I’ve written about the benefits networking resumes versus a full page resumes you’re used to writing.   A networking resume is a card that’s easy to hand out at networking events when you are looking to make contact with people that can help you with your job hunt.   I’ve also delivered several presentations on this topic these past months.  What I have found is that job hunters always come up to me afterwords thanking me for the information.  They see very clearly how they can put a networking resume to work right away as part of their job hunts.

In this post, I’m starting a series of articles to get your writing a networking resume and how to put it to use in finding that next job.

Step 1- Set Some Very Clear Goal

A while back I wrote an article called “Without Written Goals, You’re Alice in Wonderland.” In it I describe the results of an exercise I went through to write down my career goals.  There’s nothing like writing down goals to get yourself focused in a specific direction.

In my opinion, writing a networking resume is the easy part…assuming you know what your goal is. Formatting and printing the card is even easier.  Again, that’s assuming you know the job and career you want for yourself.

What I typically find when I’m talking to job hunters is they have dedicated little time, if any, to goal setting. Their worry over loosing their job has them preoccupied.  They are concern over the finances.  They have a bruised inside as a result of taking a serious personal/professional hit.   This means many haven’t begun to consider:

• What they reall want to do next
• Where they’d like to be doing that next job
• How they’re going to get there

If you haven’t written down your goals, please hold off before writing your networking resume. If have any doubt about what you want out of your career or your next job, commit yourself to figuring it out NOW.  Make it your top priority to discover for yourself where you want to take your career.  This investment of time will definitely pay for itself.

OK, so I’ve convinced you write down your goals.  How do you got about it?  My answer is get yourself a book or resource with a questionnaire, a set of steps, exercises or something designed for getting your through the process.

Now I’m not going to get you this far and leave you hanging. I’m recommending two resources to help you organize your thoughts and think about your objectives, goals, dreams, whatever you want to call them. Only after you’ve gone through this step should you proceed to writing your networking resume.

First Recommended Resource: I highly recommend a book called “Breakthrough: I Hate My Job, Need a Life, Got Laid Off, Can’t Get No Satisfaction Solution”  The book’s written by Jeannette Kraar who is a Career Jockey frequent contributors.  She’s a career coach and business consultant that I’ve known for several years.

In chapter 1 and 2, she runs you through a set of questions and exercises.  She gets you to answer some questions then helps you organize your answer.  You can use this information for a full CV, but in our case we’ll be using it to write your networking resume.

I know you’ll like her writing style. It’s fun, entertaining and most importantly, rock solid for figuring out what you want to accomplish.  You can get yourself a copy by clicking right here off of Amazon.com. I believe so much in the book, I’m working on making Jeannette’s book available as a discounted Career Jockey e-book you can download and start reading in about 2 minutes. I’ll be making this available right here as soon as it’s ready.

Second Recommended Resource: “Guerrilla Resumes” by Kevin Donlin is the second one.  You can read many of his articles on Career Jockey as well.  His book starts with a section on figuring out where you want to go with your job search and career.  In the first three chapters of his book, he provides a questionnaire for doing exactly that. Chapter three is called “Before You Start Writing Your Resume.”   (You should me noticing that resume writing books all start off goal setting.)

The questions are very specific and then the book continues with the ingredients for creating what he calls the guerrilla resume. He’s got a lot of ideas for getting yourself noticed compared to everyone else. This one is available by clicking right here to go to his website site.

You’ll be able to use this to define your goals and get you ready to write your business card resume.

This is the end of this articles, but I’ll be following it up next week with Part 2 with Step 2 – Writing Your Networking Resume.