Weekly Workings: Your Leave-Behind

My new project for the week - creating a "leave-behind".  As I'm diving into this world of job hunting, folks have offered nuggets of info on what they do during interviews, how they fancy-up their resume, networking tips ... and it's up to me to figure out how to incorporate it all (and what to incorporate) into my overall job hunting plan. Whew ... it's work and it's tricky and it's hard! One of the tidbits I'm excited about - creating a "leave-behind", as my aunt calls it. It's that little packet of info you leave with the interviewers so they can get a more complete picture of who you are, rather than basing their opinions solely on your resume.


Here's what it entails:

Page 1 - Title Page
Put your name and "general" job title. Nice and simple.

Page 2 - Skills Overview
Create a paragraph highlighting your skills, your work, and your talents. Think of this as your 30-second pitch - you're work summary. Next, add some bullet points that highlight key areas/skills/clients/venues you'd like folks to remember and pick up on. My aunt added her photo on this page as well.

Page 3 - Key Projects

Pick out some high points in your career and showcase them here. These are the projects that may have been buried in your resume. Use this page to really highlight those points in your career you're proud of. Use the STAR technique to focus on important areas of the project - Situation / Task / Action / Result. What was the situation you were working on? What were you trying to achieve or task you needed to do? What action did you take? What were the result(s)? Remember, you can add images if that will help sell your story. Worked on a brochure? Great - now show it!

Page 4 - Point of View
As my aunt said - use this page to talk about how you view the world of what you do. Others may say "xyz", but I say "abc". What is special about what you do and how you think that would make you a better candidate than the others?

Page 5 - 30 / 60 / 90
Tell (and/or show) them what you would do in the first 30 days of holding this position. After the first month, focus on the next month and finally talk about three months out and how that would carry long-term. Use this section to show exactly what you can do for them.

Page 6 - Odds & Ends
Here is where you can personalize your "leave-behind" even more. Maybe there's a story or picture that connects to the position you're interviewing for. Any last minute thoughts you'd like to leave them with? Page six isn't a necessity (granted, none of these pages are) but don't be afraid to add a final, personal touch.


See, did that get your creative juices going? I've already been thinking about the super cool projects I've worked on and now I just need to write about how great I am. Yeah, I think I can do this. My goal - get a rough draft ready to review by Friday. Done and done!