By now, you'll probably be used to me occasionally 'rolling a grenade' into the comfort zone of conventional thinking. Well, let me do that one more time.

Resumes! I've lost count of how often people, especially those with 'grey hair', express concern about their resume. Those 'grey hair' individuals admit to being intimidated at having to compete with younger applicants. They're fearful that their resume just won't stack up, and maybe I've got some magic prose to fix it.

Well, whenever these otherwise talented and dynamic people ask my advice on how to fix their resume, I challenge them on why they should even HAVE a resume. I've made this point in a previous article. A resume is a document that helps you plead your case for being considered for a job. But why even PUT yourself in a position of pleading for a job?

Think about it. If you were invited in by a company in a consulting capacity and given free rein to probe what is happening (and NOT happening) in that organisation, how many suggestions could you make to improve things? ... Initiatives to reduce the debtors, cut down on the time it takes to get orders out, to eliminate inefficiencies in the operations division, to increase the number of proposals that convert into sales ...

Look, I can't possibly know your particular expertise. But what I can suggest is that, given the opportunity to go into an organisation, my educated guess is that you'd be able to make some suggestions for improvements or new systems and processes that would add ... ten thousand, a hundred thousand, a half a million dollars to their profit line over the next year or two.

You could, couldn't you? Of course you could! If not for the vast practical experience you've gained at the coalface, then the mere fact that (in this hypothetical example), you accepted the brief to FOCUS on identifying issues, the odds are in your favour that you could deliver some pretty spectacular enhancements. Am I not right on this?

Here's my point. Contrast this scenario where you go in as a problem solving expert ... to a situation where you go in to the company as an applicant after a job, via a resume that gets buried in the pile.

When you look at that contrast, why would ANYONE (with the sort of experience you've got) put themselves at such a disadvantage? If you have even a hint of entrepreneurialism in your veins, wouldn't it be better to FIND WAYS to get invited in as the 'expert'?

Not only does this put you in control of your destiny. You deliver MORE VALUE to the company too. After all, their existing employees don't have the focus, the time (or perhaps care enough) to step back and take such a strategic look into the company like an outside 'expert' does.

And something else. If your resume lucked it for you, and you GOT the job, what are they going to PAY you to work there as an employee? $2,000 a week? $3,000?

Contrast that to going in as that 'expert', with authority and confidence, DEMONSTRATING potential outcomes in the hundreds of thousands of dollars ... The 'expert' bills the company what? ... $30,000 for the solution, and takes a month to deliver? And funnily enough, the company is happy to pay because they've been shown the extra payoff, not the expense of another wage.

Get rid of the 'wage' mentality, and anything is possible.

Lots and lots of organisations have a crying need for solutions to problems festering in their operations. And/or opportunities going untapped. Why not be the highly paid expert who goes in to make it happen?

Oh, and when you demonstrate to the management WHAT needs to be done, and explain HOW you're going to do it, with case studies of how you've done it before, are they going to be interested in your ... resume?

Want to learn HOW to achieve this? Go to:

How to Build Your SELF-EMPLOYED CONSULTANT Business

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