As you know, any resume that is going to consistently work needs to be developed with the goal in mind. This not only means targeting for the specific position, but taking into account the environment in which it will be ready. The networking resume can be a little different and its regular job search counterpart.
One of the major differences is that your resume review is in a different state of mind than your garden variety human resources professional reviewing your resume along with perhaps 100 others. The networking resume is not swimming upstream with dozens of others, so it’s reader can concentrate more on the content. In the standard job search, your resume has ten seconds or less to impress the reader. As such, everything from content inclusion to layout and design is geared toward delivering enough of a punch to clear the first hurdle to get you into the interview. When your resume is read by someone within your network, you already have their attention. This allows you some latitude in how you lay out your information and then what you include.
There are also cases where your networking resume may want to go into more or less detail than you would for a standard submission, depending upon the situation. If your contacts know you pretty well and are familiar with your background and accomplishments, then perhaps your networking resume does not require a great deal of detail. The reader is someone familiar with you and your background already. So in this case, more of an outline style resume maybe all that you need. Then again, perhaps for this reader they are looking for details on a more complex background. Where as your standard job search resume may not be able to go into this detail because of space limitations, you’re not working resume has the latitude to do so.
The networking resume has the benefit of knowing exactly what the reader dates. Because of this, we are able to sidestep some of the standard rules and guidelines of the process. As always, the name of the game is to give the reader what they need to pull the trigger. When putting together you are networking resume, think of your reader and what they will need to see. And don’t be afraid to violate some of those rules that you have learned in the past. After all, you are trying to win a job, not a contest.
