As an executive recruiter who matches job candidates with hiring companies, I see a lot of resumes. I have personal experience. I understand what resonates with me, but I also see the way that my customers, the hiring companies, react when they look at job candidates' resumes. What I've done is I've stripped it down, I've looked at many of these resumes, and I've curated and developed what I think is the ideal professional resume for virtually any job that you have. I think it works in 95% of the cases.
Before we get in, I want to talk about a few little concepts about the resume. The resume itself, the goal, there's only one goal, the resume has only one goal, which is to entice an employer to speak with you. That's it. That's the sole purpose the resume has. It's not a vehicle to ask for what you want. It's not a vehicle to tell them what you're going to do if they hire you. You can use emails and cover letters for that and the job interview itself. It's really just a vehicle to entice them and to get them excited about you, so that they want to speak with you. Let's dive in.
On the top of the resume, where your name is, I suggest first and last name only. The less the employer has to digest, the better. You don't need to use three names, four names or other symbols or hieroglyphics at the end of your name. If you've got some credentials you want to put them there, that's fine. I suggest sticking with first and last name. It's cleaner. It's easier for them to remember. You don't want to tax them any more than they need to be.
Underneath that you got your street address, your city, your state, but there's a couple of items in your contact information that I want to talk about. Phone numbers, I get all kinds of goofy stuff. People using their home numbers. Google numbers. The best number to use is your cell phone, so that they can get you directly. You should have a professional voice mail message on there. You don't want to use your home number where you've go the kids in the background screaming or the dog's barking. While I may think that's funny, because I have dogs and I understand what that's like, why risk it. You want to use your cell phone, so they can actually get you and you want to be mindful of your voice mail. It shouldn't be cheeky and funny, it should be professional if you're going to be fielding voice mails from employers. You're wondering, I probably spent about a minute on the phone number, you're going to love what I do with the email address. The email address that you place on the resume should have a couple of characteristics about it. You need to think about, it's not just your contact email, it's what the employer does with it.
I always recommend that it's personal and polished. I would prefer Stacyreeve@gmail.com, as opposed to ilovecats@gmail.com.Let me tell you why. You want them to keep seeing your name. If they're going to contact you and send you an email, you want them to be able to go into their system and just type Stacy and have your email pop up. A lot of these Mac mail and Outlook and Google mail, they retain that email address. Don't have them hunt for your resume to find that your email address is ilovecats. These are things just to think about. As we get into the rest of the resume, now this is just your contact information and your name, it's the first thing that they're going to see. You want to think of the resume as a funnel. It starts large and you want to assume that they're going to read it from top down. You also want to assume that at any moment they can jump out and stop or they can get interrupted or disinterested. You want to make sure that you start out with a bang and you give them a full digest of who you are and what you offer, because you want to entice them. That's the first thing they're going to see. You don't want to ask, it's not, as a I mentioned, a vehicle to ask them for what you want, so you don't want to put what you're seeking, what you want, what your preferences are. You want to start planting ideas in the employers mind as to how they can deploy a great asset, like you, and the value that they're going to get.
I recommend, the career profile. This is your reader's digest version of who you are and what you've accomplished and a summary of your skills, that's it, three things. Who you are, what you've accomplished, and a summary of your skills, so they have an idea. They get a collection of information. It's a snapshot. If I can take 28 years of experience and strip it down to 26 words, you can certainly take your professional life and put it into 2 paragraphs just so that they understand who you are. I want to spend a little time on this one, because I think this is extremely important, because it's the first thing they're going to see. You do want to get them excited. Let's take a couple of quick examples that are opposites, I'll try to hit as many people as I can. I know I have a lot of sales people that are out there, that follow me, that email me, that we recruit. If you're a sales professional, the who you are, the what you've accomplished, and the skill sets that you've developed might go a little something like this, "I'm a seasoned sales professional who has, you generate revenue by securing new customers." That's what it is that you do. If you want to talk about that, it's, "I'm a seasoned sales professional," or you might want to talk about what it is you sell, hardware, software, pharmaceutical products, whatever it might be, "Who has generated revenue of x amount," how many dollars over the course of your life time.
