The belief that longer you are out of work, more difficult it will be to regain employment is understandable. However, it is important to stress that many people at one time or another have found themselves jobless whether through their own doing (such as taking a career break to raise children or scheduling a well-deserved holiday), or in situations that have been beyond their control such as with layoffs, redundancies or company closures.

So if you currently find yourself unemployed, don’t be discouraged as many have experienced job losses and have eventually re-established successful careers. Rather than letting fate take its course, they have implemented various strategies that increased their marketability to a potential employer, and believe it or not you too can follow these tactics and hopefully shorten gap that lays between where you are now and light at end of what –seems like a never-ending tunnel.

Following these initiatives should assist you in transforming a potential employment gap into a learning experience, and provide you with marketable solutions for use in your resume.

~ Demonstrate your commitment to remaining current with industry trends through reading publications, periodicals or trade journals, or even researching internet.

~ Join a professional association within your field and get involved. Not only is this another way of keeping current with industry trends, but also a fantastic opportunity to grow your network; meet and develop relationships with potential employers; and even generate/source some great job leads from other members of group.

~ Take a class or a professional development course to enhance your knowledge. You may even find yourself developing new skills that can open doors to a new and more challenging career path.

~ Consider possibility of providing advice in your line of expertise through consulting or projects/assignment work performed as part of your own business. This will allow you to develop strategic relationships with other companies, which could possibly lead to full-time employment, and/or allow you to continue developing your network of contacts.

Your resume is your initial handshake and must therefore not be second-guessed, so aim is to demonstrate your ability to fulfill their requirements and to build an interest in benefits and value you bring to organization. Strive toward developing a document that will motivate reader into action by requesting an interview.

So what strategies can be followed to create a professional marketing document that promotes your overall value and portrays you as a passionate contributor to ongoing success of company that demands an employment interview?

Here are some tips to inspire your writing:

~ Replace an uninspiring career objective with a succinct career profile that summarizes your expertise and includes accomplishment highlights with quantifiable results. This is bound to impress reader and concentrates on what you can deliver for them, rather than on what you want.

~ Incorporate industry-related key words as well as action words that will grab reader’s attention. For instance: