My Resume Sucks and Getting a Grip on Rejection

I haven't changed to layout of my resume since my first one 20 years ago. So when my employment counsellor told me it sucked I was surprised to find out that I was doing it all wrong. So off to the library to find out what the pros suggest and what do you know I didn't know a thing about writing a resume.

It's not so much that the information was wrong - I can't change my working history, experiences or accomplishments - it was how I laid it out and presented the information that is an issue. I wasn't looking at my resume and cover letters as pieces of marketing literature or sales tools. I always thought a resume was just a chronological list of your past positions and skills.

I have spent hours writing marketing materials and sales tools in the past and yet I only ever spent a fraction of that time on my resume. I mean really how blind could I be? I'm not putting the time in to sell myself.

Selling myself is the thing I hate most about the whole looking for work thing, which is odd in itself since I'm a sales professional. I could blame my mother or the humility teachings of my Christian upbringing but that wouldn't be honest. I have a hard time selling myself because I fear rejection of my "self." Selling someone else, promoting another business, or selling a product is easy - the rejection is not personal. Prospects can say "NO" a hundred times over and I'd still come back with a different angle... but when an employer says "NO" that's harder for me to come back at. Harder for me to pull up my socks and say - ah but did you know this about .......

Business owners have to be confident in their "self" and accept rejection of their business services or product as just that and not a rejection of them. That's the hardest part about owning a business, realizing that when a propect says "NO" its not personal.

Presently, I'm not an expert on resumes or cover letters but I am learning from the many different books on the subject. It's going to take a while sitting here to create slick pieces of salesmanship that will hopefully open doors to me that I have been unable to open before. When the doors do open I have to remember that any rejection is not personal - it only means that the product I have presented is not meeting their needs for one reason or another. It's not about not liking me - its about matching the skill set I have presented through marketing materials and presentations (also known as interviews) with the position the employer needs to fill.