5 Tips to Make Your Resume Stand Out

It can be discouraging when you're on a job search web site and see that 95 people have already applied to a job you're interested in. And then you hear about the creative, and sometimes, wacky things people do to get their resume noticed, such as sending it in the shape and style of a pizza, or in the form of an elaborate and beautifully-designed infographic.

But the truth is you don't have to be a creative graphic designer or come up with some mind-blowing new resume style to grab attention. Sometimes, more careful attention to the basics can get the job done.

Here are 5 tips to get your resume back to the basics so it stands out.

1. Apply for a specific position. Be very clear about how your strengths and skills make you an ideal candidate for a specific position that you name in your cover letter (and perhaps in an objective, if you still use one). The company should be able to determine very quickly what job you are applying for to make a determination if you're a good fit.

2. Tailor your resume to that specific position. Do not submit a generic resume for every job you apply to. That is a sure way to end up in the circular file or the recycle bin. Your resume should be unique and distinct for each position you apply for.

3. Know the company. One way to make your resume distinct is to know the company you are applying to. Your resume should speak to the needs of the company, demonstrating an understanding of their strengths, weaknesses, challenges, and competitors. Highlight different aspects of your experience and skills as it relates to these company challenges.

4. Be specific about your accomplishments and relate them to the position. It's not enough to note that you managed a team of ten employees while applying for a supervisory role. Nearly everyone who applies for the job will have management experience. Detail how you excelled as a manager and what made you distinct. Perhaps your entire team exceeded their sales goals, or three employees you mentored moved on to become managers, too. Highlight your specific strengths and apply them to the specific position you're interested in.

5. Be positive. Demonstrate an enthusiastic and positive attitude about the job and the company in your cover letter and ensure that any language you use in your communication with the company, including on your resume, reflects accurately, clearly, and passionately about what you can bring to the job.

Apply these tips to your resume and you'll be on your way to standing out.  

Daily Leap Career Video of the Week: Take Down Imposter Syndrome

Each week we present our Daily Leap Career Video of the Week. The video we share presents news or advice related to career and life development, searching for a job, the economy and employment, and other career-related topics.

A few weeks ago we shared a video on The Imposter Syndrome. Today, the short video below from Forbes encourages you to take down Imposter Syndrome and get rid of those voices in your head telling you that you're not good enough or smart enough to succeed.

High 5 Weekly Career Transitions Roundup: What to Do When You and Your Boss Aren't Getting Along

This is our weekly roundup of some of the best career-related articles, interviews, blogs, etc., we've read during the week. We share them so you have some great resources to prepare you for the coming week. Enjoy!

• What to Do When You and Your Boss Aren't Getting Along: "Am I working on the issues that my boss wants me to be working on, in the way they want me to be working on them? Have I been disregarding their feedback?"
• 10 Powerful Ways to Empower Your Employees: "Contrary to conventional wisdom, boundaries don't restrict team members; they empower them.
• The 4 Attributes You Must Develop to Achieve Everything You Want in Life: "If you finally want to live with more intention and purpose in your life or become an entrepreneur now and not later, then your extraordinary life is on the other side of your life-planning design process."
• Want Your Resume to Stand Out? Try This One Tactic: "Try getting back to basics. Work on a carefully crafted resume that highlights your results as well as your authenticity."
• How to Become the Leader You Need to Be: "Millennials are turning up ready to take their positions in management, but leadership doesn’t come easy and organizations could suffer as a result."

Five Characteristics of Successful People

When you take a look at the lives of people who are successful in their careers and personal lives you can see some common characteristics, whether your talking about world-class athletes or billionaire entrepreneurs.

Let's take a look at a few of these traits and consider how to implement them into our lives in order to experience more success and improve the quality of our lives.

1. Curiosity. To be successful one must have a curiosity about the world, about people, about experiences, and about how things work. A successful person will consider the traditional knowledge of a subject and turn it on its head, looking at things from different perspectives and coming up with new and unique solutions.

2. Resilience. Failures, mistakes, and slip-ups will come and the most successful will understand this and find ways to get back up and move forward.

3. Positive attitude. You cannot control your circumstances, how others will respond to you, or what you experience in life and the workplace, but you can control how you respond to these things. Individuals who maintain a positive attitude and response to things outside of their control are more likely to be at peace with themselves regardless of events and circumstances.

4. Desire to serve. Life is not about taking and the most successful people understand that to be at their best they need to serve others. They consider the needs of their audience, their teams, their companies, or their clients and figure out the best way to be of service to them.

5. Clear purpose. By clear purpose we mean a clear purpose and vision to live a life that brings value to others, rather than simply living in order to maximize personal profit and fame. The most successful people have a clear vision for how they their lives and work can be of service to others.

