Recognizing and Highlighting Your Areas of Expertise in the Trades

With the economy the way it currently is, it is now more important than ever to make yourself stand out when applying for a job. The first step toward successfully marketing yourself as a potential employee is designing an attention-grabbing resume. The best way to achieve this is to showcase your areas of expertise or core competencies. These are traits that you possess or operations that you excel at.

Since each trade has its own set of requirements that basically define the job, avoid choosing everyday functions, and concentrate on skills that are more difficult to acquire/master or traits that not everyone possesses. For instance, if you are applying to be a Carpenter, it is almost pointless to list qualities such as “power tool operation” or “building construction” – the first skill is a must for individuals working in our technology-driven society, whereas the second skill is vary vague. Instead, pick items like “blueprint interpretation”, “cabinet making”, “site supervision”, “vendor relations”, etc. These are the hard qualities that you can list on their own. As for soft traits that you may wish to weave into an introduction paragraph or job responsibilities, you might include things such as “time management”, “multi-tasking”, “communication skills”, etc.

If you are struggling to ascertain what qualities make you unique, take some time to sit back and reflect on your day-to-day routine at work. Start at when you arrive at work. Do you get there before everyone else? This is a soft trait that can be mentioned. You may word it as: “Track record for showing up early to ensure that the day’s schedule is already planned out and well organized” or “Willing to work extra hours to make certain that the job is completed on time or ahead of schedule”.

Move throughout the course of your day thinking about your typical routine, and what makes you stand out from your co-workers. Is there anything your co-workers turn to you for? Are there more difficult jobs that you are asked to perform before anyone else? Is there information that you possess that you are often asked to share with others? If so, all of these things can be mentioned in various places throughout your resume including job responsibilities or your opening paragraph. You may want to write these traits as: “Mentor co-workers”, “Requested to perform more intricate tasks”, or “Serve as a reference point for new and existing employees”.

Once you have determined what your top ten strongest qualities are, you can write them into the introduction paragraph of your resume or list them immediately after this intro. The most effective method of the two is to list your hard or technical qualities on their own, giving them a bold or italicized affect to grab the reader’s eye, and mention your softer qualities (i.e. personality traits) in your opening paragraph.

By bringing both hard and soft qualities to the front, you are able to effectively market yourself, pique the reader’s interest, and immediately demonstrate why they must hire you over the other guy.