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My philosophy is that every word on your resume should contribute to the image you would like the potential employer to get.

Unfortunately, many people send resumes that look like compost piles: Monday’s egg shells lie on top of Sunday’s wilted lettuce and Saturday’s coffee grounds and watermelon rinds.

How so? Each time they look for a new job, they find their old resume and stick the new job on top of the old material. There is no thought given about some very important questions like:

Who am I now–as opposed to 5 years ago?
How have I changed?
How have the markets changed?
What do I most want to do now?
Keeping in mind that most employers don’t want to hire me (true for most everyone), what do the employers I am targeting really want?
What experience and accomplishments will best demonstrate to them that I have what they want?

Each time you create a new resume, remember that you are marketing yourself, and you must carefully select what you are telling people about yourself.

When I was in college, I ran across this quote from one of the Gnostic Gospels:

If you bring forth what is within you,
What you bring forth will save you.
If you do not bring forth what is within you,
What you do not bring forth will destroy you.

I was struck by it, but didn’t really understand it.

When I recently ran across the quote again the other day, it instantly made sense. I often see people who spend years, hating their jobs and being out of touch with their talents and passions. As their lives go slowly by, it tears them up inside. Bringing those things out will save them.

Are you finding job networking ineffective, exhausting, frustrating, and even humiliating? We hear that a lot.

 Stan handed out his resume to everyone he knew or met, saying, “Let me know if you hear of anything.”

 Mark had “informational interviews,” and disingenuously told people he wasn’t looking for a job, but just wanted information.

 Although Julie successfully reached influential people who might have hired her, she couldn’t tell them what she wanted to do, and seemed like a lost soul.

 Dana’s friend gave her five people to contact. She made cold calls, saying she was laid off and looking for work. Four of them hung up on her. The other was polite, but not helpful.

Successful networking hinges on conducting effective referral interviews. When done well, they rarely lead to rejection, but can be a rich source of valuable information, advice, and lasting contacts in your field. They can systematically steer you toward the right position, and keep you from wasting time on the wrong path.

Whenever possible, conduct your referral interviews in person. Send a good letter of introduction, then call to set a time to meet.

Setting the table
Be prepared to control the meeting by “setting the table” for the interview:
1) Thank them for their time.
2) Set the agenda. You might say, “I’d like to tell you about myself for a couple minutes (your 2-minute profile—see below), then I have some questions to ask you about…” (their field, company, etc.).
3) Ask, “How much time do we have for our meeting?” to prevent overstaying your welcome or cutting short a productive interview when the contact is willing to spend more time.

Setting the table puts the other person at ease by giving structure to your meeting—and puts you in control.

The 2-minute profile
This is radically different from what most people do in their “elevator speeches.” In this carefully-prepared and rehearsed profile your listener will hear:
1) What you do well
2) A clear concise illustration of you doing your best work; and
3) What you’d like to do next.

What if you don’t know what you want to do next? Referral interviews can help you get clarity on what you want. Still, you must be clear about how you want to contribute and have an idea of your direction. It’s fine to say, “right now I’m exploring corporate meeting planning, sales, and fundraising.” It’s not OK to say, “I’m open to whatever.”

Questions
Then, ask questions to help you move toward your career goal. Questions generally fall into three categories: information, advice, and contacts. The natural flow of the discussion is for the questions to flow in that order. Giving objective information is easiest for your contact. After they have observed you and talked a while, they’ll be better able to give you advice. Assuming that you have presented yourself well, most people will be willing to refer you to others. If you haven’t made a good impression, they won’t. No one wants to send someone who’s confused or inept to talk to colleagues.

After the interview, remember that one goal of referral interviewing is building relationships. Send a thank you note. If it’s all right with the contact, call them to check in every few weeks to let them know your progress and see if any opportunities may have arisen. It takes work to do them right, but clients regularly report that referral interviews have opened up many new possibilities. Best of all, they can actually be enjoyable.

The other day, a woman called with a resume question. She had been working in her field for a number of years, since losing her job two years ago, has been employed as an administrative assistant outside her field. She wondered how to write her resume so that her two years of temping wouldn’t make her look like an undesirable candidate.

