NEXT WORKSHOP | PREVIOUS WORKSHOP | TABLE OF CONTENTS

As you can see, by identifying and marketing skills and experience that matched the job Fran wanted, she was able to significantly elevate her image and the salary level she was qualified for. Being able to land interviews for positions at higher salary levels is like getting a raise without the wait. Starting positions at higher salary levels also accelerates your career growth since each of your subsequent promotions or positions will usually be calculated on the new salary versus the lower salary you would generate with a weak resume! Here are two more testimonials that speak of the effectiveness of my Proven Resumes materials to build job seeker confidence as well as land more interviews and higher salary offers:

This book really motivates job seekers. One of the job seekers in my class piped up and said, "I bought the book two weeks ago and have already read it. It is wonderful. I was feeling bummed out, couldn't find a job and felt like I didn't have any skills. Then I started reading this book and couldn't put it down." It's getting started that's so hard for job seekers but this book makes it easy. The questions and examples really help people pull out and identify their best skills and this builds confidence and motivation...plus it lands jobs! Gina Meyers, Counselor / Instructor

As with any testimonial please keep in mind that your particular results will vary!

Using Regina's book, a job seeker wrote her resumes to match the descriptions of 3 job announcements. She sent out 3 resumes, each of which led to an interview. All 3 employers extended job offers and she was able to choose the one that was best for her. A 100% success rate!" Nancy Kolosseus, Career Center Consultant

As Fran's story and these testimonials illustrate, our careers and work life have a powerful impact upon our lives. If we feel we don't have skills, or the skills employers want, it has a dramatic affect on our self-esteem, motivation to change jobs and even write a resume. If we've come from an environment at home or at work where we've been treated with little respect or under-valued all of these feelings can surface as we begin to write a powerful resume ... and particularly when we begin the work of elevating our image (even if everything we put in the new resume is 100% truthful).

If our new elevated image doesn't match the current image we have of ourselves there is a very strong tendency to weaken our resumes in order to make them feel acceptable and comfortable to us. This process happened with Fran. In the class of about 20 people that she had attended, we critiqued her resume and developed the new skill headings for it as shown on the last graph above. I was quite surprised when Fran brought back her resume after completing it at home.

She had replaced the headings of Customer Service Representative" and "Marketing & Administrative Management" with the weaker headings of "Customer Service" and "Marketing & Administrative Skills."
What salary range do you think Fran looks qualified for using "Customer Service" and "Marketing & Administrative Skills?" What salary range does she look qualified for using "Customer Service Representative" and "Marketing & Administrative Management?"

The people in the class who had spent 15 minutes learning about Fran's work history felt that the first set of headings presented her in the $20,000 to $24,000 range and the second set presented her in the $33,000 range (which was her goal).

It wasn't until Fran saw that her feelings were leading to her create a weak resume -- and how much it impacted her salary level -- that she became willing to override her feelings and use the stronger headings. Fran's story illustrates that our feelings and our self-image control to a very large degree what we are willing to say about our skills and abilities in a resume.

Being attuned to this, my books integrate top marketing and advertising strategies with the psychological issues of self-esteem and confidence building! My materials focus on building confidence by sharing lots and lots of examples like Fran's while teaching readers how to create top notch resumes. Here's what another instructor who uses my book on a regular basis with her class has to say about resumes and self-confidence building:

This is the only resume book I've found that addresses self-confidence issues and that's critical to achieving maximum job search success. I've used Regina's strategies with hundreds of job seekers and learning how to control your image really does increase your confidence, land more interviews and results in higher salary offers.  Angela Picardo, Job Search Instructor

In addition to all the success stories in my Increase Salaries booklets, I've packed them with tools to help job seekers identify their skills (such as 2,000 skills, keywords, and sample resume statements for 40 career fields along with 12 Questions (which have about 60 sub questions) to help job seekers identify and describe their top skills. As job seekers work through these tools and worksheets they begin to see how many skills they really do have ... and this increases their confidence substantially. As they move through this process their image of their own skills and abilities expands and their feelings then lead them to create much more powerful resumes.

Since we've focused on skill based resumes so far, it's usually at this point that people begin asking, "But what about chronological resumes? Do you recommend them?" Yes! For many job seekers a chronological resume is the very best choice for them. However, many job seekers using chronological resumes also need to expand and diversify their titles. They may want to provide a chronological listing of their jobs but if they have a weak title in one particular job - they may need to strengthen it or replace it with a skill heading. The fourth chapter of my 148 page Increase Salaries booklet provides extensive, detailed worksheets that walk job seekers through the process of creating either a skill based resume or a chronological resume. They both provide excellent worksheets to analyze your job titles and determine if a particular title or skill heading will work best for marketing each job you've held.

Getting more intrigued with the prospect of buying my materials? If so, click the titles below for complete descriptions of each product!

Now that we've talked about two of the most critical issues: elevating your image and building your confidence ... let's move on to the next workshop which discusses the importance of resume design and content!