Personal branding often missed by job seekers

Dear Sam:

I am an educator, motivator and public speaker. I have two undergraduate degrees, a bachelor’s and associate’s in business administration, and 15-plus years of work experience. I am also highly involved with my community. In brief, I love what I do. I’m diligently seeking a position that will not interfere with my teaching schedule. My heart is burdened because I have tried so hard and nothing seems to be working. Any suggestions on my resume?

Dear T.:

Thank you for emailing me your resume so I could assess opportunities for improvement. There are a number of areas you can improve upon; let me touch on a few.

Packaging

Your format lacks engagement, there is too little white space and the margins are far too small. As you are presenting 10-plus years of experience, and as your resume is spilling onto page two anyway, do not be afraid to spread out information and add white space for ease of readability.

While content is the most important part of the development of your resume, you must pay attention to the format in order to immediately engage the reader.

Positioning

There is no transparency to what you want to do or how you are positioning yourself. You must position yourself

Promotion

Your Professional Experience section lacks value based on limited content and no presentation or differentiation of responsibilities versus achievements. While self-promotion does not come easily to most, you must figure out how to showcase your candidacy through exploration of the context of your roles and the impact of your contributions.

When promoting your responsibilities and achievements, place your information in the appropriate manner. Your responsibilities would be presented in a paragraph format. Your achievements would then be presented in bullet points following that paragraph. By doing this you ensure focus is placed on where you added value to your past employers, as rarely will readers choose to review a paragraph of information over more succinct bullet points.

I recommend you check out samples on my website, other vetted websites or in recently written resume writing books for ideas of how to structure and format your resume.

Remember, your lack of success is not a reflection of your abilities, but rather a reflection of the strength of how you are communicating those experiences and abilities on paper. Revamp your resume and renew your search and

I am confident you will find something great. Samantha Nolan is a certified professional resume writer and owner of Ladybug Design, a fullservice resume-writing firm. Have a question for Sam? She can be reached at dearsam@ladybug-design.com or 614-570-3442. Find out more at ladybug-design.com.