Resume Advice For Over 40

No idea why you're not getting any job interviews while you have 15 to 20 plus years of experience in your field. 

Well, chances are, it's your resume that's not doing its job. And in this video, I share top resume advice for 40 plus, so that you can start getting job interviews.  

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I personally used the tips that I share in this video before I became a career & Job Search coach, and I was in my late 40s. And I was able to land multiple job offers for my dream role. 

So tip number one is you want to identify your speciality, which is so crucial. And usually, when we are of a certain age, we have a lot of expertise, we can go very deep on our speciality. And that's the number one thing that you want to highlight right at the top of your resume. And I will show you an example of what I'm talking about here. But this is all about what your special sauce is. And it helps to generate interest to read more about you via your resume. This actually turns your age into an advantage, not a liability. And your specialty needs to be directly related to a top skill that is sought after for your target role, regardless of if you're making a career change or not. 

And it's important for you to understand that no one wants to hire a jack of all trades when they're spending potentially extra money to hire someone with experience. They want to hire somebody who is an expert in their field. And that's the number one thing that your resume needs to highlight really quickly. 

Okay, so let me show you a very specific example of what I mean when I'm talking about highlighting very specifically your speciality in your resume. 

So here's a before example of a resume. This looks very much like a lot of resumes that come across my desk. And you can see that we get right into the professional experience with the title of the role. And then some of the bullets of the specific experience that the person held. 

In this case, it's an example of a sales manager who has 10 years of experience managing accounts, and oversaw several accounts, etc. So you can see that that looks a little bit more like list of tasks that were done in the role. And there's really nothing that speaks to the person's very specific expertise or their speciality. 

Now let's take a look at an example that clearly highlights the person's speciality in their resume. And the way we do this is with a short paragraph here that highlights the person's expertise and their secret sauce, so to speak. 

And there you see that this is an account manager that's dedicated to growing business profitably with a proven track record of consistently exceeding budget. also highlight here, the bullets that are in the form of keywords that also speak to their speciality. And those are keywords that you would find in role descriptors for the person's target role, which is an account manager role. 

So here you see territory account management, sales, presentation, product knowledge, cold calling, prospecting, all of these things speak to the person's speciality as it relates to their target role. 

Number two, you want to prove it, you want to demonstrate that you do have the skill that is highlighted through what you're saying is your speciality in your resume. And the way that you do that in your resume is you have very specific accomplishment bullets, very specific results focused bullets, that demonstrate that you have the skill and the expertise that you're highlighting at the top of your resume. 

So let me show you an example. So let's go back to our before example, with the bullets here. This is where we want to prove that we have the speciality and the expertise that we were talking about in part one of this video. And in the example before we put some very specific results focus bullets you can see here that we're just describing basically what the person was doing in the different roles doesn't really demonstrate very much in terms of the results, as you can see, we're just stating what was done, what was covered what the person was responsible for. But we're not really showcasing the results that the person was able to achieve for their employers. 

So let me show you, in the after example, what I mean exactly in the example that I want to show you how you can showcase and prove and demonstrate your speciality and your experience. You do this with results-focused bullets. And you can do that a few different ways. One of the ways that I love doing especially for people that are in midlife, 40 plus candidates that have several years of experience, and in some cases, even two decades is you want to, you can showcase key accomplishments in the top tier of your resume. So just like we showcase the speciality in the top, very top piece of the resume, we can also add key accomplishments. And that can be for even five bullets that really showcase your speciality. So we were talking about in the speciality in the heading section that this account manager was able to grow the business above budget. 

So here you can see the first accomplishment bullet is all about consistently delivering above targets. And now we're getting specific, and we're demonstrating what that meant. Here, we're saying delivered a plus 78.4% against target in first year in the role, see how impactful that is. And we're basically adding substance to what we're stating in the speciality section of the resume. And you can do that in the key accomplishments, and of course, also in accomplishment bullets that pertain to each specific role. And so it really adds dimension. And it really showcases how we're delivering on our speciality the types of results that we're able to garner. Here's another example here collaborated with such and such a company to exceed the sales budget of 105% in 2019. So we're getting specific, and we're adding numbers where possible. There's a lot of different ways to do that. But this is basically how we're able to prove that we do have the expertise that we're talking about in the first section of our resume. This is one of the best ways for you to stand out when you are a little bit older. 

When you are in midlife, you are able to showcase your speciality in your resume very quickly. 

So tell me by commenting below, what is your speciality in your field in your career, I really want to know. Number three is you want to only cover the last 15 years of your work experience. Anything longer than that is considered irrelevant. Nowadays, things are changing so quickly in this day and age. Employers and hiring managers only want to focus in on the last 15 years of your experience, make it relevant, make it punchy, and that is going to help you condense your resume into a maximum of two pages. anything more than that can make you potentially come across as self-centered or it will make it look like you're rambling on on paper. So keep it down to two pages and 15 years maximum. 

Now if you're determined to get a new job this year, and you are struggling to get interviews, I have an additional resource for you. It's called the resume booster and it's all about why your resume is failing you and four steps to quickly fix it. You can download that free resource at coach with danielle.com forward slash boost. 

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