The obvious danger here is that the first thing an employer will see is the temporary employment, and will throw her resume in the trash. To avoid that, I recommend that she structure the resume very differently than she had in the past to put her best foot forward. Here’s my advice to her and others in a similar situation.

Begin with your career summary or objective and then your qualifications section. After that, create an accomplishment section. Go through your experience, and find the best, most relevant, accomplishments in your field. Write a clear, concise description of four to six of them, making sure that you show the results of your work powerfully.

For example, don’t just say that you were in charge of orchestrating the move of a large office. Rather, show that the move went smoothly and people began work in the new place immediately without a hitch.

Likewise, don’t say that you were responsible for managing a Fortune 500 account, leaving your readers wondering whether they loved you and gave you lots of business or whether you so offended them that they threw you out and gave the account to a competitor. Instead, show how you cultivated the relationship and brought in lots of additional business for your company.

After this, put in your experience section, showing the companies you worked for, a brief description of the company, dates of employment, and a brief description of your duties. In this way, you will draw the most attention to your accomplishments and what you are capable of contributing, rather than the most recent (and unattractive) experience.

She does need to show the dates of employment for the temporary position (in this case, since she was there for two years. If she had only been there for a couple months, she could omit it) and spin that temporary experience to her chosen field, as best she can.

Because of the great importance of this issue to so many clients, I am venturing into politics with this post. Whatever your feelings may be about President Obama and about his plan, I hope that we can all come together to fix our health care system. As a self-employed career coach, I see a lot of suffering caused by the current system.

I attempted to attend a healthcare forum in my district. Though the auditorium held over 1000 people, hundreds couldn’t get in. Outside, some carried signs showing President Obama with a Hitler mustache, while others had signs supporting his healthcare plan. Since both sides were screaming at each other, it was clear there was little room for thoughtful discussion of how to fix our healthcare system. The divide-and-conquer tactics of the powers that be have been very effective.

Lose Your Job, Lose Your Insurance
I never questioned this until I saw a film featuring a doctor from another country. He said, “I never understood the logic of having access to health care depend on employment.” In our system, the company generally picks up most of the cost of your health policy when you are working, but when you are thrown out in the street and don’t have income, you must also make hefty COBRA payments or become uninsured.

Of course, millions of Americans are working full time jobs, but still don’t have health insurance. This is nonsense.

Self employment
Being self-employed is supposed to be part of the great American dream. But our insurance industry discriminates mightily against the self-employed. Every policy I’ve seen is expensive and extremely low-quality. Many people feel stuck in soul-killing corporate jobs, but are afraid that if they left, their sick spouse or child would bankrupt them.

Punished for being sick
The insurance companies closely monitor us, collecting the premiums when we’re young and healthy, but cutting us loose when we get sick or get old. One client was denied coverage at age 40 becase she’d been sick. Another, who’d had difficulty in the past getting insurance, said his insurance agent advised him to buy a catastrophic policy, just in case something terrible happened, but pay for routine medical care out of pocket–anonymously. So much for having a relationship with the doctor.

Mental Health Discrimination
Insurance companies also discriminate against those with mental health issues. One client told me about applying for insurance while taking a prescription painkiller. She was denied coverage because the insurance company employee mistook the medication for an antidepressant. She was told they would reconsider if she got a note from her doctor, stating she wasn’t using the medication for depression. I think about that every time I read about someone who commits suicide, kills their kids, or starts shooting people at work. People with mental health issues should be treated without being blacklisted.

Rationing
I have listened to the warnings about rationing and about government bureaucrats telling us which doctors we can see and which treatments we’re allowed. The fact is that health care is already rationed. But it isn’t reationed according to whether it is actually needed or whether it will do any good. Our system rations care according to ability to pay. Thus, the rich can Michael Jackson themselves with countless unnecessary treatments, and many seniors are kept alive against their will by expensive “heroic” measures, despite the fact that their quality of life is zero. Meanwhile many who could really benefit from medical attention can’t get it.

Plus, bureaucrats already tell us which doctors to see and what treatments we may get–the insurance company bureaucrats. It seems every time we get a new policy, we get a new list of doctors we’ve never heard of.

I hope that we can all pull together in the midst of the noise and hatred the powers that be have stirred up and demand a health care system that really works.