Metaglossia: The Translation World

Not all opportunities are alike and neither should your strategy for presenting your information to potential leads. One of most costly mistakes job seekers make is to become lax with their resumes. They stop planning ahead and marketing themselves with resume strategies.

When you are looking for a new job, a resume is one of the first tools you develop to showcase your skills, work experience, education and qualifications. It’s not enough to create one resume, you should tailor the format and style to each audience.

If you are new to the job market or have been searching for a while, you will be faced with a broad array of decisions: to stay in your same field, change industries or perhaps explore the possibility of consulting in your area of interest.

A resume is much like a marketing brochure for a product. It gives the reader information about the product, and the goal is to create interest in the product that leads to a sale.

Your resume presents “you as the product” to the employer, providing information and creating a reason to bring you in for an interview.

On the other hand, if you are considering a consulting assignment, a chronological resume may not be the best approach. A professional biography, which typically is used for introductions (for speaking engagements, for example), may be what you need. While a resume highlights your work history, a biography is unlimited and gives you a creative edge because you don’t have to present information in chronological order.

Editorial
I recently received a phone call from a stranger who got my
number from a colleague of mine who is a professional
community interpreter. This pleasant and friendly
gentleman phoned to ask me if I could offer him
interpreting work. He explained to me that he had recently
got involved in interpreting quite by chance really. This
interpreter, a friend of mine, hired him to act as an
interpreter on a few occasions and he kind of liked it.
I rarely share work with other interpreters mainly because I
cannot complain of an excessive amount of it, however,
since this gentleman sounded so polite, I thought, I would
not cut him off rudely. So I asked him about his
qualifications. Quite evasively he informed me that he had
lived in Ireland for eight years.
But I persisted and finally found out that he is a drop-out
from an IT school and that he has no language related
qualifications. It annoyed me that someone thinks they can
work as an interpreter without any professional training. Will
he next phone a lawyer to ask him for some work?
However, it annoyed me even more that this man was sent
on interpreting assignments by a professional interpreter.
Are we interpreters shooting ourselves in the foot by...

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