The biggest mistake people make is leaving out their key differentiators.

What do employers really want to know about you? They want to know that you produce results.

• What problems have you solved?
• Did you serve as a project or team leader? Mentor to others?
• Have you helped the company save money, improve efficiency or increase productivity?

And it doesn’t stop here. Anywhere that you can, you need to quantify and quality your achievements:

• How many dollars did you save the company by your efforts?
• How much in additional business did you bring in?
• What was the percentage increase you brought about in productivity, safety, efficiency…?

In a tight job market, and as a young person just starting out in general, it’s important to include these extras to make you stand out in a sea of typical resumes and typical candidates.

That being said, while you’re busy growing up and become a professional, your resume also needs to grow up. Here’s how you do it:

1. If you haven’t already, get rid of anything highschool related. No one cares what your GPA was junior year or that you were captain of the math team. If you went to a prestigious high school (like many people in St. Louis), think about getting active in the alumni association and putting that in a Community Involvement section.
2. Unless you had a very important leadership or employment role, you can probably remove most of your club or social involvement from college too. If you were a part of a Greek organization that may help for networking, get involved in the alumni association and put that in your Community Involvement section too.
3. Move your education information down underneath your work experience. Now that you have job experience, that’s a lot more important that your liberal arts degree that everyone else has, too.
4. Add an executive summary displaying your key skills and traits as well as your specific objectives for career development. Let’s face it, after graduation your objective literally translated to “please give me a job, any job.” Now that you’ve been out in the real world for a couple years, it’s important to know where you want to go next and what you’ll bring to your next employer.

To demonstrate the before and after of a resume makeover after a first job, check out Chris Mann’s new resume and his first resume out of school.

Still not sure how to make your resume mature with your career? E-mail me.

I have a lot of friends that have been out of school for about 2 years now that are ready to make a move to a second job, but aren’t sure about what to do in an unstable market. Hoover’s article explains what to expect from the process, including moves that can help or hurt your career in the long term.

If I could offer you some advice, I’d tell you to do something that you love. Something that you don’t mind getting there early to do or staying late. Don’t know what you want to do? You need to get out there! Intern. Job shadow. Go on informational interviews. Volunteer. You’ll learn best by doing.

When at all possible, work with people that you respect and will make you a better person. I have been extremely fortunate to work with people like this.

Your personal brand is important. Who you know and what you’ve done… that’s who you are. Network. And never burn bridges.

If you’re interested in getting into interactive marketing, do it. Our generation is naturally more tech savvy because we’ve grown up doing it. Read blogs. Check out web sites. Talk to people in the business.

Keep idea books. Bookmark web sites you like or articles that have good ideas in them. Part of what makes people successful in marketing is knowing what’s already been done… and how you can apply similar principles to your clients and innovate by improving on what’s already out there.

Then, to my surprise, I came across an article today: 10 job hunting tips for this year’s college graduates. In his blog post, Edward Boches,  Chief Creative Officer of Mullen, offers some very similar tips for how to get hired in advertising right out of school.

Did you know that 30 percent of hiring managers think that interviewees do not provide sufficient answers to questions during interviews? The best way to prevent insufficient answers in your own interviews is to prepare for difficult questions ahead of time.

1. Tell me about yourself. Spend about a minute or so talking about your education, work history and recent experience.

2. What do you know about our company? Demonstrate you’ve done research on their products/services, reputation, goals and even organizational challenges without going into too much detail.

3. Why do you want to work for us? See my post on three easy ways to score interview points.

4. Why should we hire you? Talk about your accomplishments, combined with your skills and interests make you a valuable addition to the company. Mentioning your ability to set priorities, identify problems, and using your experience to solve them are all good ways to demonstrate that you’re a smart choice for the position.

5. What’s your biggest strength? Don’t pick just one! Determine which strengths would fit best with the position for which you are applying and give examples of how you’ve applied your strengths to measurable successes. (“I believe my greatest strengths are my leadership and time-management skills. During my last major project, I headed a team that surpassed my manager’s expectations and came in ahead of schedule.”)

6. What’s your greatest weakness? Tell the truth by sharing a real weakness. The important thing is to emphasize what steps you’re taking to improve yourself. (“Unfortunately I have a tendency to procrastinate. In order to overcome that problem, I’ve started breaking down large projects into smaller, more manageable tasks to make sure I stay on time and on task.”)

7. Why are you leaving your current job? Don’t spend too much time detailing this answer. Regardless of your answer, be truthful because employers do check references!

8. What did you like best about your last job? The worst? Avoid personality problems or negative responses. Talk about what you liked about the position and then what you’re looking for in your next position.

9. What are your long-term goals? Relate your goals back to the company with which you are interviewing: “At a company like XYZ, I would like to…”

10. What are your salary requirements? Avoid exact numbers for as long as you can politely do so. Early in the interview process, you may say you need to know more about the position’s responsibilities before you could give a meaningful answer to that question. Continue to emphasize you’re most interested in finding out more about the opportunity than talking about money. Try to find out whether there is a salary range attached to the job prior to the interview by doing research. So if you’re pressured to give a number, you can share that based on your understanding of the job, an appropriate range is between X and Y dollars.