Working Your Wardrobe for Career Success

Working Your Wardrobe for Career SuccessWorking Your Wardrobe for Career SuccessUpdate your professional attire to make the right impression and advance your career.Experts agree that your appearance plays a role in your professional advancement. Your clothing, grooming, hygiene and hairstyle all affect your personal brand. This becomes even more important when youre looking for a job or vying for a promotion. Remember, you only get one chance to make a first impression, whether thats with a potential employer or a prospective client. Invest in a professional wardrobe to update your look and advance your career.Below are some tips to improve your wardrobe for career success.Get the right fit.Clothes have an expiration date. Remove any items from your professional wardrobe that are more than five years old, with the exception of a few classic pieces that were made to last a lifetime. Fit is a huge factor. Youre better off picking up a suit at a discount retailer like Marshalls and the n paying to have it altered rather than splurging on an expensive outfit that doesnt fit you quite right. When in doubt, size up and find a good tailor who can alter the garment to fit you like a glove.Consider the culture.Take your industry and the company culture into account when purchasing work attire. For instance, if you showed up to interview at a fashion house in a head-to-toe formal suit, youd appear stuffy and be deemed a cultural mismatch. Similarly, if you strolled into a financial services organization for a client meeting dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, youd look equally out of place and unprofessional. No matter how casual or formal your company is, make sure your clothing is clean and pressed and that your overall outfit looks put together.Insert your style.Dress for the part you want, but find ways to incorporate your personal style into the overall look. Ladies, use a few brightly colored accent pieces, such as your shoes, bag and jewelry to let your personality sh ine through a more traditional outfit. Gentlemen, your watch, cufflinks and believe it or leid socks are great outlets for your style, no matter how buttoned-up your workplace may be.Take a cue.If you want advance your career, take some cues from the next level of management. How does your boss and his peers dress for a regular work day? While you dont want to looked overdressed in your current your position, its important to start doing little things to step up your look so you appear polished and ready for the next challenge. Additionally, be careful of what you wear during company outings and other more relaxed settings, such as a summer picnic or casual Friday. Even when youre out of the office, youre still being judged by your colleagues.Take some time this week to reevaluate your wardrobe so you make the right impression during your next interview, client presentation or in the office.Click on the following link for more information about personal branding.

Step Up Your Job Search During the Holidays

Step Up Your Job Search During the HolidaysStep Up Your Job Search During the HolidaysStep Up Your Job Search During the HolidaysWere a week into the traditional start of the holiday season. If youre among the millions of Americans who are out of work, the coming weeks will test your mood amid the joy and anticipation that come with the season.Compounding that is the perception that employers slow down or stop their hiring efforts for the final few weeks of the year.Double bummer?No All the more reason to kick your job search efforts up a notch by taking these two approachesCatch Employers While Theyre Not Paying AttentionMost other job seekers will be slowing down their efforts, and many hiring managers are more interested in winding up the year and focusing on the holidays. That makes it a good time to zig while everyone else zags. If youre targeting a healthy company, even if it doesnt have a suitable opening, its a good time to send a resume just to introduce yourself. You never know if youll catch the hiring manager in a moment of holiday cheereggnog-induced or not.Socialize with a PurposeWith holidays come holiday gatherings, which provide job seekers with more chances to meet people who might know of job openings somewhere. (Just think of it as another way to network.) To be prepared, have copies of your resume handy to give to potential contacts. Or, at least have a pen and paper on hand, or a notepad phone app, to jot down contact information.The holidays can be a trying time if youre unemployed. But maintaining or stepping up your job search efforts can keep you from falling into a holiday funk, and might propel you into a new job sooner than you had been thinking.

