So, you’ve blasted out your resume to dozens of jobs on the mega job boards, but you haven’t landed a single response! Your bills are piling up and your dissatisfaction with your current job has you wanting to bang your head on your desk. You are tired and frustrated that your job search is going nowhere fast. What on earth is the problem?

1. Well, here are some possibilities:
2. Your resume looks like everyone else’s resume applying for the same job.
3. You don’t know how to promote yourself and feel bashful writing and talking about your accomplishments.
4. You have no idea what your areas of subject matter expertise are, nor do you have any clear idea of what your target job is.
5. You are boring on paper.
6. You do not know how to identify and communicate your competitive edge in the job marketplace.​

Bingo! One through five are all possibilities, but you hit the nail on the head with number five! Without knowing who you are, what YOU have to offer, and how you surpass other applicants is the recipe for failure on your job search campaign. So, how to you avoid failure? Research, contemplate, identify, and promote your competitive edge and what makes you shine above thousands of other applicants!

Only 20% of applicants land an interview. Here at Elevated Resumes, we want to be sure you make the cut!

Our powerhouse writers know to not just write about responsibilities, but to focus more on your quantifiable achievements. We love to highlight your home runs in revenue growth, cost savings, operational efficiencies, client satisfaction, and other value-added contributions.

The truth is, hiring managers are looking for superstars who have a strong record of catalyzing territory growth, market expansion, and record-breaking revenues.

So, let’s explore the process of how to find your competitive edge:

1. Sit down and take an in-depth inventory of your most awesome career achievements.
2. If you have them handy, quantify your accomplishments with dollar figures or percentages.
3. Where do you have vast experience and/or encyclopedic knowledge? That will lead to finding out your superpower, or what resume writers call your subject matter expertise!
4. Write down recurring themes that show up throughout your career. Are you consistently enabling operations to be seamless and efficient? Do you identify areas of deficiency and introduce process improvements? Are you recruited to steer start-ups to significant growth? Are you asked to design and deliver training curricula that improves the performance of employees? Do you always get a ton of promotions?

Now, do you have a better idea of what you are all about and the areas where you have been a rockstar?

Or not yet? How about this: here are some examples of competitive edge statements:

1. As a brand champion and award-winning leader in pharmaceutical sales, I crush competition and achieve million-dollar revenue growth, often up to 210% of quota. With a consultative approach and hunter-like mentality, I always land a top 10 ranking. I am confident that my strong record of elevating annual revenue will ensure rapid growth of your enterprise.
2. As a respected CTO, I excel in enhancing usability and increasing productivity with my expertise in ERP systems on Lawson financials. Offering a proven record of business process re-engineering, I am strong in directing mission-critical initiatives with strategic vision to ensure bottom line success.
3. As a Registered Nurse, I’ve worked in many areas, including medical/surgical, cardiology, and telemetry. I’m proud of boosting hospital ratings due to my compassionate approach, knowledge of evidence-based medicine, and ensuring an outstanding patient experiences. I also step out of the norm and suggest process improvements to make our department run more efficiently.

Why should you care about all of this? Take it from us, as career campaign specialists, you’ve got to do this. Your competitive edge is your secret weapon and vital to job search success! 
Your competitive edge also proves vital to getting your resume noticed by hiring managers out of thousands of other applicants. One resume client jokingly said, “I want my resume to jump up off the hiring manager’s desk and slap him on the face!!” Hell yes! And in doing so, you want to give them the motivation to sit down and actually read your resume.

Where else does your competitive edge prove vital? Job interviews, of course!!
Your competitive edge gives you the perfect response to when a hiring manager pushes her glasses down on her nose, gives you a penetrating stare, and asks, “Why should we hire you?”
The best possible answer in this scenario is to tell them all about your unique value, and don’t be afraid to toot your own horn!

As an innovative resume writing and design company, we encourage you to visit our Get Started page to discover how we can catapult you into great success with your job search!
​
For many of our clients, including c-level executives, finding and articulating their competitive edge is a huge challenge, especially when you career background has been very diverse. If you need strategic counseling on the task, we highly recommend scheduling career coaching sessions with one of our in-house career coaches.​​

In 2015, 95% of recruiters used LinkedIn to actively search for candidates, not just post jobs[ii].  LinkedIn has gone from a resource a professional should be using, to a requirement. Simply put, whether you are looking for a job or not, get your LinkedIn game on!
​
Hopefully we have sold you on the importance of LinkedIn, so let’s focus on another important platform. Twitter. 15 jobs are posted on Twitter every minute[i]. We’ll let you do the math.
 
Twitter can be intimidating if you’ve never used it before. I’ve been asked – “How can following my neighbors on Twitter to see what they do all day help in a job search?” Well, it can’t. But following companies that you may want to work for can. Twitter also allows you to engage with companies that you are interested in and keep abreast of their latest news and innovations.
 
Everyone has been given the advice to do research on a company to catch their attention in a cover letter or to bring up specifics in an interview. While many people take to a company’s website to read the “About” page, the better approach is to go to their Twitter feed. You will get the latest information about the company, what they are talking about and who they are engaging with. Having this social connection going into an interview not only provides topics of conversation but can also give you a boost of confidence and reassurance.
 
Twitter is a great place to gather information and make important connections, however, if you do not have a LinkedIn presence, you may never get the interview in the first place. LinkedIn can be frustrating when trying to figure out an effective strategy for taking an active approach to your job search and connect with the right people.
 