Daily Leap Career Video of the Week: Two Tips to be a More Confident Public Speaker

Each week we present our Daily Leap Career Video of the Week. The video we share presents news or advice related to career and life development, searching for a job, the economy and employment, and other career-related topics.

The video below from Fast Company provides tips to becoming a more confident public speaker; a skill that can help you get ahead in your career.

High 5 Weekly Career Transitions Roundup: Helping Others is Your Most Valuable Offering

This is our weekly roundup of some of the best career-related articles, interviews, blogs, etc., we've read during the week. We share them so you have some great resources to prepare you for the coming week. Enjoy!

• Helping Others is Your Most Valuable Offering: "Helping others makes us happier and consequently boosts productivity. From there we can thrive and improve our bottom line while growing our businesses."
• This is the Key to a Successful Partnership (and a Successful Life): "You can’t enter a partnership and then rely on your partner to figure out for you who you are. In effect, you have to form a strong 'partnership' with yourself before someone else can. As we like to say, 'we' always starts with 'me'.
• Your Internship Just Turned Into a Job Offer--Should You Take It?: "For better or worse, interns often have vastly different experiences than employees who work year-round. Before committing, it’s essential to research the job and company."
• The Changing Shape of the Modern Workplace: "The way our workplaces look and behave has been undergoing a great deal of flux and experimentation in recent years, urged on by a wide range of driving forces."
• How to Determine What Your Potential Boss is Like in an Interview: "You don't want to find out after you start working that your manager is extremely difficult to work for. Asking this question of the people who work for your prospective boss may yield different answers than what human resources or a recruiter tells you."

5 Tips for Finding Work-Life Balance with the Start of School

It's that time of year already! The end of summer and the start of a school. And, if you have children, you've likely noticed that your daily routine has become a bit out-of-whack over the last two months.

Not to fear. You can take some basic steps to get back into the swing of things so your work and personal life return to balance.

Here are a few tips to consider as you prepare for your kids to return to school.

1. Manage your expectations. Yes, there will be stress and everything will not go perfectly. Understand that there will be difficulties: you might oversleep, or the kids will oversleep, or you'll just be plain cranky in the morning and everything will bother you. These difficulties do not prevent you from having a good day, effective, and productive day, though, and do not allow them to prevent you from enjoying your children.

2. Get back into a routine early. Don't wait until the Sunday night before school starts to begin getting back into a routing of going to bed earlier, or waking up earlier to get that morning workout in. Start your new/old routine at least a week before school starts and he won't feel like such a shock.

3. Be prepared. Do whatever you can to make your mornings proceed smoothly. If possible make lunches the night before, have everything you need to take to work already organized and ready to go. Don't get into your car to discover you have no gas. All of these little things add up to bring great stress so do what you can to minimize inconveniences.

4. Watch your schedule. You might find that no more how organized you are something always comes up to make you a few minutes late for work. Prepare for this by ensuring, as much as you are able and have control over it, you do not schedule meetings first thing in the morning or have important deadlines to meet immediately. Give yourself a break and ease into the most demanding parts of your day.

5. Accept help. This tip might even be more effectively to "ask" for help. Perhaps a neighbor or grandparent can take the children to school, or pick them up. Even if this is done only one or two days in a week it can go a long way toward reducing your stress and helping you achieve a sense of work-life balance. There is no shame in seeking and accepting help.

Finally, be sure to enjoy this time. Before you know it, you'll miss these opportunities with your children. Take some time to sit back, relax, and experience some joy for the good things in your life.

Daily Leap Career Video of the Week: 10 Ways to Persevere and Stick with It

Each week we present our Daily Leap Career Video of the Week. The video we share presents news or advice related to career and life development, searching for a job, the economy and employment, and other career-related topics.

In the video below from Entrepreneur, famous entrepreneurs share their views on why you need to persevere and stick with it to be a success in your career and business.

High 5 Weekly Career Transitions Roundup: 5 Ways You Are Sabotaging Your Job Search

This is our weekly roundup of some of the best career-related articles, interviews, blogs, etc., we've read during the week. We share them so you have some great resources to prepare you for the coming week. Enjoy!

