Career Directors International Announces 2008 Conference: Seattle

I just received an e-mail from Laura DeCarlo this morning announcing that the 2008 Career Directors International conference will be in Seattle from Oct. 15-18, 2008!

CDI puts on an amazing conference, but I've never been able to make one, due to prior conflicts with my favorite local passion, college hockey. I haven't seen the 2008-09 UNO Hockey schedule yet (and probably won't know until Spring), but I'm hopeful that I'll be able to make the Seattle conference, as the hotel looks amazing.

You can check out photos from the 2007 conference in San Antonio here. The conference featured presentations by Don Straits, Louise Kursmark, Deb James, Marty Weitzman, Joelle Silva, Cory Edwards, Grant Cooper, Sharon Pierce-Williams, Heather Wieshlow, Nona Pratz, Judy Ware, Susan Guarneri, and more!

If you are interested in being considered as a speaker for the "Reach for the Stars...Capture Success" 2008 conference, contact Laura!

Joelle Silva, Grant Cooper, Sharon Williams, Barbara Adams, and Lisa Becker take a break at the reception. (Photo by Laura DeCarlo)

Create Passive Income by Selling Special Reports

For years, I heard about resume writers who wrote informational guides and sold them to their clients and prospects, generating passive income. But it all seemed so complicated -- requiring shopping carts, and autoresponders, and HTML coding. Bleh!

So when I wanted to sell our first special report, "Making Money as a Resume Subcontractor," as an electronic download, I started doing some research. And I found a service that integrates easily with PayPal and that even I could figure out. Best of all, you can sell $100 in products using a basic account before you have to pay anything.

What kind of informational products could you offer? Although Kim Isaacs offers hers as lead generators for her resume services, she could easily sell her special reports-- 4 Quick Fixes For Your Resume and Top Resume FAQs -- for a couple of dollars each.

You could create a directory of local employment resources -- including recruiters and their specializations, top employers, and training sources -- and sell it for $5 or$10 dollars as an electronic download. Write a good "generic" topic that's not too self-promotional, and you can even set up Payloadz to track affiliate sales -- tell me about it and we'll get your colleagues to sell your products on their websites too!

It's easy. Write your special report. Create a PDF. Sign up with Payloadz. Put your product online. Promote it in e-mails and on your website.

Looking for ideas for your special report? Order Special Report #20 from The Publicity Hound: How to Write and Market Profitable Special Reports.

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"Scannable Resumes Becoming Obsolete"

With the increase in companies accepting resumes electronically, scannable resumes will soon be a thing of the past, says Pat Criscito, author of E-Resumes.

I talked to Pat today via phone as a follow-up to my article on "Knowing Just the Right Thing to Say: Using Keywords Correctly in Resumes" in the September/October 2007 issue of Resume Writers' Digest.

Companies are getting more of their resumes over the Internet, says Criscito, so they're not investing as much in systems to scan resumes manually. She notes that this can be a benefit for resume writers, as the formatting limitations of resumes designed to be scanned often hindered resume writers.

Criscito is revamping her recommendations on electronic resumes for the second edition of "How to Write Better Resumes and Cover Letters," to be released early in 2008.

Speed Resume Writing

For some resume writers, speed and turnaround time can be a competitive advantage. However, for every resume writer, meeting client deadlines is critical. Because each resume is different (and each client is unique), it sometimes can feel like you're starting from scratch each time you sit down to start a project.

In addition to the tips published in my book, "Write Great Resumes Faster" (2nd edition), here are some ideas:

• Create an inspiration notebook. Some resume writers maintain a hard copy "library" of past projects, categorized alphabetically by job title. Others create a Word document into which they copy-and-paste Qualifications Profiles, lists of keywords, and cover letter closings.
• Develop a list of electronic resources you can count on. Creating a Word document with links to key online research sites can save you time searching Google for the right link. Or use the "Favorites" tool in your web browser to collect web links.
• Create a visual cue for your writing. Creating cluster "word maps" can be a useful way to organize your thoughts for a resume. Write the client's job title in the middle of a piece of paper and then draw "spokes" to key concepts you want to cover in the document.