•  There are four critical strategies for executive resumes. •  Executive career profiles provide additional detail.

Searching for a job is a form of sales. The product you're selling, of course, is yourself. But as an executive, you'll need more than an ordinary marketing plan to make the high-level sale you're after. Your plan's centerpiece should be a powerful $100,000-plus job search portfolio, which begins with your resume.

Today's $100,000-plus resume is best characterized as:

• A quick snapshot of your professional experience, academic credentials and other noteworthy information.
• Dynamic, distinctive and hard-hitting with a focus on success and achievement.
• Sharp and upscale in visual presentation to create an executive image.

Your resume must:

• Present a clear and concise picture of who you are (technology guy, finance gal, logistics expert, etc.).
• Clearly communicate the value you bring to an organization.
• Highlight the knowledge, experience and qualifications that make you unique.

A resume is not:

• A biography of your entire life.
• A document containing lengthy job descriptions and lists of duties and responsibilities.
• A passive, low-energy narrative summary of your work history.

Every $100,000 resume should include a Career Summary or Career Profile, Professional Experience and Education. Depending on your particular experience, you may also have sections for Publications, Public Speaking Engagements, Technology Qualifications, Professional and Civic Affiliations, Honors and Awards and more. And here are the four most critical resume-writing strategies:

Connect Your Past to Your Future.

A resume is not a lengthy and cumbersome historical overview of your entire career. Rather, it includes your career's highlights, accomplishments and successes that are most relevant to your current career objectives. Extrapolate information from your past experience to demonstrate you have the qualifications for the positions you want now.

Sell It, Don't Tell It.

Compare the following two sentences:

Responsible for corporate accounting and finance functions.

Directed all corporate finance, accounting, tax and treasury affairs for a $220 million, VC-funded, media broadcasting corporation operating throughout the US, Europe and Asia.

Which candidate sounds more interesting to you? Using text to sell who you are and what you have accomplished makes a dramatic and positive difference in the tone and energy of your resume and the volume of your responses.

Use Key Words.

Be sure to use the right key words for your industry and profession. Not only do individual key words communicate a tremendous amount of information by themselves, they are also vital in electronic resume scanning, technology that is used increasingly throughout the executive job search market.

Format for the Right Medium.

Will you be using a print resume, electronic resume or both? They're different. Your print resume is designed to provide an upscale, visually attractive, executive image. Your electronic resume is designed for accuracy via electronic transmission via either email or Web site. This negates a great many of the aesthetic qualities in your print resume, from actual page layout to font selection and more.

Your Executive Career Profile

The other vital element in your portfolio is your executive career profile, a document that is different than your resume in purpose, style and presentation. It provides more information than your resume, generally with more detail about your career, specific positions, project highlights, achievements, innovations and more.

Executive career profiles are more narrative than resumes, focusing on your career's success story. They're often a combination of paragraphs and bulleted lists of achievements, projects, transactions and other highlights. These documents run longer than resumes but still have impeccable visual presentation.

Your executive career profile is the ideal tool when a prospective employer or recruiter asks you for additional information. In essence, you've taken your resume and expanded it to further highlight the value, experience and knowledge you offer. It showcases what you've accomplished and how, and gives you a clear competitive advantage over other candidates.

If you create a powerful $100,000-plus resume and career profile, you will position yourself well above the rest of the crowd and succeed in a job market that becomes more competitive every day. Devote the time necessary to this vital first step in your career marketing campaign, for the value you reap will be worth the effort a million times over.

Be sure to read Part II of this article, in which we will discuss the development of powerful cover letters, networking letters, interview follow-up letters, venture capital letters and other job search communications essential for you.

Part 1 | Part 2 >>

For examples of powerful nouns, verbs and phrases that should appear in your resume and profile, check out Enelow's book, 1,500+ Keywords for $100,000+ Jobs.