Remember you're aggregating here, so these numbers and these accomplishments should sound bigger, because you're aggregating them. Your are adding up all the years of experience that you've had, even if it's 1 year or 2 years or 10 years. "I'm a seasoned sales professional, who has sold 'whatever the products are', generating X amount of revenue, securing X new customers. I'm proficient in researching, prospecting, customer relationship development, sales,"and so forth. The employer can get all of that in a paragraph or two. Now they've got a snapshot and a memorable breadcrumb of you, of who you are.
Now, you might say, "Well, I'm not a sales person," or "I'm not a marketer," or "I'm not something like that." Let's take something just totally different. For all of you hostesses out there, I love to go to my favorite restaurants. I love people that greet me. Well, if you are a twenty-five year old hostess and you've been working for two years. Think about what you do. You answer the phones. Your organize the tables. You greet the people when they come in. You can say that and you can say, "I'm a hostess," or you can think of it in terms of what you're actually contributing to the health of your restaurant. Let's say you work five days a week and every day that you work your eight hour shift or ten hour shift, you work for a great restaurant who seats a hundred customers a day that you seat. You've been working there for an entire year. That's five days a week, that's hundred people a day, for fifty weeks. That's twenty-five thousand people that you have greeted. Are you a hostess or are you a hostess who has performed reception duties, who has greeted people, who has handled over twenty thousand to to twenty-five customers per year for the life that you've been doing this. Think in those terms, you can encapsulate that. I'm a hostess who works at a 4 star restaurant, who greets twenty-five thousand people a year, your are proficient in reception, organization, and customer service.
This really can work with whatever your profession is. You need to think about what it is that you're actually doing. Kind of in the terms of a noun and a verb. That's the career profile. That's just a little Reader's Digest of who you are.
The next section is where you start to build that excitement. You want to talk about your highlights. This is that three to four bullets of your major accomplishments in your life. Now, when you think about what employers are interested in understanding, employers, they're actually very simple. No matter what it is that they do, they want to generate revenue, they want to save costs, or they want to optimize the foundation or processes or overall structure, so that their company is healthy and stable. Those are the three home runs. If you can think in terms of building, improving, optimizing, increasing the overall health of the company, those are the highlights that they're going to be most interested in. If you don't have that many years of experience and you haven't done something that has been quantifiable or has as major an impact as that does, think in terms of what else you've done. Have you coached people? Have you taught your fellow employees? Have you optimized processes? Have you written white papers? Have you done anything that contributes to the growth and the health of your company that you are personally proud of? That's the highlights section. Now they're really starting to get excited. Here again, thinking in terms of the funnel. Thinking in terms of they can jump out at any moment, this is what you're leaving them with.
Now let's get into the body. There's a couple of keys to victory in the work experience section or professional experience section, whatever it is that you want to call it. This is a listing of the organizations that you've worked at in reverse chronological order, that's number one. Second this is you want to list the companies on the left side and slightly indent your titles. Reverse chronological order, companies, work titles, responsibilities, and so forth. Now, why do you want to do it that way? People think in terms of time. They think in terms of chronology. They want to look at your track record of achievement. They want to see your history, the decisions you've made, your evolution within your companies and across companies. It's very difficult for them to do that if you start listing your responsibilities and then the companies that you worked at where you held those responsibilities. It reads like a Rubik's cube, it's very difficult for them to understand that. You want to stay in reverse chronological order for those reasons.
The second thing is, you want to put your company on the left side. Some people that I see, they put their title on the left side. While you might not think this is a big deal, there are a couple of really key points here. The first is, for me, when I read a resume, I actually look at your name, I look at your highlights or your career profile, something to get a good sense of who you are. Then, I race down the left column to look for the companies that you've worked at. The first thing I'm looking for, are those good, well known companies? Do they have good pedigree? Is this individual likely going to be coming from a well cultured organization? That's important. Second thing it tells me is, does this person consider him or her self a team player? If I see your title, it's almost like you care more about yourself than you care about the employer. It might sound subtle, but your sending these messages and you're not there to clarify. They're not there to talk to you yet, they're just looking at a piece of paper. You want to make sure that these subliminal messages that you're sending are positive. The other thing that you want to do is you want to make sure that you show some progression within your titles. It's best if you can show a nice evolution, if you can't, you can't. That's another thing you want to make sure that you're doing. Make sure that it's reverse chronological order, it's companies on the left, it's titles slightly indented.They could be very, very well know companies in your space, but a future employer might not understand what it is that your organization does. I recommend, that right underneath the company name, you put a one sentence description of what that company does, what their goal is, what their contribution to the world is. Just so that I have a sense. Are they a product company? Are they a service company? What is it that they do? Is in a non-profit organization? Whatever it might be.
