Friday, September 30, 2011

One Anecdote: Patience and Tenacity in Your Job Search in this Economy

One of our Resume Boutique clients just landed a job after a long search.  A Connecticut-based lawyer, he moved to New York City and took a temporary position with the thought that soon he would land a full time job.  But within eight months, the New York legal market began to take a nose dive.  So he did what he had to do.  He was fortunate enough to work for on very long term projects for two firms.  He contacted us in the summer of 2010.  After he took the third temporary position, we recommended grouping all the contract work in one section rather than by law firms.  We continued to refine his resume during this process to present the temporary positions in a manner that enhanced but didn't detract from his credentials.  We also drafted numerous cover letters for different industries. The greatest concern regarding his resume was that there would be too many positions listed that might lead a recruitment professional to discard the resume without taking a second look.

Specifically, the contract work looked like this with bullet points below it summarizing the most relevant information from each position:

Contract Attorney, New York, NY
Aug. 2007 – Present
Contract lawyer for matters involving large financial, securities, and employment actions.  Representative work: