Editor, Publisher

Marketing

To help you see just what I mean by this, let's use the term paper business as an example.  Let's just say in running your term paper service you had to do some of the following tasks:  create flyers, distribute flyers, place ads about your business in school newspapers, and had to regularly approach students you didn't know and explain to them the substantial benefits of using your services.  This ongoing selling and basically trying to promote your products/services to other students on campus classifies itself as a marketing skill, which is something that many employers highly search for in today's job applicants.

Word Processing

Now, let's also consider in operating your own term paper business that you had to regularly perform the following:  align text attractively on pages, incorporate popular fonts like Arial or Times New Roman in documents, create easy-to-read footers on pages, construct neat headers, construct separate bibliography pages, and later distribute documents via email, disks and make documents available as hard copies for pickup and delivery.   Well, all of this involved typing and sheer fiddling around with the computer endlessly would definitely count as valuable "Word Processing Skills or Computer Skills," and many companies regularly list computer skills or at least familiarity with word processing software (e.g. Microsoft Word or Word Perfect) as prerequisites for most office jobs.

Managing/Supervising

Now, let's consider another possible facet of your operations.  Let's talk about what could be classified as "Managerial Skills or Supervisory Skills."  In operating your term paper service, let's say you had to enlist the help of two classmates both of whom had their own computers in their rooms.  Now, in your dealings with them lets say you had to do some of the following:  1) regularly assign typing projects between the two, 2) make sure they stick to weekly typing schedules that you established, 3) talk with them about improving the quality of their work such as making less typos and proofreading their work more often, 4) remind them to establish more consistent pickup times from their rooms, 7)  remind them to be more polite in their dealings with customers over the phone or in person and 8) regularly remind them to call you when they won't be available to work on particular assignments so you can form backup arrangements.  These are all duties that any "real" office manager could be found performing at his or her job daily.

Bookkeeping

Finally, let's take a look at your billing procedures for your business.  We all know that most business owners prefer releasing products/services to their customers in the form of C.O.D. (cash on delivery) and let's assume you're the same.  For the most part, you demand full payment whenever releasing finished term papers to customers, but let's say this doesn't happen all the time.  Let's say 25% of the time you find yourself accepting partial payments with the promise by your customers to give the rest to you within a week or two.  Well, then naturally you would have to set up some type of accounting system to keep track of stuff like this.  You might also have to create a modest database with names of students that owe you money still.  You'd probably also have to regularly create reminder notices and invoices to distribute to these same delinquent customers when their promised pay-periods had expired.  Well, naturally, you don't think the extensive energy you put into staying on top of who owes you what should be a task worth overlooking on your resume?  Definitely not. The skills you used in making sure you regularly received your payments are skills belonging under the heading of bookkeeping or even accounting services.  These are talents that any employer would value in a new employee.

Improving Your Resume

Now, as you can clearly see, there are a lot of skills required in operating any type of business whether it be a three-person, dorm-operated typing service or a small lemonade stand ran from a cardboard box on a street corner.  The skills you develop while operating your own business are talents that should not be taken for granted.  Unfortunately, many new jobseekers mistakenly end up putting on their resumes very non-descriptive wording like, "Successfully operated own t-shirt business" or "sold t-shirts from dorm room" to describe their former business-related duties.  Jobseekers should instead expound on the details of any business they oversaw.  They should clearly highlight examples of duties that they believe to be transferrable to jobs they're applying for.  For example, if you're applying for a position as a telemarketer, don't just give examples like: "had to use the phone a lot in running my own business."  Instead, give descriptive examples like, "Called 20-30 business owners regularly each month to explain the substantial benefits of using my office support services."

Summing Things Up

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This article is © 2003-2004 by Tracy Miller and may not be reposted without written permission from the author and may not be reprinted for profit.