Then, as you start to go down into the detail of your title, what is it that you are, in a sentence, responsible for. Is there a mini collection of highlights or responsibilities that you can give the person a good perspective without actually having to read all the bullets. Don't assume that they're going to read all the detail in your resume. They read it like an outline. That's what most people do. Are you continually enticing them to read further? That's another thing you can do. You want to make sure that when you get down to the bullets and the specific accomplishments, and I stress the word accomplishments. There's activity based resumes, which includes what you were responsible for. There's accomplishments or benefits based resumes, as to what your actual contribution and benefit was to your company or it's customers or the people within the organization, whatever it might be.
Then comes the part for education.Education, list your school, list the years that you attended, the location of the school, and list the degrees that you got. If you did not get a degree, you want to note that. How many credit hours did you actually accumulate. Are you currently in school? When is your expected graduation or completion date, whether it's for an associate's degree, a bachelor's degree, a master's degree, whatever that might be. Then just list all the schools.
At the end, this is kind of your catch all section. I call it extra-curriculars or volunteer activities or other notable accomplishments and feats. It could be anything from non-profit activities, board activities, mentorship programs or volunteer programs. I generally say stay away from hobbies and other things, that while important and interesting to you, might not really be important for the employer to know.
There you have it. You want to start with a career profile, that's the reader's digest of who you are. Then you want to go onto your highlights. What are your major contributions to your organizations and it's constituents, it's customers and those types of relevant parties. Then, your work experience in reverse chronological order, listing the companies, your titles, and your responsibilities. Then, your education and then your extra-curriculars.
I hope you enjoyed and found this post useful.Please do us a favor by sharing and subscribing to our newsletter for more rich content like this.
You might also want to read How to Write a Cover Letter
Before we get in, I want to talk about a few little concepts about the resume. The resume itself, the goal, there's only one goal, the resume has only one goal, which is to entice an employer to speak with you. That's it. That's the sole purpose the resume has. It's not a vehicle to ask for what you want. It's not a vehicle to tell them what you're going to do if they hire you. You can use emails and cover letters for that and the job interview itself. It's really just a vehicle to entice them and to get them excited about you, so that they want to speak with you. Let's dive in.
On the top of the resume, where your name is, I suggest first and last name only. The less the employer has to digest, the better. You don't need to use three names, four names or other symbols or hieroglyphics at the end of your name. If you've got some credentials you want to put them there, that's fine. I suggest sticking with first and last name. It's cleaner. It's easier for them to remember. You don't want to tax them any more than they need to be.
Underneath that you got your street address, your city, your state, but there's a couple of items in your contact information that I want to talk about. Phone numbers, I get all kinds of goofy stuff. People using their home numbers. Google numbers. The best number to use is your cell phone, so that they can get you directly. You should have a professional voice mail message on there. You don't want to use your home number where you've go the kids in the background screaming or the dog's barking. While I may think that's funny, because I have dogs and I understand what that's like, why risk it. You want to use your cell phone, so they can actually get you and you want to be mindful of your voice mail. It shouldn't be cheeky and funny, it should be professional if you're going to be fielding voice mails from employers. You're wondering, I probably spent about a minute on the phone number, you're going to love what I do with the email address. The email address that you place on the resume should have a couple of characteristics about it. You need to think about, it's not just your contact email, it's what the employer does with it.
