Welcome to the 3rd edition of this book.
The concept of brag books isn't new.
When I wrote the first edition of this book in 2005, brag books were somewhat new.
Since jobseekers often seek out and use new and unique ways to present themselves differently, a brag book is an ideal fit.
As I spoke to more recruiters and hiring managers about brag books, I was surprised that some LOVED brag books. And, some didn't have a preference or a definitive answer on the matter either.
What I love most about brag books: professionals can use them as leave-behind materials after an interview. There's no better way to set yourself apart from other candidates IMHO.
I hope you agree. 🙂
Regards,
The following content suggestions are not all mandatory elements to a brag book.
At this point, hiring managers and recruiters keep an open mind with brag books, so the exact tabs in your brag book may differ from others with a similar skill set.
Potential brag book contents:
1. Resume/Cover Letter
A resume and cover letter isn’t a necessary element of a brag book.
But, these documents do provide the hiring manager the ability to read and consider your skill set — one more time, if only for a moment.
To avoid confusing the reader, include the cover letter and resume you originally submitted at the time of applying for the job.
Include a different resume, and you might throw off the reader.
2. Professional Awards
The object is to always keep the pages of your brag book up-to-date and fresh, so encompassing awards from the last 5-10 years are a great idea.
For those with extensive histories of performance, including awards beyond 10 years is acceptable as well.
Are there some awards that overshadow others?
Yes.
Employee of the Month awards don’t hold as much weight as Employee of the Year or Salesman of the Year.
What types of awards should you include?
The following represents a sample list of awards you might want to include:
- Employee of the Year
- Salesman of the Year
- President’s Club
- Enterprise Club of Achievement
- Winner’s Circle
- Chairman’s Circle
- Best in Brand
- Anniversary Cup
Should you include military awards?
It depends.
For those presently separating from the military, awards received while active military are likely all you have to include.
For those who separated from the military a few years back, however, assess whether you now have enough civilian awards to exclude or begin “shaving” military awards down to a smaller number.
It’s worth noting that military awards don’t always hold the same value as civilian awards.
3. Recommendation/Recognition Letters From Superiors/Clients
Creating a tab in your brag book to encompass recommendation and recognition letters from superiors and clients is a great strategy, as letters help add “voice” and introduce validity to the statements contained in your resume, cover letter, and yes, brag book.
Let’s say, for example, that your brag book contains the following:
“Grew the SW Florida area from $1.5M to $4.13MM between 2007 and 2010.”
Ideally, a recognition letter from your boss indicating your success over that 3-year period tells the reader that you’ve performed at the level stated.
Possessing a letter from one of your customers secured during that timeline would be great too!
Do you see where I’m going with this?
Of course, this is an ideal situation.
Our customers and bosses inherently avoid talking about financial aspects, so getting letters that highlight numbers and percentages might be a challenge — if not impossible.
Just do your best.
4. Detailed lists of sales and/or management achievements that wouldn’t fit into (or be appropriate in) your resume
A resume can only house so much detail, making the brag book a great place to go a little wild with accomplishments.
The achievement category can entail all those feathers in your cap.
For example, it might include revenue and sales reports, detailed management achievements (e.g. realignment of staff, internal restructuring, introduction of new technologies), and other secondary accomplishments that didn’t make the cut for your resume.
What else can you include in this section?
How about …
- Specifics about new clients; list client names *
- Successes relating to per-client sales
- Improvements to your workforce/team
- Increases in bottom-line revenue and sales
* presuming you’re not confined to a confidentiality agreement with a current or past employer
5. College Degree(s)/Continuing Education Certificates
Don’t feel inclined to include copies of your college degrees or CEU certificates; doing so is strictly your preference.
Completed college degrees should already be mentioned in your resume, so providing actual copies of your degree might be redundant.
Continuing education certificates can get bulky, too, especially if you’re an avid participant with advanced training.
In this case, a detailed list of all continuing education is likely the better option.
A sample header for listing the training could look something like this:
Name of Training Administered By # CEUs Date
Effective CRM New Horizons 2 September 2010
6. Non-Confidential, Personally-Cultivated Sales Spreadsheets
Sales professionals (or those with sales as part of his or her job roles) have the best opportunity to expand brag books to include broad and deep sales information.
Sales spreadsheets enable you to shine for potential employers — particularly useful for professionals who have a long record of building client accounts, expanding market share, growing sales and bottom-line revenues, and so on.
How much sales detail should I provide?
How you present and how much you present is up to you. For the Sample Sales Spreadsheets & Charts contained on page 35 of this book, sales were broken down by month. However, you might package your sales volumes by month, quarter, or year — or include a combination of these.