Don’t worry, the team at Elevated Resumes has your back. We can help setup your LinkedIn profile and develop content that will attract the right audience. We can also help you define a strategy to pursue an active job search and navigate through the organized chaos.
 
Happy tweeting, posting, connecting and job searching!
[i] http://www.socialtalent.co/blog/how-recruiters-and-job-seekers-use-social-media-in-2015
[ii] http://www.socialtalent.co/blog/how-recruiters-and-job-seekers-use-social-media-in-2015
[iii] http://expandedramblings.com/index.php/twitter-stats-for-businesses/3/
 

 Here are a few quick tips to spicing up your cover letter content and ensuring the reader’s attention is captured the whole way through: 
 
1.   Start with a clever attention grabbing opening line. 
You can describe your passion, your love of the company or a skill that could set you apart from the rest of the candidates. For example, an event planning professional could start with saying “I have always been known for being the “hostess with the mostest,” so I decided to take my natural skill for throwing an over the top party and make it a career. Now, with over 5 years of experience planning corporate functions, I’m ready to take my career to the next level and would love to do so as the Lead Event Manager with [Company Name].”
 
2.   Keep their attention with quantifiable achievements. 
The reader now knows about your passion, so now it is time to tell them how you have successfully put that passion to good use. For example, the event planner could highlight that they planned a weekend long retreat with over 2,500 guests in attendance.  Numbers grab the reader’s eye. The more a candidate can quantify, the better!
 
3.   End with a closing remark that shows knowledge of the company and how you can help meet their goals. 
Now that they know you, it is time to show that you know what they are looking for and that you can make it happen. To keep with the event planning example, the candidate could close with a remark such as “I know that you are looking to manage and create the most memorable, creative and unique events in the industry and I am prepared to take this goal and make it a reality.”
 
Keep in mind that the purpose of a complete job application is to make it as simple as possible for a recruiter to realize that the candidate is qualified and will be an asset to the company. A cover letter should provide concrete evidence that you have the experience to meet the qualifications laid out in the job description, which is why it is important to individualize each cover letter instead of using a “one size fits all” approach. 
 
The professional cover letter writers and designers at Elevated Resumes can assist in creating amazing designs and compelling content that can be utilized for the industry that you are interested in but can also be easily updated for each position. They will also provide guidance on how to identify the key skills to pull out of each job description and how to incorporate those into the template provided. This will allow you to gain a whole new skill set when applying to jobs and will ultimately make you stand out as a qualified and prepared candidate. 
 
Submitting one complete, cohesively designed package will show that you are committed to taking the next step in your career while also showing off your individual style! ​

The only rule of resume writing – there are no rules!
 
It wasn’t too long ago that the rules for writing resumes were extensive and strict. 12 point, times new roman font with 1.5-inch margins was a job seeker’s only choice. Recruiters would get flooded with resumes that looked exactly the same – the only difference being the name and the content itself. With all of the repetitiveness, it was nearly impossible to stand out. It almost came down to luck of the draw to see if your resume was read or not.
 
Luckily, times have changed but surprisingly enough, many job seekers have not. I have seen job seekers sticking to these outdated rules that no longer put them on the same level as the other candidates, but actually put them at a disadvantage. Recruiters have no desire to sift through hundreds of resumes that all look identical – and they don’t have to!
 
With online applications and word searching software, it is not good enough to be the same as everyone else. Job seekers must find ways to make themselves stand out from the crowd to get noticed. It seems impossible but it may be easier than you think…
 
The first thing you will need to do is ensure that your content matches the search criteria in order to get through the initial electronic key word searching software. Then, you need a layout that is visually appealing and easy to read but also makes a statement. If your resume looks different than anything the recruiter has ever seen (in a positive way), I can almost guarantee that yours will be printed and shown around the office. What could be better than making an impression like that before even getting an interview?

Even though many of the resume rules are outdated, there is one that is tried and true and generally still applies to the modern resume - that is the one page maximum rule. Unless you have been in the field for over 10 years and have very extensive experience, one page is still the standard resume length. If you have a long work history, two pages can be used to fit all of your experience on the resume. For this instance, you would want to include a professional summary to ensure that the qualifications that you wish to highlight are located on the first page and are seen by the recruiter.
 
The average recruiter spends 6.25 seconds reviewing a resume before deciding if the candidate is a good fit or not. This is why it is so important to try to keep a resume to one page. If a large bulk of information is on a second page, it will most likely never be seen. The best part about a service such as Elevated Resumes is that we can take a two-page, 1.5-inch margin document and turn it into a sleek and well-designed one-page resume. With the content development service, we can also ensure that the most important information is front and center to get you noticed.
 
Knowing that 6.25 seconds is not enough time to read a whole resume, how can you make a recruiter spend more time reviewing your experience?
 
Catch their attention immediately and hold onto it – the only way this can be done in such a short period of time is through a creative and visually appealing design. Including a professional picture in the header of your resume is another great way to catch the attention of the recruiter. This may make them more interested in reading about your experience since you are connecting with them right away by giving your resume a personal feel.  This also creates a consistent brand image with your other professional profiles such as LinkedIn, an online portfolio, social media, etc.
 
Submitting resumes can be exhausting – make it a little more fun by getting creative and designing a resume that reflects your personality along with your qualifications.  Recruiters will also thank you for giving them a bit of relief after looking at black and white cookie-cutter resumes all day.
 
If you want to learn more about Elevated Resumes and how we can create a unique design that reflects your experience and career goals, please visit our website at ElevatedResumes.com or email Allison@elevatedresumes.com.