Visualize Your Personal Brand With Wordle

Word Cloud of Scott's Resume

Do you know what your resume really says about you?

In many cases, the first time someone takes a look at it, they’ll be skimming through rather than pouring over all the specifics. It’s important to be consistent and deliberate when you decide what to include in (and leave out of) your resume, and pay special attention to your word choice. While it may be tempting to get bogged down with all the minute details, don’t neglect the overall message that your resume is sending to to the people who read it.

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Selling Your By-products: Student Edition

I was catching up on my RSS feeds over the weekend and came across a great post by Jason over at 37signals’ Signal vs. Noise blog, entitled “Sell Your By-products.”

The software and web industry can learn a lot from the lumber industry, the oil business, and corn and soybean farmers. They take waste and turn it into hefty profits.

It goes on to explain ways that software people can take the by-product of whatever it is they’re already doing (writing code, blogging, etc.), and use it to their advantage. I’ve been thinking about this over the past couple days, and I’ve come up with a few ways that students can take this same approach to add value to their job or internship search:

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Hello world! (Why I’m blogging)

This blog has been a long time coming. In such a frustrating job market, I’ve spent so much time lately with students, pushing the “blog” angle for personal branding purposes. I’ve explained how blogging is a great way to create a dynamic resume, demonstrate your area(s) of expertise, and begin networking with some of the leaders in your field.

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