When deciding between monthly, quarterly, or yearly, ask yourself which representation puts your sales achievements in the best light.
What should I do for those months where sales were negatively affected by the bad economy?
At some point, you may have blemishes within your sales record for circumstances in and out of your control.
Confident sales professionals know that not every road is a yellow brick road.
Certainly sales professionals want to strive to meet and exceed employers’ expectations, and you should be no different.
Anytime your sales volumes don’t meet sales quotas, don’t worry about it too much. But, definitely follow any sales losses with attractive sales gains.
Employers are willing to overlook negative sales activities, especially when those sales are followed by favorable (preferably sizable) sales gains.
7. Social Media Properties
Something new to brag books is the inclusion of social media activities that are professional, and preferably, relevant to your job search.
Let’s say for example that you head a LinkedIn group that caters to the pharmaceutical sales industry … and as luck would have it, you’re focused on a pharmaceutical sales position with a major drug company.
This is an ideal situation where including your social media activities is preferred.
Some social media activities are irrelevant and probably best left unknown to hiring managers, however.
Some of the more prominent and professional social media activities include Facebook, LinkedIn, ande Twitter.
Not sure about adding social media activities?
A survey included within a presentation given by Brooke Watts and Francois Dufour on LinkedIn indicated an increasing number of recruiters and HR personnel plan to spend more time and money on professional social networking forums.
One could take that claim to mean the obvious sourcing for candidates.
But, it could also have a less-than-favorable flip side, meaning an intended growth to also leverage online tools to prescreen candidates.
No problem for those who carry themselves professionally online.
But always be very, very, very careful what you put online because your words can help you, or bite you in the butt.
It’s also worth noting your social media activities will *live* on the Internet for an undisclosed amount of time, possibly viewable by talent recruiters for years, so keep that in mind as well.
Take the following as a prime example of what **not** to include:
A good rule of thumb to follow, and to keep your
online, professional “world” from being tarnished:
Conduct yourself online in such a way that you’d be comfortable having your priest, mother, and children view your activities.
8. List of Personal/Professional References
Although the inclusion of references might seem like an unusual addition to your brag book, this simple add just might save your fanny once or twice.
How many times have you been asked to provide references during an interview?
Keeping a simple sheet of references updated and included in your brag book can help you save a step … and perhaps save a small amount of your sanity too.
Informing hiring managers that your references are under one of the tabs of your brag book can provide one more incentive for individuals to crack the pages of your brag book.
Sneaky, right?
9. Miscellaneous Accolades
Miscellaneous accolades could be just about anything that you can’t find an appropriate spot for elsewhere. Just be cautious to only include the stuff that’s important; job offer worthy, if you will.
10. Your Plan of Action
One of the more interesting and relevant sections of a brag book is the inclusion of your sales or management plan for the potential new employer.
This section works exceptionally well when you have deep insight into the potential employer, which might include an upcoming merger and acquisition, business expansion plans, staff restructuring goals, and so on.
A plan of action outlines your intentions, goals, and vision for the company once hired.
Tap every network connection, online resource, newspaper, business journal, and industry magazine to help you flesh out a plan of action, in order to get that added edge when developing this section of your brag book.
Your action plan could encompass strategies for …
- Improving staff efficiencies
- Developing new business / expanding territories
- Growing sales and bottom-line revenues
- Strengthening customer relationships
- Building value-added resellers (VARs)
- Leveraging alliances
- Tapping your “Rolodex” of connections
- Producing new products and services
- Advancing staff training
- Increasing sales team performance
11. Other Content Suggestions for Your Brag Book
- Details relative to prominent or high-profile projects
- College transcripts (entry level to established professionals)
- Copies of exceptional performance reports and that-a-boy memos/emails from employers
- Details of aptitude tests
- References to published articles or books that quote you, as well as, articles you’ve published
- Volunteer work (list only what you know the employer will wish to see)
Word of Caution:
Be sure to exclude, or redact, any documents that have your date of birth and social security number in them. Since a brag book is a leave-behind document, avoid using any documents that reveal personal data about you.
How Should this Information be Presented?
What might surprise you is that a brag book doesn’t necessarily need to be a “book” at all. The documentation should be professional and neatly categorized into chapters or subjects, but not necessarily in book format. In fact, you can utilize something as simple as a colored folder or a slightly more costly, bound and professionally printed/catalogued booklet.