64 Action Verbs That Will Take Your Resume From Blah to Brilliant

64 Action Verbs That Will Take Your Resume From Blah to Brilliant64 Action Verbs That Will Take Your Resume From Blah to Brilliant Youve probably heard the advice that action verbs should be sprinkled throughout your resume. By starting each bullet point about your past experience with a powerful action verb, you draw hiring managers in and give them a concrete picture of your expertise. Certain action verbs are also likely to help your resume get past automated scanning tools . But its not as simple as just throwing a bunch of verbs on a piece of paper and hoping something sticks. Heres how to use action verbs on your resume intelligently to help you land the job of your dreams. It is important to be strategic on the action verbs used to describe your skills and experience, notes Jessie Czerwonka Roller, Manager of Career Services at Turning the Corner . Being in the career services field for over a decade, I have seen an abundance of resumes the good, the bad and the ugly. The ones that stand out, she says, are resumes that are tailored toward both the job and the industry, using verbs that feel relevant and targeted.Shefali Raina , an NYC-based executive coach, agrees. For maximum impact, use action verbs selectively and convey simple, direct messages. Nothing dilutes the impact of action verbs than being surrounded by many other action verbs In other words, you definitely want action verbs throughout your resume, but dont go overboard. Its a good idea to include action verbs that showcase your personality. Empowered speaks to your ability to give energy, authority, confidence and power to a group or a team to achieve a certain result, Raina says. It suggests that you possess the confidence and the influence to be able to authorize and energize a team or group to have a powerful impact. Organized is a wonderful verb that denotes an individual who can prioritize not only the items on their desk, but their tasks too, says Gabrielle Pitre, Recruiting Team Lead at Coalition Technologies . This lets employers see that you understand what is valuable to your job. But, perhaps, an even better verb is orchestrated , as its rarer and more likely to attract attention. Initiated is a powerful one because it demonstrates that you are proactive and that you spent the time and energy to begin a project or originate an idea, Raina notes. To employers and recruiters, it speaks to a positive, can-do mindset and says that you will be a solution starter.One of the most important rules for using action verbs effectively is to choose them based on the jobs youre applying to. If you are a job seeker who wants to gain a leadership position, you want to describe both your skills and experiences using strong leadership action verbs such as advocated, bolstered, drove, engaged, elicited and spearheaded , Roller explains. To highlight management experience, youll want to use verbs like established and delegated , Pitre says. These w ords can say much more than more common verbs, such as led or oversaw . You want to show how proactive you are and ansicht verbs express that well.Try brainstorming industry-specific action verbs, as well. For example, if you are a job seeker targeting the IT industry, use action verbs such as administered, centralized, configured, engineered, installed and programmed, Roller recommends. These show that you know the space inside and out and you wont need to be brought up to speed.If youre looking at creative jobs, you might want to consider the verb designed . This word tells me that the candidate has built something new that did not exist before, says Amanda B. Gulino, founder of A Better Monday .A job seekers goal is to entice the recruiter or search committee member to read more and get excited about their background to elicit an interview invite, Roller points out. You know your resume isnt working if you arent getting interviews . If your current resume isnt working fo r you, be flexible in switching it up until you find the right eye-catching combination of words and phrases.And remember, its not just about the verbs. We love to see candidates stray from ordinary statements, Pitre says. Its not always just about a specific adjective or verb, but everything around it. The best candidates often understand how important it is to share their specific stories, give examples and show how and why they are good at something, rather than just stating that its a skill.Need a little more inspiration? Here are some of our favorite action verbs to get your resume-updating wheels spinning. Audited, Built, Collaborated, Created, Delivered, Earned, Exceeded, Generated, Identified, Improved, Minimized, Negotiated, Obtained, Outperformed, Planned, Presented, Produced, Redesigned, Reduced, Researched, Solved, Trained, TestedChampioned, Coached, Consolidated, Decreased, Enabled, Facilitated, Grew, Hired, Implemented, Instituted, Integrated, Launched, Managed, Ment ored, Partnered Advised, Aligned, Cultivated, Developed, Evaluated, Founded, Guided, Motivated, Transformed