Archives for August 2007

Animal Career Secrets Explores Resumes. All content copyrighted 2007 by Diana L Guerrero. Some rights reserved.

Okay, even though I said I’d back off to posting three times a week—I had a thought. What kind of edge can you get when you first start seeking a career with animals? I had to think back (way back) to when I just got out of high school and didn’t have much experience.

One of the first things I did was find a professional resume person to help me out. I had volunteer experience but no paid positions under my belt. She spent loads of time helping me to pull out what skills I had and what other things I had done to work toward my goal. The result was a professionally done resume that didn’t look to empty. Now I have to cut and choose what to include because I have too much experience!

When you are starting out you want to make sure you take a few steps to help you be successful in your job hunt:

1. Take a personal inventory and list the qualities you believe are the strongest.
2. Next list animal experiences under your belt followed by any courses you have taken to contribute to your goal of a career with animals.
3. Ask friends, family, and employers for an evaluation of what strengths and weaknesses you have. Include those into your list and plan on working on those areas where you are weak.
   
4. Plan on investing in a good professional resume since your resume is the first impression someone is going to get of you—to get a competitive edge make it a good one.
5. Finally, each resume should also be specific to the animal job you are seeking.

I’ll have more tips on this later—but get started so you can get an overview of what you might look like on paper.

Diana L Guerrero is an animal career specialist and has extensive experience in many areas of the animal world. A well known animal expert, she has worked professionally with animals for over thirty years. Guerrero is the author of several books and the host of the syndicated, Ark Animal Answers.