The option you select is going to be indicative of how much is housed in your master brag book. A small number of documents can easily be placed within a folder, whereas 50-100 pages would best be housed in a 3-ring binder (or a similar alternative). Keep size in mind when selecting the best delivery method.
Below are options to consider:
- 3-ring view binders are available in a variety of sizes, from a ¼” up to several inches. “View” simply means that it possesses a clear overlay on the outside so a title sheet can be inserted into the front of the binder. The title page adds a nice touch. Plus, when leaving the brag book with the hiring agent that person will continuously see your name as long as the book stays in his presence. A tiny bit of additional marketing never hurt anybody!
- Report covers are a cheap alternative, as well, because they run about $2 per cover. Many hold up to 3” of paper and possess reinforced hinges for easy opening and closing, or have a three-prong system. The only challenge with using report covers is when dividers are introduced. The tabs tend to stick out beyond the cover itself. For some people, it may be an issue when factoring the overall finished quality of one’s brag book.
- Presentation kits are typically used for business documentation. Maybe you’ve seen them while participating in a meeting or while attending a conference. A comb secures the pages between a front and back presentation cover. It’s probably the most costly option compared to the above two. However, if you plan to package a couple dozen brag books to hand out while going through the interviewing gauntlet then this is a prime option. The covers come in a variety of colors, plus you can always find a coordinating spiral/comb to go along with the color of the front and back covers.
Whether you select a binder, report cover, or presentation kit that requires a binding machine (available for free at most office/business retailers), plan to go one step further by using page protectors and tabbed dividers. Page protectors keep copies crisp, prevent bent corners, and deter stains from dirty fingers. Introducing content dividers will keep the presentation orderly for readers — and for you too. It’s all about having a cohesive book.
The brag book is a piece of jobseeker communication. I think we both agree on that. A higher-end book will be more accepted by readers. It’s all about presenting excellence. After all, you’re a quality candidate so everything associated with you should be high end as well.
“It’s all about presenting excellence.”
Here are some answers to several of the common questions about brag books. After all, you need to be armed with all the straightforward information needed to determine whether a brag book is right for you.
- Is a brag book worth the time applied to putting one together?
Undoubtedly, you will spend several hours accumulating materials for your brag book, with a few hours here and there to keep your “master” brag book up to date — spread over several months and years, of course. The best practice is to keep a master brag book for your records, while providing HR managers and recruiters with updated, relevant, and professionally presented “copies” of your book, which they can then keep, pass on to colleagues, and so on.
Certainly when you factor the number of hours allocated to putting a brag book together, you want to make sure you aren’t wasting precious time … time better spent on other job-search activities.
A brag book is somewhat of a risk, and without knowing your short- and long-term return-on-investment, you’ll somewhat march through the project a little bit blind — not knowing whether you’ll have any ROI at all.
But, let’s say you’re in the ideal career field for a brag book. Then, the real question should be: Are you willing to take the chance of not having one if there’s only one person interested in viewing it? No matter how you spin it, someone at some point will be interested.
Now, back to the original question: Should you take the time to collate one? Hell yes!
A brag book should reflect thoroughness and attentiveness on your part, and therefore, outweigh any time spent compiling it.
A jobseeker needs the added edge … and a targeted brag book can help provide that added touch that others ignore all too often.
It’s worth noting that a brag book comes in particularly helpful when targeting a specific company, or maybe, an industry-specific recruiter. When you have the right career destination in your sights, finding the right path to it becomes easier — and it’s no different when you have your sights set on a specific job too.
“I think brag books are important … for many other interview situations,” says Frank Heasley, president and CEO of Medzilla. “It always helps to bring along some sort of portfolio of the things that you’ve accomplished in your career — things you would not include with your resume but that certainly serve as points of discussion to enhance communications with the person that you are talking with.”
- Who can benefit from a brag book?
Individuals heavily involved in generating bottom-line revenues, sales, and so on, are the best candidates to benefit from a brag book. You don’t need to have any specific job title per se; but if your job focuses heavily on any one or more of the following, chances are you have what it takes to aggregate a great brag book.
- Business Development/Sales
- Executive Operations/Consultancy
- Operations/Facility Management
- Human Resources/Staffing (when heavily based on improvements/efficiency/results)
- Financial Analysis/Realignment
- Business Steering/Restructuring
It’s questionable whether engineers, administration personnel, medical staff, and other task-heavy positions, for example, should possess a brag book. Jobs that inherently or routinely don’t focus on bottom-line results, such as revenue generation and cost savings, make compiling a brag book rather difficult. No doubt, there are some job roles where a brag book just isn’t feasible. Let’s face it. The brag book is designed to include accomplishments and “braggable” material. If you’re in a position where outlining bottom-line results is routinely difficult to identify and quantify, reconsider whether a brag book is right for you.
