Photo by stevendepolo

You like vanilla and that’s totally fine if we are talking about ice cream. Vanilla ice cream is rated as number two on this poll on About.com:

But in job search or in your resume, vanilla is not the best choice.

You want to differentiate yourself and make yourself different from all the other vanilla resumes.

I was having this conversation with my friend and colleague, Dawn Bugni, on Saturday. Fun facts you may not know about Dawn is that she has:

A Bachelor of Science degree in Business Management and credentials through The Career Management Alliance as a Master Resume Writer, (MRW) one of only 27, worldwide and  The Professional Association of Resume Writers as a Certified Professional Resume Writer (CPRW) round out her expertise.

That might give you a clue why I value her opinion and trust that when I want to test a resume strategy, she will give me a straight answer. We were talking on Saturday about job seekers who take accomplishment-driven Power-packed resumes and want to dilute them by making everything generic so it could fit anyone perhaps because they are in a panic.

If you were to put this same job seeker in their own field, they would be unlikely to dilute their product or service.

For example, say this person was a real estate sales person. If they were marketing a high end property, they would be unlikely to say, “You’ll love this property, it has a kitchen, bathroom, and two bedrooms” and leave it at that. Isn’t that pretty vanilla? Most residential properties do have a kitchen, bathroom and at least two bedrooms. No, they might say something like this:

Magnificent two story home located in desirable Rib Mountain! Wooded cul-de-sac with beautiful views of Rib Mountain and finished lower level with daylight windows. This dream kitchen has hard surface countertops, custom built hickory cabinets and wood flooring. Spacious family room with ceramic tile flooring, wood burning fireplace, vaulted ceilings and ceramic tile flooring. Large windows accent the family room bringing in the outside surroundings and lighting.

One size fits all or vanilla isn’t the solution for job seekers either. You need to sell your value and use strategic job search solutions to find the elusive new position.