Florida Conference for Women Speaker

Should You Dumb Down Your Resume?

If you constantly hear the words "you're overqualified" from potential employers, it might be time to make some adjustments on your resume. We're not talking about denying your expertise or years of experience on paper -- just some strategic editing so that your resume doesn't shout, "I'm Old And I'm Expensive."

A few tips:  

• If you graduated from college when the Doobie Brothers were hot, great, but putting 1976 on your resume screams you're middle-aged. It might put off a recruiter who graduated in 1996. Name the school and degree but omit your graduation date.
• If your career spans 15 years or more, forget about work experience beyond the 15-year mark. List what you've done for the last 15. If that doesn't impress, nothing will.
• A lofty title -- say senior executive vice president of marketing -- may make a potential employer fear that you'll demand big bucks and a corner office when all you want is a friggin' job! Avoid that by omitting your former title. In this case, noting that you were a marketing executive, and where, will suffice. Instead of words like "led customer service department," consider downgrading to "handled customer service issues."

by Tory Johnson, Women for Hire
Career expert Tory Johnson is founder of Women for Hire and Workplace Contributor on ABC's Good Morning America. She joins the Florida Conference for Women as keynote speaker and co-host of its ReWork Career Fair.

5 Steps to Build Your Brand

Whether you want to land your dream job or take your business to the next level of success, building your brand is an essential first step to realizing your goals. The steps to building your personal brand or your business brand are basically the same.  Take a look at the five steps to achieve brand awareness and foster brand reputation below.

1. Definition: Define the message and image you want your brand to portray in the marketplace and how you want it to be positioned against the competition.
2. Communication: Communicate your brand message, image and promise.
3. Consistency: Your brand messages should be consistently communicated, so there is no confusion about who you are, what you offer, and what people can expect from your brand.
4. Persistence: Keep communicating your brand messages over and over until they stick in people's minds.
5. Restraint: Be persistent but pick and choose where and when you want to communicate your brand messages to ensure every opportunity matches your brand position and enhances your brand rather than detracting from it.

When you're building a brand online and offline the underlying key to success is patience. Your efforts will build over time, but it takes time to meet your objectives.  Brand building is not a "get rich quick"scheme.

Instead, it's a strategic path that you have to nurture and let grow in order to realize the ultimate benefits.

This blog post was submitted by Florida Conference for Women speaker Susan Gunelius.

Boomers in a Post-Boom

The New York Times' Michael Winerip recently featured Tory Johnson, who will speak at the Conference, in an article about job fairs in today's economy.

Tory and Women for Hire will co-host the exclusive ReWork Career Fair, featuring local and national employers with current job openings, for Conference attendees.