I always recommend that it's personal and polished. I would prefer Stacyreeve@gmail.com, as opposed to ilovecats@gmail.com.Let me tell you why. You want them to keep seeing your name. If they're going to contact you and send you an email, you want them to be able to go into their system and just type Stacy and have your email pop up. A lot of these Mac mail and Outlook and Google mail, they retain that email address. Don't have them hunt for your resume to find that your email address is ilovecats. These are things just to think about. As we get into the rest of the resume, now this is just your contact information and your name, it's the first thing that they're going to see. You want to think of the resume as a funnel. It starts large and you want to assume that they're going to read it from top down. You also want to assume that at any moment they can jump out and stop or they can get interrupted or disinterested. You want to make sure that you start out with a bang and you give them a full digest of who you are and what you offer, because you want to entice them. That's the first thing they're going to see. You don't want to ask, it's not, as a I mentioned, a vehicle to ask them for what you want, so you don't want to put what you're seeking, what you want, what your preferences are. You want to start planting ideas in the employers mind as to how they can deploy a great asset, like you, and the value that they're going to get.
I recommend, the career profile. This is your reader's digest version of who you are and what you've accomplished and a summary of your skills, that's it, three things. Who you are, what you've accomplished, and a summary of your skills, so they have an idea. They get a collection of information. It's a snapshot. If I can take 28 years of experience and strip it down to 26 words, you can certainly take your professional life and put it into 2 paragraphs just so that they understand who you are. I want to spend a little time on this one, because I think this is extremely important, because it's the first thing they're going to see. You do want to get them excited. Let's take a couple of quick examples that are opposites, I'll try to hit as many people as I can. I know I have a lot of sales people that are out there, that follow me, that email me, that we recruit. If you're a sales professional, the who you are, the what you've accomplished, and the skill sets that you've developed might go a little something like this, "I'm a seasoned sales professional who has, you generate revenue by securing new customers." That's what it is that you do. If you want to talk about that, it's, "I'm a seasoned sales professional," or you might want to talk about what it is you sell, hardware, software, pharmaceutical products, whatever it might be, "Who has generated revenue of x amount," how many dollars over the course of your life time.
Remember you're aggregating here, so these numbers and these accomplishments should sound bigger, because you're aggregating them. Your are adding up all the years of experience that you've had, even if it's 1 year or 2 years or 10 years. "I'm a seasoned sales professional, who has sold 'whatever the products are', generating X amount of revenue, securing X new customers. I'm proficient in researching, prospecting, customer relationship development, sales,"and so forth. The employer can get all of that in a paragraph or two. Now they've got a snapshot and a memorable breadcrumb of you, of who you are.
Now, you might say, "Well, I'm not a sales person," or "I'm not a marketer," or "I'm not something like that." Let's take something just totally different. For all of you hostesses out there, I love to go to my favorite restaurants. I love people that greet me. Well, if you are a twenty-five year old hostess and you've been working for two years. Think about what you do. You answer the phones. Your organize the tables. You greet the people when they come in. You can say that and you can say, "I'm a hostess," or you can think of it in terms of what you're actually contributing to the health of your restaurant. Let's say you work five days a week and every day that you work your eight hour shift or ten hour shift, you work for a great restaurant who seats a hundred customers a day that you seat. You've been working there for an entire year. That's five days a week, that's hundred people a day, for fifty weeks. That's twenty-five thousand people that you have greeted. Are you a hostess or are you a hostess who has performed reception duties, who has greeted people, who has handled over twenty thousand to to twenty-five customers per year for the life that you've been doing this. Think in those terms, you can encapsulate that. I'm a hostess who works at a 4 star restaurant, who greets twenty-five thousand people a year, your are proficient in reception, organization, and customer service.
This really can work with whatever your profession is. You need to think about what it is that you're actually doing. Kind of in the terms of a noun and a verb. That's the career profile. That's just a little Reader's Digest of who you are.
The next section is where you start to build that excitement. You want to talk about your highlights. This is that three to four bullets of your major accomplishments in your life. Now, when you think about what employers are interested in understanding, employers, they're actually very simple. No matter what it is that they do, they want to generate revenue, they want to save costs, or they want to optimize the foundation or processes or overall structure, so that their company is healthy and stable. Those are the three home runs. If you can think in terms of building, improving, optimizing, increasing the overall health of the company, those are the highlights that they're going to be most interested in. If you don't have that many years of experience and you haven't done something that has been quantifiable or has as major an impact as that does, think in terms of what else you've done. Have you coached people? Have you taught your fellow employees? Have you optimized processes? Have you written white papers? Have you done anything that contributes to the growth and the health of your company that you are personally proud of? That's the highlights section. Now they're really starting to get excited. Here again, thinking in terms of the funnel. Thinking in terms of they can jump out at any moment, this is what you're leaving them with.
