For the next seven days you’ll find excerpts here from my e-book, Upshift Now! The Executive’s Guide to Winning a Higher Position.

Despite the title, it’s a book for anyone seeking help in a job search,  not just executives. Times are tough and I think we all need guidance from time to time.

If you have comments on the book, please post them here at the blog. I’m interested in your suggestions.

If you would enjoy getting a complete PDF of the book, send an email request to Paul@ShimmeringResumes.com.

You can find more information about resumes and other job search matters at ShimmeringResumes.

UPSHIFT NOW! Traps in the Job Search

Upshift Now! discusses ten common traps in the job search:

1. Aiming too low.

2. Failing to lay out your career goals in writing.

3. Focusing the resume on duties rather than achievements.

4. Sending your target an all-purpose resume.

5. Dashing off the cover letter.

6. Not preparing for the interview.

7. Thinking employers care how much you want the job.

8. Failing to network widely and actively.

9. Feeling you’ve failed if you don’t get an interview.

10. Feeling rejected if you interview and don’t get the job.

“What do you do?”

It’s one of the first questions strangers ask each other. That’s because your career is you, to a large extent. It consumes the largest part of your waking hours and shapes your habits of thought. It’s part of your definition.

Your career can also bestow huge rewards, such as wealth, esteem, power, fame, satisfaction, and pleasure in the work itself. Your career is where you exercise your talents and showcase yourself. It is, or can be, a major route to fulfillment.

This book will help you maximize those rewards. It will give you an edge and help you achieve the career you want.

For though you have probably worked years to gain specialized training, many others have done so too. But relatively few ever study job transition skills.

Yet transition skills matter almost as much as job skills themselves. The better you become at them, the faster and higher you rise.

And mastery is open to anyone.

So they greatly repay the investment of time and thought. Yet because no college has a Job Transition Skills Department, and few even offer a course in the discipline, ambitious people tend not to study it. That’s a serious error in today’s world.

You may not realize exactly how much a successful job transition is worth to you. Most people don’t.

It’s easy to get a general idea. Let’s say you act astutely and move up from a $200,000 job to a $300,000 job at age 45. You likely have 20 more years ahead. Assuming equivalent annual pay increases and promotions, the difference between the two tracks is $100,000 x 20, or $2,000,000. That’s how much a single, well-focused job search may change your life.

And it’s just the beginning. For with higher position come greater bonuses, stock options, and retirement benefits, as well as status, impact, and contacts. The move can easily be worth $4 or $5 million. It can be worth even more.

And note that this example takes place at the height of a career. At age 25, the benefits are much greater, because they have more time to multiply. The earlier you rise, the higher you go.

This book will give you strategy and an array of suggestions for making such transitions. Use of a single idea presented here can tilt the balance and turn second-place into success. If so, this book was almost certainly the best investment you’ve ever made.

In the following pages we’ll lay out the key elements for your job quest. They include:

•    Grasp of your goals. Know yourself and you’ll find better jobs.

•    The resume. Do you have the experience and talent for the position? The resume establishes your credentials and makes your case.

•    The cover letter. This important document creates the first impression. Write it at the last minute and it can sink you.

•    The interview. What kind of person are you? Do you get swiftly to the heart of issues? Are you are good fit for the organization? The interview helps answer these questions and leads to the final decision.

•    Executive search firms. Executive search firms, or headhunters, add a layer but can hasten your progress.

•    Your network. Networking is critical, at every stage from discerning opportunities to divining the corporate landscape before an interview.

•    Perspective. Perspective keeps your search running. It’s easy to get a false, disheartening view of the process, and this chapter shows how to see it objectively.

Think of these as the tools you’d need for a prospecting trip. The better you know them, the more likely you’ll return with a strike.

To receive a complete PDF of Upshift Now! send an email request to: Paul@ShimmeringResumes.com.

You can find more information about resumes and other job search matters at ShimmeringResumes.

Your career consumes the largest part of your waking hours and shapes your habits of thought. It’s part of your self-image. It can also bestow huge rewards. This book shows how to navigate your career and maximize those rewards, and ultimately achieve the life you want.

Upshift Now! will help you with your resume, which is essentially a marketing device. It’s a biography too, but a very special one: brief and almost all highlights. Your thesis is: I am the person to hire. I’ll give you the best payoff. The entire nature of the resume flows from that. Upshift Now! contains critical checklists, and its tips on language, focus, style, and format will help you pass the screener’s 15-second test and win interviews.

Upshift Now! will reveals the art of learning about a job before anyone else, and explains how to make valuable contacts and nurture them throughout your career.

Upshift Now! will prepare for  interviews, offering invaluable tips on preparation, as well as many other techniques to make a strong impression. It also tells you how to apply them at just the right time.

As President of Shimmering Resumes, I have spent years perfecting the strategies of career management. I summarize them for you in this book you can download immediately. You can’t do your career over again. So click here to get UpShift Now!

Let Paul make your career history shimmer.

Go to Shimmering Resumes.