Resumes.

A friend wanted to use me as a reference on her resume so of course I said sure.  We chit chatted about what kind of resume she had and she replied that she had a "regular ass resume".  Me being the way I am I assumed she wouldn't mind some help and pointers on how to make a better resume.  Hence this post.

Their are four basic types of resumes:  chronological, academic, skills, and results.  Most people do the chronological one; my last job was this, the next one was this, etc.  I did until I picked up a book called:  Winning Resumes - Career Coach Series by Robin Ryan.  Great book, she makes a great point of selling what you are and tooting your own horn.  

I did that with my resume and I did get a lot of call backs; unfortunately, I was honest in my interview about my background and the number of interviewing ladies that didn't like the topless bar background is a bit surprising.  I didn't lie on my resume, on the contrary I did put out some honest numbers like "part of the team that increased sales 26%".  I had a whole section of my resume that was just accomplishments.  They were pretty simple once I thought about it; at this club sales were up whatever percentage, at this other club employment numbers were improved by this percentage, changed venues with this club, implemented this program (which saved this much money) at this club, and etc.  

In the real estate business it's called "puffery", a classic example would be "handy man dream house" instead of "whip out more cash to fix every damn thing" (I've bought a house like that before).  Again, you don't want to lie but how can you phrase something that you think is normal into something that the employer would want?  Do you own your own business?  That gives you skills with bookkeeping, payroll, inventory, auditing, pricing, marketing, and a host of other things.  Were you a bartender, waitress, or dancer?  Those jobs give you major skills in reading people, and doing it quickly, and suggestive selling.  Don't think a dancer knows about suggestive selling?  At my clubs you would make chump change on the stages but if a customer bought you a bottle of champagne then you could skip that set in order to make real money on the floor doing table dances.  Have you worked at a charity?  Did the place help more people whilst you were there or did they do so much help that the charity was no longer needed?  

Don't look at your experiences from your point of view, look at them from a salesperson's point of view.