Make $7000 to $30,000 by Making ONE Resume Change
Posted by Jean Cummings on Mon, Mar 28, 2011 @ 08:44 AM
Ever wondered about how to handle the 
negotiations with an employer over a job offer? Most people just wing it and leave money on the table.There are some great books out there about how to optimize the offer. One key tip is to never be the first to put out a specific number. But I'm not going to talk about salary negotiation strategy as commonly understood today.
I'm going to talk about something that is usually not considered an important factor in salary negotiation, but I have found to be incredibly powerful. And that is the impact of a clearly defined value proposition in your resume and your LinkedIn Profile. Here are two stories.
Job Seeker One: A senior engineer got a job after only three weeks of job hunting with his new resume. (I am disguising information about this person to protect confidentiality.) He'd been searching with his old resume for a year with no luck, in part because he had switched to another field for a few years and wanted to return to engineering. To overcome that obstacle, we needed a really strong value proposition and we developed one. It was the reason he was asked for several interviews and had an offer from an industry-leading company right out of the gate.
He didn't love the compensation packaged offered - it was in the middle of the range for his position. He contacted me and I merely suggested that he point to the value prop in the resume. He did so and was offered $7,000/year more along with a full relocation package.
Job Seeker 2: An IT consultant (employee) got a job after only a couple of months of searching with his new resume. He'd had no success search with his old resume for about a year. We had spelled out his value proposition VERY CLEARLY in his resume. He received and accepted an offer at $30,000 more a year.
What's a value proposition in a resume look like? Here's one part of the engineer's value prop:
"Enabled identification of potentially catastrophic failures early in the product life cycle, thus reducing risk, slashing remedial costs downstream, and avoiding billions of dollars in possible losses from warranty claims."
Here's just one cell in a value table from the IT consultant's resume:
"As a result of (here I included a grid of personal attributes and impacts), the consulting firm gains contract extensions, more referrals, improved consultant billing & higher revenues."
If you were an employer, wouldn't you want the $$ results these people have proven they can provide? Your resume is a golden opportunity to turn your career gold into actual currency. Don't miss your chance!