- What’s the point of having a brag book?
A skimmer; a page flipper; a pair of distracted eyes … regardless of which you encounter, a brag book offers those with short attention spans the ability to walk away with a copy of your brag book. Basically, a brag book gives you the opportunity to provide a “leave behind”; something to provoke the hiring manager to learn more about you.
- What if the interviewer only skimmed your resume?
- What if the interviewer was distracted during the interview and only heard a fraction of what you said?
The above represents examples of the challenges a brag book can help you overcome. A brag book provides one additional “vehicle” to the hiring manager to help further sway him into looking at you in more detail, and hopefully, offering the evidence needed to offer you the job — or minimally, call you in for another interview.
- What’s does the brag book contain that my resume does not?
One could argue that a resume is rather rigid with only a few acceptable headers that readers wish to see; i.e. education, professional experience, and objective/summary. The brag book takes your information much further by including more in-depth categories (presented under tabs) such as letters of recommendation and annual performance reports. Specifically, a brag book reflects all those “feathers in your cap” that you wish to relay to the reader yet couldn’t find room for elsewhere.
- Can a brag book be general? Must it cater to a specific person or company?
A brag book can be general, much like other job-search documents. One notable issue with a general brag book: you’ll miss an opportunity of adding more value and relevance for the hiring company / brag book recipient.
Put yourself in their shoes.
Would you prefer a general brag book, relevant to anyone and everyone, or would you like to see a book that has been personalized and speaks directly to you?
Whenever humanly possible, produce a brag book that caters specifically to each interviewer and/or hiring company — only if you wish to enhance your hire-ability factor even further, of course.
- Is it possible to fill a brag book even if you don’t possess prior sales, management, or executive experience?
Bragging is universal across a high number of career fields and industries, yet the answer to this question is “maybe.” The sole purpose of a brag book is to reflect your greatness, as I mentioned above. There’s no sense in cushioning the answer, because it’s all about presenting you as a better, more effective, more efficient, and more profitable hiring choice. If you don’t have enough “bragging collateral,” often prevalent with those in sales, management, or executive roles, coming up with an adequate amount of braggable detail can make filling a brag book extremely difficult. When faced with this dilemma, abandoning a brag book — at least for the time-being — may be necessary.
- Is there a time when a brag book is too big?
Determining the right size is really between you and the people viewing it. To keep the contents of your book fresh, thoroughly weigh the relevance of each piece of material, which should help keep the book to a reasonable size.
When unsure on the ideal size of your brag book, pay attention to interviewers when they pick it up and thumb through the pages. Do their eyes widen when you hand it to them? Do they skim and quickly hand it back? A reader’s actions and reactions will offer great insight into whether your finished brag book is too much, and subsequently needs a little nip and tuck.
Should your brag book cover a specific time frame? Maybe 10 years? When faced with quantity (meaning your book is just getting too fat), shift your attention even further towards quality. For example, let’s say you secured and later saved a $250,000 client with a former client. Right now, you have the achievement listed as a bullet point under the sales achievements tab of your brag book. Taking a closer look at your career history, however, one learns that you now work with $5MM clients who sign 2- and 5-year contracts with your current employer.
There are small achievements, and then there are those that add “WOW factor.” Typically, the best achievements to brag about are the biggest and the best. The $250,000 client takes a backseat and becomes overshadowed by the $5MM clients you now work with. Do you see where I’m going with this?
BTW, it’s worth noting that the only time to stray from this formula is when you are intentionally taking a step back in your career.
- Should the brag book be present at every interview?
It’s tough reading people’s minds, do you agree? Who wants to read the brag book? Which interviewer even cares? Well, that’s the problem. There’s no black and white answer to such questions. So, plan to cover ground by bringing your brag book to every interview. Yes, it will be time consuming especially if you plan to personalize each book, but your efforts will eventually pay off.
Presenting the brag book at the right time during an interview can be a challenge too. Should it be the first thing you present or maybe wait until the closing part of the interview process? It’s tough to say because every interviewer has different preferences, so improvise. Hold onto the brag book until you see a break in the conversation and when you feel comfortable making the introduction. A great time to introduce your brag book during the interview could be after the interviewer has exhausted his list of interview questions and subsequently hands the floor over to you.
- Can I use an online, soft copy brag book?
With today’s Internet age, going with a soft copy of your brag book seems like a logical next step. But, a soft copy introduces new challenges and issues not found with the traditional, hard copy version.
