Wrong! What you really need is a non-resume strategy. That's right. A job search approach that doesn't require you to focus all your attention on preparing and distributing a resume.



We discovered this fact of life many years ago when we realized that the job market follows the same marketing rules as the business market. That realization was the beginning of the alternative job search movement. And the first target of some serious re-thinking was the value (or lack of it) of the resume.

Traditional job search wisdom requires that your first step into the job market is to write a resume. Unfortunately that doesn't square up with the way hiring decisions are made. No one is going to hire you based on a resume.

Ask any hiring decision-maker how he/she goes about the process of hiring. Ask them what, in the final analysis, goes into their decision to bring a certain job candidate on board. Very few will tell you that it's based on a consideration of what the candidate used to do for someone else (as expressed in the resume).

More frequently they will tell you that they want someone they feel confident will fit into the team as a productive member. And how do they determine that? Most will tell you that they like the candidate and feel that they have good rapport and chemistry with him/her.

What builds this rapport and chemistry? Our studies have shown, hands down, that the most important thing a candidate has done to further his/her candidacy is to show that they've done their homework and learned about the goals of the organization as well as of the decision-maker.

So, what is the Non-Resume strategy?

Well, in place of spending countless hours, writing, rewriting, tweaking your resume and then mass distributing to job sites, job openings, a bunch of companies, agencies and recruiters, you spend your time doing the following:

1. Use Google and library resources to identify organizations that are consistent with your career choices.

2. Within those organizations, identify the decision-makers who would most likely have an interest in someone with your qualifications . . . in other words, the persons who could be your next boss.

3. Use various communication strategies to get an invitation to meet face-to-face with those decision-makers (not an interview). Among those communication strategies are referrals by people who know or have access to them, phone calls, letters of introduction, emails, or direct person-to-person contact.

The good news is that it takes less time and energy to implement a non-resume strategy than the weeks and months it takes of nervous waiting for the mail or the phone to ring . . . and then rehashing your resume campaign for the second, third or fourth time.

The other good news is that there's a fabulous alternative job search system already in place that can walk you through this non-resume process step-by-step. What's more, it can show you how you can be speaking with your next boss in a matter of days . . . and entertaining real job offers in as little as two weeks!