• 5 Ways You Are Sabotaging Your Job Search: "You may be planning your retirement, but never say it publicly. It sends a message that you won't be fully committed to the job."
• 3 Ways to Discover Your True Passion: "Perhaps we don’t really want a new job, but we’re seeking growth and meaning in our work that we’re not currently finding. Is a new job the only solution or are there other things we can try without leaving our current job?"
• 4 Ways to Create an Amazing Workplace: "People want to put their mark on something meaningful and exciting. Potential recruits want to have a voice in an organization. By attracting a few good talented hires it can start a chain reaction for other potential recruits."
• How to Keep it Real While Building Your Network: "Even when you’ve firmly established yourself and your reputation, you should still expect to be giving quite a bit more than you’ll be receiving. Give before you make an ask and you’ll eventually see the fruits of your labor."
• What You Can Learn From the Excuses You Tell Yourself: "If you feel stuck, it could be that an excuse you’re telling yourself is holding you back. In this case, purposefully engage in perspective changing."

5 Characteristics of a Great Employee

Sometimes it feels like being a good employee simply requires us to keep our head down, plug along, mind our own business, and get the work done.

However, that might have been true years ago but today's great employees take initiative and bring a passionate approach to their work.

Below are five additional characteristics of a great employee.

1. Team player. Great employees know that to be successful others on the team need to be successful and so she works well with others in the company, helping them to achieve their goals.

2. Curiosity. To be a great employee one must be curious about the company you work at, curious about all the divisions and areas within the company. curious about the company's competitors, and curious about how to make the company better and more effective.

3. Humility. Instead of glorying in success and taking credit, great employees will deflect praise in humility, understanding that successes require a team.

4. Communicates effectively. Great employees understand the importance of (and practice) good communication. In addition to excellent verbal communication skills, good employees know that effective written skills are important, too. Good communication also means avoiding gossip, and speaking positively about your job and company.

5. Takes responsibility. Every employee will experience some failure in the workplace at some point but it is the great employee who will get back up without blaming anyone else, take responsibility for the failure, and move forward to make things right.

What other characteristics does a great employee have?

Daily Leap Career Video of the Week: The Imposter Syndrome

Each week we present our Daily Leap Career Video of the Week. The video we share presents news or advice related to career and life development, searching for a job, the economy and employment, and other career-related topics.

In the video below, The School of Life takes on the "Imposter Syndrome", noting that what holds us back from being more confident at work is often a sense that we are fundamentally different from those who succeed.

High 5 Weekly Career Transitions Roundup: 13 Simple Steps to Land the Job You Want

This is our weekly roundup of some of the best career-related articles, interviews, blogs, etc., we've read during the week. We share them so you have some great resources to prepare you for the coming week. Enjoy!

• 13 Simple Steps to Land the Job You Want: "Network with everybody you’ve ever worked with; connect on LinkedIn with each person you meet on the job."
• 3 Tough Habits You Must Drop to Succeed: "Being an effective leader will require you to break the storytelling habit that's happening in your head. Instead, separate the facts from the stories, and make decisions based on what you know for sure."
• 4 Ways to Make Your Employees Love Training: "The key is to not approach training with a one-delivery-system-fits-all mind-set."
• How High-Performing Leaders Refuel: "I am delighted when I see someone emerging from a mid-afternoon break because it means that they feel comfortable taking care of themselves and they will be performing at a higher level for the rest of the day."
• Using Social Media to Build Professional Skills: "If you want to work on self-development while working out, doing household chores, or commuting, that’s a great time to listen to the podcasts you’ve discovered."

3 Things to Know Before Your Next Job Interview

You can always find a lot of advice about job interviewing and preparing for a job interview. However, sometimes all that advice merely serves to make one more anxious about the process and feel slightly overwhelmed by it all.

In reality, though, if you know the following three things in advance of your next interview you will go in much better prepared than most of the other candidates.

1. Know the company. Do your homework and understand as much as you can about the company you are interviewing with. Who founded the company and when? What are its key values? What is the mission of the organization and what are some of the major challenges facing it? Know the answers to these questions and use them as you formulate your responses to interview questions.

2. Know the competition. Who are the major competitors to the company you're interviewing with and what are their strengths and weaknesses? Why are you choosing to interview with this company rather than with its competitors? How can the company your interviewing with better distinguish itself from its competitors? If you can answer some of these questions for yourself you will be in a good position in the interview to situate yourself as a knowledgeable asset to the company.

3. Know your strengths. Be sure to understand yourself well, and understand the skills and knowledge you bring to the company. By knowing your strengths, as well as having a deep knowledge of the company and its competitors, you will be able to clearly demonstrate and communicate your value to the company.

Focus on these three areas before your next interview and you'll enter the interview room with confidence.

Daily Leap Career Video of the Week: How to Get Over Your Fear of Failure

Each week we present our Daily Leap Career Video of the Week. The video we share presents news or advice related to career and life development, searching for a job, the economy and employment, and other career-related topics.

In the video below Tony Robbins presents some inspiring tips for overcoming your fear of failure in life and in your career.