Guest Post by Joe Flanagan
Even if you’re in the process of successfully building a business that enables you to work from home, at some point you’ll still need a resume. A business is a business after all and, at times, you’ll find yourself needing to source new clients. How better to demonstrate your talent and experience than with a well-written resume?
Sometimes it can feel overwhelming to know where to start and this can especially be the case if you’ve been working from home for some time. How should you best format your resume and what information should you include? The difference between a resume that you’d submit to a prospective employer compared to a home based business is the fact that you may never get an interview to prove yourself. Your resume may be your only opportunity to ‘wow’ a prospective client, so it’s critical to submit your best work. Your goal therefore, must shift from simply wanting to land an interview, to straight up winning the job!
Inclusions:
• Objective: refrain from including generic statements such as the fact you want to work from home to spend more time with your children. Focus on the host of outstanding skills you possess, rather than your location of work.
• Keywords: Nowadays many companies are scanning resume applications straight into computer databases and no human ever actually reads them. Computers scan for desired keywords as dictated by your client, so make a list of “skills” and include all the software you’ve used as well as your key talents. For example, if you’re a freelance writer and the computer is instructed to search for “blogger”, you want to make sure this common type of writing is mentioned in your resume.
• Work experience: Employers are used to reading about work experience in chronological order. However, if you’ve been working from home for some time you may have worked for a number of different clients. Tailor your resume to target each prospective client by highlighting your most relevant work experience, even if it’s not necessarily in strict date order. This also includes paying close consideration to highlighting your most famous or “big fish” clients. Using this method of focusing on your actual experience rather than your lineal dates is called a functional format and is often more appropriate for freelancers.
• Education: Clients are generally more interested in specific work experience and capability than education, although you do need to include this information on your resume.
There are plenty of tools available to assist you to build the perfect resume or perhaps you might prefer to engage the services of a professional resume writer if you’re feeling a little out of your depth. A resume builder can help utilize templates and other tools to help you build your own resume with ease. However, you choose to have your resume written, make sure it has enough “wow” factor to impress any prospective client straight off the bat.
Joe Flanagan is a Senior Consultant at Velvet Jobs, a resume builder, job search and outplacement service. When he’s not helping candidates find their next job you can find him running
