A new job in 30 days? Here’s one way to do it
A lot of people I’ve met over the years have looked at job posting descriptions, requirements, and desired attributes and said confidently, “Yeah, that’s me. I fit the bill on all (or almost all) of the list.”
And to that I say, “Yes, you and a few dozen of your best friends, enemies, co-workers and complete strangers.”
Are you really a good fit for the position, though? How would you truly know for sure?
Well, you’re a manager, executive, or professional … chances are, you have to evaluate the performance of members of your team, people who report to you, however you care to describe the people you supervise.
And it’s likely you have a manager or executive above you who reviews your performance, right?
I’ve seen, completed, and been subject to corporate performance review documents before, and I can’t say I ever gleaned a lot of useful information from them – and certainly nothing I could’ve used to update my own resume or do anything with in relation to a job search.
The idea of doing your own personal evaluation is just part of the process detailed in Susan Britton Whitcomb’s new book, 30-Day Job Promotion: Build a Powerful Promotion Plan in a Month. And honestly, phrasing it as “doing a personal evaluation” doesn’t begin to do the book justice in terms of what it can help you understand about yourself, your contribution to your company, and how to move to the next level of success.
(By the way, while the main focus of the book is landing a promotion internally, the lessons it contains can easily be applied to a job search outside your current company.)
Susan gave me the chance to peek inside the first half of the book, and if I had to summarize my reaction in one word, that’d be “robust.” It’s as much a workbook as anything, and I’m astounded by the amount of valuable information she’s managed to pack in here, without also overwhelming at the same time. No mean feat.
The truth is, I could blog about this book twice a week for the rest of the year without breaking a sweat, considering the range of topics covered in the first six chapters alone. Instead, I’ll highly recommend you skip the middleman and pick up a copy for yourself.
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Stay away from The Ladders (theladders.com) resume service:
as I too have been scammed by the resume service on the Ladders. It all starts with a resume critique — which will look impressive, until you realize that 95% is the same thing that everyone else receives… see this link (http://www.manager-tools.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=23534) for a reprint of the 95% duplication.
You’ll then receive a worksheet to provide the resume writers with material. This worksheet is so bush-league, words can not do justice to how amateur and unprofessional this process is:
1. The resume critique will rip you to shreds (which is okay) — they’ll pepper the critique and future correspondence with smileys so not to hurt anyone’s feelings.
2. The worksheet they send will say “Please email your old resume with your completed worksheet.” Huh, don’t you already have it? How did you do the critique then?
3. The worksheet will also say, “so I have everything from you in one email”. Huh? You cannot attach multiple documents from the Ladders website. Clients cannot send everything in one email!
4. The worksheet might as well have been developed in crayon. There is such a mix of font sizes, styles, highlighting, tabs, and paragraph marks that it makes me car sick just trying to work with it. One would think that for $600+ that this orgnaization could put together a form with data entry fields and a consistent flow of text.
5. After you send the worksheet in, they will send you follow-up questions. They make it seem like the questions are custom tailored to your worksheet responses. They’re not… the follow up questions are the same questions they send to all their clients.
When you receive your resume, you’ll find that you wrote it. Yep… about 95% of the text on your $600+ resume is taken directly from: your old resume (which mind you was ripped to shreds during the resume critique), your worksheet, and your responses to the phony “follow-up” questions.
Marc Cenedella has quite a racket going… dupe people on a job search into spending over $600 for the privilege re-writing their OWN resume. To be fair, the website appears to be honest and provide a valuable service — but the resume writing aspect of The Ladders is nothing but a SCAM!!!