Insider career resources, insights and tactics from Resume Worded

Every week, I research and send you the best career strategies in this 2-minute round-up email. My goal is to make it easy for you to get new ideas and mindsets that make a real difference to your career (that you won't find anywhere else). If you don't find them useful, please unsubscribe at the bottom of this email.

Today, I put together 8 career ideas and hacks that have changed my life that I think you might find useful over the next year. I've handpicked some of them from emails I've sent over the past year, with new ones I've been wanting to share. Let's dive in!

1. Be more specific about your career goals. Then reverse engineer them. The more specific you are about what you want, the easier it is to identify the best path you need to take to get there.
2. Send speculative, helpful emails to people you admire, expecting nothing in return. Get into the habit of simple, regular networking. For example, the next time you come across an interesting piece of content, send an email to the author telling them about your favorite part or your perspective. 
3. My productivity 'hack' — this approach works wonders for me, try it:
   • Create your daily to-do list the night before. Every night, I spend 5 minutes deciding the 1 big task, 3 medium tasks, 5 tiny tasks I need to do the next day. 
   • On the 1st of every month, I decide the core themes I need to focus on for the month.
   • Make sure daily tasks are aligned with monthly themes.
   • Bonus: Try this free Chrome extension to help you focus — it's got Pomodoro timers and focus music.
4. Great careers aren't usually structured. Don't just expect a standard linear climb, and don't 'over-plan'. Just remember to follow opportunity, take responsibility, prioritize your personal growth — you don't know where your big career wins will come from.
5. Networking tip: Rather than only trying to connect with CEOs and VIPs, look for people 1 or 2 steps ahead of you. Their advice will be more relevant + they'll be more likely to help you out. Example: find and connect with someone who recently made a career change you're trying to make. 

6. Simple email 'hacks' for professional emails. Most of us use phrases like 'I think', 'sorry' or 'maybe' too frequently — and they make us appear less confident. Here are before/after examples on how to fix this:
   • Before: "I'm no expert but I think we maybe should do..."
     • After: "We should do..." or "I recommend we do..."
   • Before: "I'm so sorry for the delay..."
     • After: "Thanks for your patience"
   • Before: "I'm just checking in"
     • After: "I'm checking in"
   • Before: "Sorry for contacting you out of the blue"
     • After: "It's nice to meet you"
   • Before: "Apologies for [missing your email / making a mistake / etc]"
     • In general, be less apologetic in professional emails!
7. Be proactive to increase your 'luck surface area': Of course, luck plays a big part in our career. But there are ways to increase the amount of 'luck' we get. The more we go out of our way to create new opportunities (e.g. build your personal brand, etc), the better your odds are of being 'lucky'. 
8. Job search tip: Do what others aren't doing. 95% of people do the same thing on their job search — e.g. they mass apply to jobs on Indeed or LinkedIn using 'one-click apply' and play the 'waiting' game. But you can easily stand out if you do things slightly different. Here are 5 ways:
   • Optimize your resume for hiring managers and resume screeners.
   • Send a note to the hiring managers after you apply for the job.
   • Add the right keywords to your resume for each job you apply to. 
   • Send the hiring manager a sample of you already doing the job — for examples if you're applying for a sales role, send them a list of 10 prospects and how to target them. If you're applying for a marketing role, write up a marketing strategy they should try.
   • Optimize your LinkedIn profile so recruiters find and contact you, and not the other way around.

We're also just a day away from 2022! I'm curious, what's your #1 goal or resolution for 2022? Do you have one? Hit the reply button, and let me know.

I hope you found today's email useful! If you did, I'd love if you could share it with just one person in your network who might also find it useful. 

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Take care and happy holidays!

- Rohan

P. S. I try to make this the most actionable email you receive all week. If you've read this far, I'd really appreciate a 1-line reply on what you thought of my email or which tip you found most useful — I read every single reply. Or, you can leave a one-line review on my emails here.

P. P. S. If you're using Gmail and this email showed up in your Promotions tab, drag it to your Primary Inbox so you don't miss the career insights I'll be sharing over the next month.