WEEKLY UPDATE: Interview Coaching for Every Brain Type

Summary: As a Communications Coach, one of the things I most love to do is to provide my resumé clients with interviewing tips, based on their personal needs. If you have a "challenged brain," you can benefit from some of my most commonly given advice below.

This week, I got one of those e-mail messages that really makes you glow: A satisfied resumé client wrote to tell me how helpful all of the "extras" I provided him were—extras like interview coaching, which is my favorite part of creating resumés for people. This work is best done one-on-one, but can also be successful when conducted over the telephone. In my client's case, we were able to meet in person and expedite the process.

Resumés are an integral part of the work world—even for blue collar positions nowadays.

This fact has surprised a number of my clients in recent months. I've helped people who have never created resumés (in one case, a retiree who had over 30 years of experience as a steel millwright in Gary, Indiana) pare down lifetimes of experience into concise, accurate, one-page sales pitches of their work history.

This can be a daunting process! Most clients come to me because they are completely overwhelmed by figuring out how to do this properly—and because so much depends on their getting the right employment right now.

Because of my expertise as a Communications Coach, it's far easier for me to do this on their behalf, simply by asking them a few questions and working off of a template that I've designed to cover all the bases. And because so many of my clients have what I call "challenged brains," I'm able to coach all personality types through unique and specific challenges. Examples include clients with ADD who have difficulty focusing (my biggest piece of advice is to practice deep breathing before, after, and especially during the interview); those with autism who may be particularly challenged by eye contact (making direct eye contact during a handshake and at the start of the interview is important, however a trick that can help for the remainder of any interview session is to look at the speaker's eyebrows or eyelashes); and clients who've struggled with depression, addiction or other illnesses that interrupted their work lives (there are a number of ways to address resumé holes or gaps in employment, and it's best to discuss these to determine what's right for each individual).

I love to see people grow and succeed. And I also love getting e-mails from those people that read, "I feel more confident thanks to you. ... I know who to come to with any questions in the future"!

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