By Tim Noble
An unfortunate reality of our digital age and resume culture is that a two-page summary of your entire career will likely be the most important key to opening the door to your next opportunity. Nothing replaces solid experience and solid contributions, but you still cannot escape the need to represent those career experiences in the best light possible.
As an executive recruiter, I see hundreds of resumes—the good, the great, and the down-right awful—every week. Here are my top nine points for creating an outstanding resume that will offer the best possible reflection of your skills, your contributions, and your accomplishments.
The reverse chronological layout continues to be the preferred format by most employers. Other formats that cloud a candidate’s employment dates may lead employers to assume that you are trying to hide something in your past. Document the timing of your work history and educational credentials accurately. Don’t leave the reader guessing where and when you were employed.
Job titles can sometimes be misleading, or their meanings may vary from company to company. Along with your title, provide a concise explanation of your duties and scope of responsibilities. This can include the number of people managed, size of budget responsibility, reporting resources, and size and scope of operational/functional responsibility.
Let the reader know the size and location of your past employers. Most hiring professionals will not be familiar with a lot of small and medium sized companies, so don’t leave them guessing. For all past employers you list, include the type of business, approximate revenue, and key products in your summary description. A one-line summary should be sufficient.
The biggest resume mistake candidates often make is to confuse job descriptions with job accomplishments. A resume must specify and quantify your various job accomplishments:
Too often candidates only list their job description responsibilities, which entirely misses the point of a resume.
Give appropriate attention to jobs and educational credentials according to their importance and relevance to the hiring employer and your target position. More recent and relevant positions should have more accomplishment content than positions held earlier in your career.
For example, for positions you held 15 years ago or earlier, list only a job title with the appropriate company and date information. This will leave more space on your resume for more relevant and recent accomplishments.
Target your resume by including only job-related content. Your accomplishments should clearly demonstrate a pattern of success and contribution to your prior organizations. Customize different versions of your resume to highlight certain accomplishments that are most relevant to the types of opportunities you are seeking.
Clearly spell out key words and avoid overusing company-specific acronyms that may not translate outside of your organization or industry. Appropriate use of “keyword” content in the context of your job accomplishments also helps, as most companies and recruiters use computerized applicant tracking systems to sort out candidates by keyword content.
One of the most violated resume expectations is brevity. A resume that runs longer than two pages, although not entirely unacceptable, may give employers the impression that you are unable to organize your thoughts and accomplishments in a concise and relevant presentation.
This shouldn’t even be on a nine-item list as it should be understood without exception. To catch and correct surface errors, use techniques like proofreading in hard copy, reading slowly out loud, and reading every phrase and every sentence both forwards and backwards. If writing is not one of your strengths, seek help.
Whether we like it or not, hiring managers and employers often scan resume content. Aid the busy reader with clear, concise, “bulletized” accomplishments and contributions.
Construct this content with short, hard-hitting, action-oriented sentences. One common mistake is to rely on long paragraphs of information devoid of summary statements and bullets. This mistake may convey to a hiring professional that you are unable to summarize and organize your own accomplishments into a format most often expected in today’s work environment.
In the end, if extracting accomplishments and contributions requires too much effort for the reader, your resume may end up at the bottom of the pile, or worse yet in the trash, even if you are a great candidate.
Tim Noble is the managing principal of The Avery Point Group, a global executive search firm specializing in lean, Six Sigma, and operations talent for clients in Europe and North America. Mr. Noble has more than 20 years of executive leadership experience in manufacturing, supply chain management, distribution, and executive search. Throughout his career he has held senior-level executive roles in Fortune 500 companies like General Electric (GE) and The Stanley Works (SWK). He also has extensive experience in lean manufacturing and is a GE-trained Six Sigma Master Black Belt.