If You Wait Until Tomorrow To Start, You'll Just Be Older

At the age of 40, my husband took up novel writing.

So I love seeing stories about successful people who began new careers at "ripe old ages," because when you work with jobseekers, so many of them find themselves starting over again … and sometimes they're not what they themselves would consider to be "spring chickens."

So when I came across this article from Inc. magazine, "Accomplish Great Things at Any Age," I just had to share.

How appropriate then, that the listing for my age -- 40 -- has to do with writing:
At 40, Mark Twain wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

You're never too old to start something new. And if you wait until tomorrow, you'll just be a day order. So don't wait. If there's something you've been wanting to try, just Start.

Portfolio Jobs: Everything Old is New Again

When I was in sixth grade, I remember learning about the concept of portfolio jobs. It was the "workplace of the future." Instead of having a job that lasted years and years, you might have two or three "project"-oriented jobs each year, working on defined tasks and then moving on. Or you might have a couple of part-time jobs instead of one full-time job.

That was back around 1984. In the intervening years, job tenures did become progressively shorter, and the "lifetime" job, where you started in the mailroom and retired as CEO, all but disappeared. The portfolio job hasn't really materialized … but the idea lives on.

I was reading the July 7-13, 2014 issue of Bloomberg Businessweek and came across a book review by Bryant Urstadt reviewing The Alliance, a book written by LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and entrepreneurs Ben Casnocha and Chris Yeh.

In the book, Urstadt says, Hoffman suggests keeping employees engaged by "setting up 'tours of duty' involving specific tasks such as managing groups, then mining the networks they form."

While not exactly the definition of portfolio careers I learned in the sixth grade, it's interesting that the project-oriented career is still being explored. It works well in Hollywood, where the "gig" lifestyle is geared around a movie: People are hired, do their jobs, and then move on to the next project.

Perhaps it's coming to the Fortune 500 company near you.

As resume writers, it's something to consider. Maybe there will be a whole new resume format that arises to help meet the need of describing this project-oriented career. After all, as anyone who has ever written a resume for an IT consultant or project manager knows, those resumes can easily stretch to 4, 5, or even 6 pages or more.

Urstadt writes, "Hoffman's ideas have grown out of an environment where young workers with elite backgrounds and big personal dreams are feverishly recruited under the guise of changing the world."

These are the clients who will be hiring us. If not now, they will soon be.

Food for thought, for sure.

Three of My Favorite Resume Writers To Read

Every day, I read the excellent writing of my resume writing colleagues ... and I wanted to make sure you're aware of them too! Got five minutes? Check out these three blogs. They're all "Bridget-approved" as being "resume-writer friendly." That means you won't find information on these blogs that I wouldn't share with my own clients.

Here are three of my favorites (in no particular order):

Julie Walraven of Design Resumes
Practical advice you can put "to work" right away
Here's one of my recent favorites from Julie:
"The Secret To Finding Your Accomplishments Or Resume Stories"

Jacqui Barrett-Poindexter of CareerTrend
She uses nautical themes and imagery to guide career journeys.
Here's one of my recent favorites from Jacqui:
Disrupt Your Resume Beyond LinkedIn's Borders

Jason Alba of JibberJobber.com
Sometimes controversial; always thought-provoking.
Here's one of my recent favorites from Jason:
"How To: Word Cloud and Key Word Analysis of Job Descriptions and Resumes"

How Do I Create Fillable Forms for My Resume Clients? (Q&A)

Every day, I get questions from resume writers! I reprint many of them on here to help other resume writers! Here's today's question!

Question:
I just updated my client agreement and some of my other forms and my graphic designer created some pretty PDFs for clients to fill out. How do I make these PDFs fillable forms so the clients can just put the information online and send it to me?

My Answer:
There are three options for giving clients an interactive way to complete your client forms. (And I would still post the "pretty" PDF versions for folks who don't want to provide their information online in any way, shape or form!)

The first allows you to use your actual PDFs. The only reliable method I know of to allow you to do that is using Adobe Acrobat Pro software:
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/convert-existing-forms-to-fillable-pdfs.html

It's now available as a monthly subscription vs. what it used to be as a one-time $$$$ cost.

There's also folks on Fiverr.com that will do this for you for a small fee.
Here's one:
http://www.fiverr.com/pdfhelper/create-pdf-fillable-forms-for-your-company

There are a couple of "knock-off" "fillable PDF" converters, but I can't speak to their reliability:
http://www.pdffiller.com
http://www.PDFill.com

The second is to use an online form builder.
I personally use FormSite. You can see an example of a FormSite form here:
http://acasseroletogo.com/onlineordering.html

You can also link FormSite to payment providers (like Authorize.net and PayPal) so that the client can securely provide their payment information online when they submit their information too.

(My husband is a website designer, and he uses FormSite on his client sites.)

JotForm (http://www.jotform.com) probably has similar functionality and like I said, if you use WordPress, you can use online forms like Gravity Forms, Ninja Forms as WordPress plug-ins.

The third option is a fillable Word document.
(Bronze members of BeAResumeWriter.com, you can log into your BeAResumeWriter.com account and go to the Pass-Along Materials page and check out the different versions of the Resume Critique Form and LinkedIn Critique Form to see how this works in practice.)

Here are the instructions for creating a fillable Word document:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word-help/create-a-fillable-form-HA102840128.aspx

If you have a different version of Word (not as new), Google "Fillable Word document" and the version of Word you have (i.e., Word 2003). It actually was easier to make them in the old versions, but it's still pretty simple! :-)

I hope one of those solutions helps!


Note: None of these links are affiliate links, and I can't vouch for any of the services mentioned, except FormSite, which I personally use.