3 Reasons Your Resume Brands You As A Commodity - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career

3 Reasons Your Resume Brands You As A Commodity - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career You wouldnt describe yourself as a commodity, would you? You especially wouldnt describe yourself as a commodity when looking for a job Who would say in a job interview, You should hire me because Im exactly the same as everyone else? So youre probably thinking, Id never write a resume that makes me look like everyone else. Would it surprise you to learn thats exactly how your resume brands you as a commodity? Here are a few simple tests to tell if youre selling yourself as a commodity: Unclear: At first glance, if your resume isnt crystal clear to your audience about what job youre looking for, then your brand reflects that you really dont know what job you want. Skills and responsibilities: When your resume lists skills and responsibilities, you brand yourself as being the same as anyone else that has similar skills and responsibilities. Lack of candidate superiority: If your resume doesnt clearly show why youre a superior candidate, then you brand yourself as being the same as your competition. Now ask yourself, does your resume pass these three tests? So, how did we end up branding ourselves as sheepdescribing ourselves just like everyone else? Weve been taught to describe ourselves this wayand its been reinforced so often that it just seems right. There are 3 basic reasons we brand ourselves as commodities: College Placement: Your college placement office is at the center of it all. College placement offices taught you how to brand the college as the provider of a consistent quality of worker. Your college placement office didnt teach you to brand yourself, because that would teach you how to look different and unique. Your college placement office branded itself by teaching graduates to write resumes that look exactly alike with a common format, common look and almost identical information they published graduates consistent resumes in a book or eBook, which they sold to employers. Think back to college if your resume wasnt consistent with the placement offices standards, it was rejected remember? For those of you who didnt go through college or grad school placement, your high school career counselors taught you what they learned in college to brand yourself like everyone else. Candidate Shortages: From WWII until 2007, the US and Western European economies had shortages of candidates and skills there just werent enough workers to supply growing economies. Even during US recessions, there were shortages of skilled workers (just smaller levels of shortages). In 2007, the combination of the great recession, increased productivity and ability to source labor globally (both thanks to the internet) caused fundamental changes to demand for workers. Candidate shortages were replaced by job shortages. When there were candidate shortages you could be a commodity and still get a job. It wasnt as critical to differentiate yourself pre-2007, because employers couldnt find enough people with just the basic skills needed for the job. Today, there are many candidates who have the basic required skills for most jobs (yes, even management/executive jobs), so demonstrating skills makes you look like just about every other candidate like a commodity. Reinforcement: Since job markets have only changed recently, most of the career advice given is traditional based on the pre-2007 job market of candidate shortages. Youll find this traditional but obsolete job search advice everywhere. Most articles, recruiters, outplacement, many career coaches, career articles and free career advice from government, community, church, alumni resources still use traditional job search techniques as the basis of their advice. These folks dont intentionally mean you any harm. The job market changed so quickly and so profoundly, that even most career professionals havent caught up yet to incorporate different suggestions for a new environment. We might even include a 4th reason society. Society teaches us to blend in, to fit in, to show were the same as everyone else. Even from childhood, in order to succeed in school and society, were taught how to be the same as everyone else. Even the football stars and valedictorian are taught rules to fit in so how can we help describing ourselves basically the same as everyone else. Branding yourself as a commodity is a choice you dont have to do it. Most of us dont even realize that were selling ourselves as a commodity because we just dont know another way Stay tuned for next weeks column and learn how to brand yourself as the unique solution to a specific employers individual needs. Author: Phil Rosenberg is President of  reCareered.com, a leading job search information website and career coaching service. Phil also runs the Career Central group, one of Linkedin’s largest groups for job seekers and has built one of the 20 largest personal networks on Linkedin globally. Check out one of Phil’s complimentary job search webinars at reCareered.com/newsletter.