Guerrilla Marking for Job Hunters 2.0 - Jay Conrad Levinson [59]
Because you’re dealing with humans here and humans are unpredictable, you never know what part of your resume will make a hiring manager want to call you. So if you think your hobbies, interests, volunteer work, and so on are relevant and may give you an edge, include them.
Please refer to Appendix 1 for examples of Standard Guerrilla Resumes that won jobs.
In a hurry? Need to send a resume to an employer today? Refer to the resume examples in the downloadable Word file available through www.gm4jh.com. Pick one that appeals to you, customize it with your own information, and voila, you have an “instant” Guerrilla Resume.
➤ The Extreme Guerrilla Resume
Now that you’ve assembled a Standard Guerrilla Resume, you’re ready to take it to a much higher level by creating an Extreme Guerrilla Resume.
Remember! This format is very aggressive. You should send it only to senior executives who can either hire you for an existing job or who can create a new position just for you.
Do NOT send an Extreme Guerrilla Resume to anyone in the human resources (aka “Hiring Resistance”) department or anyone else but a person with the authority to hire you. Why?
Human resources types, administrative assistants, and other “gatekeepers” simply won’t know what to do with this style of resume—it breaks too many rules. While every company “claims” to want to hire bold, courageous leaders (that’s really just the president speaking), rank-and-file staff rarely want to hire people better than themselves.
To recap, your Extreme Guerrilla Resume has all the components of the Standard Guerrilla Resume, plus one or more of the following (the more you include, the more powerful your finished product will be):
1. Proof section (mandatory),
2. Grabber statement at the top (optional), and
3. Career driver section (optional).
Ready? Let’s start with the ...
Proof Section (Mandatory)
This part runs down the left-hand side of your paper, below your name. It should be about 1 inch wide and it will include third-party information to “prove” you are a candidate every sane employer would want for his or her team.
What goes in here? The 2 best things you can include are:
1. Logos of past/current employers or clients. Doing so lets you piggyback on the value of company brand names. It’s called the halo effect and it sets your resume apart.
Essentially, you’re borrowing the credibility associated with that company. The opposite is also true, so be careful how quickly you claim Enron as a customer, for example. You know who the most-respected companies in your industry are, so try to find a valid reason to insert their logo in your resume. You can often download logos from company web sites—that’s the easiest way to do it. Simply save them to your computer and insert them in your resume.
2. Quotes from people familiar with your work. These serve as mini-testimonials and are very powerful. You can get them from past/current managers, clients, suppliers, college professors, newspaper or magazine articles about you—anyone who’s seen you doing what you want to do in your target job. You can also lift quotes from personnel/annual reviews of letters of reference. Obvious warning: don’t ask anyone for a quote whom you don’t want to know about your job search.
GUERRILLA TIP
If you need help setting up your page so that you can include this “proof” section, refer to the Extreme Guerrilla Resume Master Template in the downloadable Word file available at www.gm4jh.com. Open the Master Template and simply paste your quotes and/or logos down the left side of the document.
When it comes to quotes, you must have written versions of any material that you quote from to back up your claims. Never, ever include a quote that you cannot verify in an e-mail, performance review, letter of recommendation,