One of the most important documents you create in your career is your professional resume and your online resume.

It is the first impression of who you are as a tax professional. With three decades experience reviewing more than one million resumes, I understand what it takes to get a tax professional an interview with a company; and why doors are literally shut on tax professionals being considered for a tax job within 15 seconds.

Early on in my executive search career, I ran into a myriad of obstacles connecting tax professionals with the corporate decision-makers who ultimately hire them. There are actually many obstacles that will be discussed; however, the biggest is often your resume presentation. This is when 99% of tax professionals get screened out of the interview process. A majority of tax professionals simply fail to gain an interview with the written resume they presented.

This was a scenario I saw over and over again; tax professionals eliminated within 15 seconds because the person reviewing their resume did not understand it or it did not contain the information the company was searching for in a person. In my opinion, a resume screens you in or out in 15 seconds and then if they like what they see they will spend maybe three minutes more before they make a decision to see you.

Companies screen out great tax candidates every day unknowingly and opportunities for many are lost in the pile of paperwork or emails we receive every day. I learned of this early on in my career and sought a solution to save tax professionals from this unfair practice. It has happened to every one of you during your tax career. After having numerous people approach me for help this month in why they could not find a job, I knew it was important to share my deep knowledge with as many people as possible.

The majority of you are getting misguided advice from people who have no experiencing getting a tax professional through the front door of a corporation, public accounting firm or a law firm. You can go by others track record or you can view my track record and client list and decide who you should be listening to on the subject matter.

As an expert in making introductions of tax professionals to organizations worldwide, I realize most of the resumes presented to me will not be invited to interview with companies. They will be knocked out of consideration in 15 second resume glance.

Your resume must make an impact in 15 seconds or a prospective employer will quickly move on! They are glancing over your resume to find education, certifications, state admissions, employers, dates of employment and written communication style.

It is really important to place dates of employment at the end of the description of your responsibilities. The reason you place dates of employment after your responsibilities is that numbers people will look at numbers first. If they do not like the dates, they will disqualify you in the first 15 seconds. There is no good reason to display dates prominently on the first two lines because you want prospective employers to focus on education, experience and your ability to communicate in writing.

Learn from a couple of examples I encountered this week.

Candidate Resume #1: A tax professional came to me with a resume and asked why she could not get an interview with any companies. I encouraged her and pointed out the resume would knock her out in 15 seconds because the first thing my eyes went to on the right side of the paper where the dates of employment. These dates were so prominently displayed that this is where my eyes stopped on the resume first. I counseled her to place the dates at the bottom of each section of her responsibilities.

View The Resume Template

Want to know exactly what happened within two hours of these changes? We sent it on to a company she would love to work for and she was scheduled for an interview within two hours. This is one hundred percent a true story!

Candidate Resume #2: A tax lawyer with outstanding credentials wanted to move to a Big Four firm. He sent his resume to all of the firms and received rejection letters from them all. He received “Thank you but no thank you letters from two of the firms.”

I counseled this tax lawyer to place his online resume on https://www.taxconnections.com/membership/sign_up and utilize the
Tax Library to upload all of his Articles he posted as tax blogs on TaxConnections. I then advised him how to contact the firms directly and use his TaxConnections Professional Profile and his Tax Library to draw attention to his written communication skills. He has two offers as if this week!

It is all in the packaging of your tax skills and expertise that makes a huge difference in the number of opportunities you will have access to during your tax career. I built TaxConnections to package all your tax skills and expertise in order to gain you the respect you deserve throughout your tax career.

Online Resume

The smartest way to promote your tax skills and expertise to a prospective employer or client is to have an online resume that promotes you! As the CEO of www.taxconnections.com, my life has revolved around helping you be discovered by organizations who have no awareness that you even exist. The primary reason I built the site for tax professionals was to create a style of presentation on your professional life that is proven to work and keep people focused on you and your tax career. Take a look at the site metrics below for proof what we do works better for tax professionals than any other site in the market.

Look at these numbers from Amazon Alexa Analytics:

https://www.taxconnections.com/site-metrics

When people are looking for tax executives they are coming to TaxConnections to find tax professionals.TaxConnections  Professional Profiles actively promotes your tax reputation in front of millions of decision-makers who are looking for tax experts. No one knows if you are looking for an opportunity… unless you prominently state so in your Tax Professional Professional Profile Summary or if you are smartly packaging your career so people notice you and your professional accomplishments.

Wake up and understand every tax professional needs a presentation that is put together to build their reputation from the day they start their tax career. Invisibility online will have a significant on your tax career. If people do not know you exist, your tax career will suffer. Corporate tax professionals unknowingly are effected the most when they make no effort to be readily visible to a world searching for them.

Smart career management starts with making yourself available to the more than 2 billion people who now go online searching for tax expertise every year.

Before anyone even considers hiring you, they go to the web to research your qualifications!

Invest the time and effort in building a professional profile online and package your tax professional reputation smartly online in a way that draws people to you!

Visibility online builds trust with people and the amount of visibility you have will directly affect how many doors readily open for you  throughout your tax career.

Watch for my post tomorrow on how to “Build An Online Professional Summary”. It is important!

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