Where’s Your Brag Book?

When you were little, someone close to you-- a big sister/brother, grandmother, Mom—probably kept a book of exceptional pictures of you doing things that made you special. Parents would show friends and relatives this “Brag Book” to any unsuspecting victim without warning. Some of us were fortunate [or unfortunate, depending on your perspective] to have mothers who created incredible scrapbooks with our pictures, drawing, utterances, comments on the passing scene in general, all in full color with decorations and pains-taking love.

As we grew, we learned to keep our own brag book, only we called it a scrap book. Mementos, souvenirs, newspaper announcements, sports awards—all sorts of great stuff relating to our passage. Many of us now keep an electronic scrapbook using My Space or Facebook technology to chronicle our successes and fun moments in our lives. This is a great way to capture what’s important to us and to share it with friends.

When it comes to work, however, how may of us have our professional brag book to share with recruiters or prospective employers? Most of us, when asked to prepare or revise our resume to demonstrate our value to an employer, just can’t do it. How many times have we heard that “I’ve just been doing my job and not keeping track of how I contributed to the company”? Well, in our competitive society, we better be able to set ourselves apart and have concrete examples of the ways we’ve made contributions to our employers, or we won’t make the cut.

Jason Alba, CEO and Founder of Jibber Jobber.com [http://www.jibberjobber.com]
calls these “brag books”--Job Journals. His great website offers a way for us to list and manage our contributions over the course of our careers. Now there’s just no excuse for not remembering what you did on the job last year!

In our career transition practice, we insist that resumes be professional, targeted and performance driven. They must pass a fundamental test by answering the reader’s basic question—“What can you do for us? Your resume must be filled with accomplishments, achievements, strengths and not duties and responsibilities. Tell the reader how great you are and demonstrate it! Show them your professional Brag Book!



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