only overcome personal hangups, but also contend with a crowded room, tenuous introductions, and a shortage of time. Having a well-crafted elevator pitch can help you make an impression instead of leaving you fumbling by the snack table during networking opportunities like holiday office parties. A concise, informative elevator sales pitch allows executives to introduce themselves to visiting CEOs, leadership teams within their current companies, and experts in industries that may sound appealing as future career paths. The more you polish your self-promotion sales pitch, the better you can build a professional network when you find yourself in a situation with an unexpected opportunity for developing your career.

How to Craft the Perfect Self-Pitch

A good elevator sales pitch is concise, informative, and well-branded. Remember these rules of a good self-promotion elevator pitch:

Keep the pitch between 60 seconds and 3 minutes, with room for expansion or abbreviation based on your audience
Share your goal (e.g. gaining new knowledge, expanding your network, broadening your industry education)
Identify how you can provide value to your new business contact
Use specific, actionable words
Utilize your personal brand, sharing your story in creative ways
Wrap up with a clear call to action
Follow up several days after the initial pitch with a quick phone call, email, or holiday greeting card

Do you need help transforming your executive story into a concise, actionable sales pitch? Call Executive Resumes Atlanta for help honing your personal brand.

Colleen Reyerson

3 Tips to Maximize LinkedIn Marketing

Most business professionals are familiar with LinkedIn’s online networking system, but few know just how many career opportunities bypass them daily. Executives are inundated with personal branding and social media marketing information. In the wake of so much information, it’s advantageous to take a step back and remember the basics of LinkedIn marketing.

How to Successfully Navigate LinkedIn

Mine recommendations, not endorsements. “Endorsement” is the buzzword in the LinkedIn personal marketing sphere, but as with any networking tactic, the more personal option makes a better professional impression. Accept endorsements from respected colleagues for your top executive skills, but don’t ask for endorsements. Instead ask a few superlative members of your executive team to write a recommendation. Recommendations are more personal, more compelling, and better display your executive skills.
Timing is everything. The key to LinkedIn success is to stay active, even if you’re not actively searching for a new career. Follow revolutionary leaders in your industry, update your profile to reflect new challenges and skill sets, and refrain from asking for multiple recommendations and endorsements at once. LinkedIn timestamps their data, making it obvious to recruiters (and your current employer) when you’re scrambling to update your LinkedIn profile in the hopes of landing a new job.
Give and take. Networking is not solely about seeking opportunities, but about forming mutually beneficial business relationships. If a business associate endorses one of your top skills, peruse their profile for a skill you can substantiate. When you write a professional recommendation on LinkedIn, ask your connection to return the favor. Be specific about which professional successes, leadership situations, and executive skills you’d like them to praise. But remember to choose your connections wisely. Endorsing the merits of a coworker is not simply a reflection of them, but of you as well.

Executive Resumes Atlanta is an Atlanta-based executive-level career marketing service. Call Colleen for more information about how a professionally written LinkedIn profile can help maximize your career success.

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Colleen Reyerson

3 Ways to Develop Your Personal Brand

Many executives lack the time, the skills, or the patience to develop a compelling and concise personal brand. Here are 3 guidelines for personal branding success from the high level career builders at Executive Resumes Atlanta.

Develop authenticity. In unskilled hands, executive self-promotion can come across as shortsighted braggadocio or a carefully crafted falsehood. The advent of social media has created a world of transparency in personal branding and online communication. Business executives should take care not to overshare in their online profiles, but authenticity is key to any personal branding effort. Develop a clear, focused brand that’s easily recognizable, both to those who know you in the real world and to contacts who only know you virtually.
Strategize. Developing a strong personal marketing brand requires time, forethought, and skill in executive promotion. Users who regularly update their LinkedIn profiles, monitor their networks for industry developments, and interact with online associates increase their likelihood of career advancement. Identify your personal marketing goals and map a plan for effectively establishing your brand within your target audience. If you don’t have the time or skills to effectively develop your personal marketing strategy, hire a professional career marketer to optimize your online presence.
Move beyond social media. Networking sites like LinkedIn and Facebook can have a significant impact on a professional’s career prospects, but social media isn’t the only way to achieve executive success. Businesspeople who successfully expand their professional networks use a combination of real world and virtual marketing techniques. In addition to creating an active, enticing LinkedIn profile, executives should attend local networking events, create an impactful resume, and build strong working relationships with their peers.

The executive career marketers at Executive Resumes Atlanta have the skills and experience necessary to create an impactful personal brand, both virtually and in the real world. Contact our professional resume writers to strategize your career objectives, optimize your personal branding efforts, and advance your career.

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Colleen Reyerson

Find a New Career without Getting Fired

No one envies the frustrating and often disheartening task of making job hunting your career, but finding new opportunities when you’re already employed comes with its own set of complications. Whether you’re stuck in a job you hate or you’re simply suffering career ennui, it’s challenging to find a new job without burning bridges. Find a fulfilling executive career without losing your current one by rethinking the way you network.

Change Your Approach to Networking

Building a network of likeminded professionals is indispensable in landing a new executive position. Unfortunately, it also alerts others to your intentions. Instead of attending networking events and hoping your employers don’t find out, approach professional gatherings as learning experiences. Volunteer at industry events instead of attending as a guest, and attend educational conferences instead of networking dinners. Not only will you build a strong executive network without tipping off your employers, you may also learn applicable skills for your future career. If you discuss a potential new position while attending an executive networking function, ask your prospective employer to keep your job search confidential.

Manage Your Online Updates

The most common mistake job seekers make is failing to manage their online presence. Effective personal branding can help executives reach new career opportunities, but it can also cause trouble at work. To make the most of new job opportunities without losing your current career, make sure you’re correctly managing your online personal marketing.

Stay active on LinkedIn. Personal branding experts recommend using LinkedIn frequently, even if you’re not looking for a job. Not only does this approach mask your search when you do want a new career, it helps executives build solid professional networks before they need to utilize them.

Manage your privacy settings. The quickest way executives reveal their job searches to employers is easily avoidable. Refrain from mentioning your job dissatisfaction on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. LinkedIn is a powerful executive networking tool, but mismanaging your settings could tip off connections at your current company. Make sure your contacts don’t get updates every time you make a new connection, search for a career opportunity, or revamp your LinkedIn profile. By managing your privacy settings on LinkedIn, you can protect yourself from inadvertently revealing your intentions to your boss. As an added bonus, you won’t inundate new connections with notifications each time you reword your executive successes.

Executive Resumes Atlanta has the tools and experience to manage every aspect of your career search. Call our professional personal branding service to write your executive resume, manage your LinkedIn profile, and help you cultivate career opportunities.

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Colleen Reyerson

The Art of Executive Self-Promotion

Professionals who have spent any amount of time in executive positions have a long list of tangible contributions they’ve brought to their company. However, many executives—particularly female executives—feel uncomfortable when enumerating their accomplishments. A fixation on past successes can halt the progress on an otherwise promising career, but self-promotion in and of itself has more benefits than drawbacks. To take your executive career to the next level, learn to effectively analyze and promote your leadership skills.

Learning to Self-Promote

Is Your Self-Promotion Effective?

Self-promotion is a valuable skill for networking and career advancement. The difficulty in effective self-promotion is learning how to discuss professional skills and successes without alienating your audience. Successful executive self-promotion involves:

Objectively analyzing your executive skills, measurable successes, relationships with peers and subordinates, and contribution to the forward motion of your company before self-promoting.
Listening for social cues that would make self-promotion appropriate.
Starting with basic, quantifiable facts about your job performance and leadership influence. List your accomplishments frankly, without pride or quantification, to refute potential disputes.
Framing your contributions within the grander narrative of company vision and business success. By incorporating other employees, leadership lessons, and the more humanizing aspects of your success, you can connect with your audience and share meaningful personal contributions without sounding conceited.

The Negative Impact of Unskilled Self-Promotion

Executives shy away from self-promotion because, frankly, so many CEOs do it poorly. Thoughtless self-promotion often comes across as vanity or shortsightedness. When honing your self-promotion skills, take care to avoid these professional pitfalls:

Isolating yourself from your peers by focusing only on your own achievements.
Losing sight of upward expansion by leaning too heavily on past successes.
Creating an artificial vision for the company in the name of self-promotion.
Failing to ascertain when self-promotion is necessary and when it will undermine the culture of teamwork within your corporation.

The professional resume writers at Executive Resumes Atlanta are experts at executive promotion. Call us to develop your executive resume, build your personal brand, and coach you on executive self-promotion.

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