Now let's get into the body. There's a couple of keys to victory in the work experience section or professional experience section, whatever it is that you want to call it. This is a listing of the organizations that you've worked at in reverse chronological order, that's number one. Second this is you want to list the companies on the left side and slightly indent your titles. Reverse chronological order, companies, work titles, responsibilities, and so forth. Now, why do you want to do it that way? People think in terms of time. They think in terms of chronology. They want to look at your track record of achievement. They want to see your history, the decisions you've made, your evolution within your companies and across companies. It's very difficult for them to do that if you start listing your responsibilities and then the companies that you worked at where you held those responsibilities. It reads like a Rubik's cube, it's very difficult for them to understand that. You want to stay in reverse chronological order for those reasons.
The second thing is, you want to put your company on the left side. Some people that I see, they put their title on the left side. While you might not think this is a big deal, there are a couple of really key points here. The first is, for me, when I read a resume, I actually look at your name, I look at your highlights or your career profile, something to get a good sense of who you are. Then, I race down the left column to look for the companies that you've worked at. The first thing I'm looking for, are those good, well known companies? Do they have good pedigree? Is this individual likely going to be coming from a well cultured organization? That's important. Second thing it tells me is, does this person consider him or her self a team player? If I see your title, it's almost like you care more about yourself than you care about the employer. It might sound subtle, but your sending these messages and you're not there to clarify. They're not there to talk to you yet, they're just looking at a piece of paper. You want to make sure that these subliminal messages that you're sending are positive. The other thing that you want to do is you want to make sure that you show some progression within your titles. It's best if you can show a nice evolution, if you can't, you can't. That's another thing you want to make sure that you're doing. Make sure that it's reverse chronological order, it's companies on the left, it's titles slightly indented.They could be very, very well know companies in your space, but a future employer might not understand what it is that your organization does. I recommend, that right underneath the company name, you put a one sentence description of what that company does, what their goal is, what their contribution to the world is. Just so that I have a sense. Are they a product company? Are they a service company? What is it that they do? Is in a non-profit organization? Whatever it might be.
Then, as you start to go down into the detail of your title, what is it that you are, in a sentence, responsible for. Is there a mini collection of highlights or responsibilities that you can give the person a good perspective without actually having to read all the bullets. Don't assume that they're going to read all the detail in your resume. They read it like an outline. That's what most people do. Are you continually enticing them to read further? That's another thing you can do. You want to make sure that when you get down to the bullets and the specific accomplishments, and I stress the word accomplishments. There's activity based resumes, which includes what you were responsible for. There's accomplishments or benefits based resumes, as to what your actual contribution and benefit was to your company or it's customers or the people within the organization, whatever it might be.
Then comes the part for education.Education, list your school, list the years that you attended, the location of the school, and list the degrees that you got. If you did not get a degree, you want to note that. How many credit hours did you actually accumulate. Are you currently in school? When is your expected graduation or completion date, whether it's for an associate's degree, a bachelor's degree, a master's degree, whatever that might be. Then just list all the schools.
At the end, this is kind of your catch all section. I call it extra-curriculars or volunteer activities or other notable accomplishments and feats. It could be anything from non-profit activities, board activities, mentorship programs or volunteer programs. I generally say stay away from hobbies and other things, that while important and interesting to you, might not really be important for the employer to know.
There you have it. You want to start with a career profile, that's the reader's digest of who you are. Then you want to go onto your highlights. What are your major contributions to your organizations and it's constituents, it's customers and those types of relevant parties. Then, your work experience in reverse chronological order, listing the companies, your titles, and your responsibilities. Then, your education and then your extra-curriculars.
I hope you enjoyed and found this post useful.Please do us a favor by sharing and subscribing to our newsletter for more rich content like this.
You might also want to read How to Write a Cover Letter
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