Article 1: Landing your dream job with my secret ingredient

You worked hours on your resume, perfecting it so that you can send it to ten companies for ten roles that sound kind of cool.  These ten jobs may not be exactly what you are looking for, but they have to be better than what you have now, right?

This newly updated resume is the one that will find your dream job, you convincingly tell yourself, one where you will fit into the culture and are challenged in a way that doesn’t consume you.  Nothing at all like your current or last job. You want more. You want better! 

You hit send ten times, and your resume is immediately scattered across cyber-space.  You don’t personalize your resume with a cover letter as this perfect resume says it all.  And your LinkedIn profile is just fine. No updates needed there. You feel great!  You get up from your computer and go for a run or grab lunch with a friend. Now all you have to do is wait for a response.  

Two weeks pass. Five weeks. Nothing. You update your resume again and send it out to ten new companies.  This time your resume will have recruiters calling you, frantic to hire you. You just feel it.

You run, You eat. You wait.  Still nothing.  You become despondent. You begin to question your ability to find a new job. A better job.  After all, no one is responding to your perfect resume, right?  It must be your lack of experience or your education. Or your age. It can’t be the resume. You perfected it.  You must not be good enough.  You stop sending out resumes and accept life’s hard knocks – this must be as good as it gets. It is just too hard to land that dream job. 

Being in the dumps about the ability to find a new job, a better job, a different job, is a hard place to pull out of.  But I’m here to help you.  I have a methodology with a secret ingredient that will help you land your dream job.

But it takes a new way of looking at job hunting.  In addition to creating a totally new resume, you’ll have to keep your LinkedIn profile updated and fresh. And no more sending out resumes without cover letters!  Resumes do not tell your whole story.  There, I’ve just shared my secret ingredient with you: Stories. Sounds too simple, doesn’t it?  It is, and it isn’t. 

This series of articles will walk you through my program of using stories to craft your resume, cover letters, LinkedIn Profile, and interview responses.

Stay with me as I share more about Effective storytelling to land your dream job in my new blog series.