For example, have you thought about …
- How will I house the soft copy of my brag book — online, CD, etc?
- How do I ensure hiring personnel will take that necessary step to view it?
- If online, what service will I use? Will the brag book be password protected or viewable by everyone/anyone? How will the password be delivered to hiring managers?
The biggest obstacles when opting for a soft copy are view ability and accessibility. Typically, a brag book is hand delivered within an interview, somewhat “encouraging” hiring managers to open and minimally skim the contents. When delivery is done by an alternate method, by compact disc, for example, you’re left with the hope that the hiring manager will go back to his computer, insert the CD into his computer, and spend time outside the interview to view your book.
The same scenario falls true when your brag book is housed online. Will the hiring manager take the time needed to input a website address, type a password (if required), and skim the online web pages that make up your brag book? No doubt, it’s a gamble.
What about my iPad? Will that work for hiring managers?
Because you’ll spend a fair amount of time compiling your book, getting the most mileage from your efforts will be your ultimate goal. Although an iPad would work, how much time will the hiring manager spend reviewing your brag book on such a compact device? You could opt for a laptop, but again, there’s still the question about time spent reviewing what you expend so much time accumulating.
Going with a print copy of my brag book sounds great, but my brag book is expected to be 1-2 inches thick. Keep in mind, all the content of your master brag book may not apply to every hiring company. The pages you copy, compile, and provide to each book recipient should vary. For example, those awards you received from Canon back in the 1990s may be important when applying to Hewlett Packard, but not as important when applying to employers across other industries. The goal is to provide employers with the most relevant and important components of your brag book.
- Can you offer any added advice to help me develop a brag book?
Here are 5 quick key strategies for developing a great brag book:
- Focus accomplishments in your brag book to only those from the last few years; maybe 36 months to 48 months old. Why cover such a tight time frame? A-list actors will often say that they’re only as good as his or her last picture, and the same may fall true with jobseekers. Readers will likely favor recent and slightly older achievements over those from 10 to 20 years ago.
- Hone in on a brag book theme. If you’re great at sales and building relationships with Fortune 500 companies, your brag book better reflect a fresh, impeccable record of accomplishments with companies of that size and financial caliber.
- Avoid making your brag book a catchall portfolio. Weigh every item you place in it. Ask yourself a couple of main questions. Does this inclusion mean anything? Will employers even care about it? Think of each item placed in the brag book as an A-player or B-player. B-players should likely be benched (placed in a less dominant position), or cut from the team.
- Ensure the book is organized and easy to follow. As with any other compilation of materials, look at your finished resource through the eyes of its readers. Are the sections easily marked? Are the reports and/or lists of accomplishments appropriately organized by date, size, and relevancy?
- Update the brag book monthly, biyearly, or minimally, several weeks before you begin searching for a new job. Conducting a regular update avoids the need to frantically search around looking for documentation, sales figures, percentages, and other details. A regimen of continuous updating means newly added data is fresh in your mind, and will ultimately make the task easier to complete.
The Bitter Reality
You’re not the only jobseeker looking for a job. Shocking, I know!
In the smallest town or the largest city, you’re contending with an unprecedented number of competitors. They’re coined “competitors” simply because you’re competing against them for the limited slots open in today’s crowded job market. In the last 5 years, jobs were highly sought after — no surprise there. But today’s openings are seeing record numbers of applicants … extraordinarily high numbers, in fact!
Want more bad news?
Forget those who have recently lost jobs — thinking about those who are employed, yet planning to change jobs or restructure their careers can be mind-boggling too. So when you combine the droves of unemployed persons who are actively searching, career changers, new college grads, and the run-of-the-mill, employed-yet-always-on-the-market jobseekers, well, reality can set in … and quickly!
How many others are there with your exact skill set and list of accomplishments, or worse yet, how many possess something better?
You have no choice. You must outshine, outperform, and outdo when it comes to maneuvering the job-search gauntlet. Failure to do so, and your job search continues while another revels in the position that should have been yours.
With increased job-search competition, a brag book suddenly becomes a make-or-break component for jobseekers — it’s that simple.
Additional Resources for Building Your Brag Book
Paper Direct
http://www.paperdirect.com
Offers bordered paper, presentation folders, report covers
Office Depot
http://www.officedepot.com
Offers a support center to help you produce copies of your brag book
How to Assemble a Brag Book
http://phoenix.jobing.com/blog_post.asp?post=3311
How to Create a Brag Book; Use for Any Job Interview
http://searchwarp.com/swa235514.htm