Why am I still out of work? I’ve got the experience, the references and the degree. What else do these people want? The problem probably is that you don’t express what you have to its best advantage. It’s easy to trip yourself up when it comes to trying to get a job and even very smart people falter here. Most of us don’t have a lot of practice at finding jobs because we’re pretty good at doing them. So how do we go wrong?

1) First of all, how clear is your resume? Your work experience needs to well organized so that a person NOT IN YOUR INDUSTRY can understand what you did. It might be true that you performed all your tasks, but saying so is neither informative nor impressive. Resume space is far too valuable to waste with empty clichés so don’t use it to talk about how you’re a detail-oriented self-starter. Give us results and identifiable skills, that’ll tell us what we need to know about the kind of employee you are. Beware of grammatical mistakes and typos. A single keystroke or misplaced word can completely change the meaning of a sentence. You have time to proofread and polish. Do so.

2) Are you focusing on yourself or on your value to the company? It may seem like your resume is the perfect place to toot your own horn, but for the most part we don’t care. Yes, you want to distinguish yourself from the other candidates. But you want to do so in a way that makes you look like a better investment. Show us that you can make us money and we’ll want to see you.

3) How are your in-person communication skills? Pay close attention to what you wear and how you wear it. Your appearance and body language send messages to an interviewer so make sure you’re sending the right ones. Speak well and clearly. Nerves can make you stumble over your words. Which means that stumbling over your words signals that you’re nervous. Be careful that your mouth isn’t running ahead of your brain. It’s okay to take a moment to compose an answer to a question. A person who thinks before he speaks is a valuable asset.