Resume' (or CV) Essentials

“Before he was famous, before he painted the Mona Lisa and the Last Supper, before he invented the helicopter, before he drew the most famous image of man, before he was all of these things, Leonardo da Vinci was an artificer, an armorer, a maker of things that go ‘boom,’ ” writes Marc Cendella on his blog about job-searching and recruitment advice. “Like you, he had to put together a resume to get his next gig. So in 1482, at the age of 30, he wrote out a letter and a list of his capabilities and sent it off to Ludovico il Moro, Duke of Milan.”

Resume or CV (Curriculum Vitae), whatever you call it, this is the document that most people will use to try and get some insight into who you are, what you have done and what you could bring to their organization.  It is important and you need to spend a fair bit of time on this effort. You will likely want to have a couple versions that you use for jobs with different titles or alter it for certain jobs you are pursuing to better align with their stated target traits. There are entire books written about writing resumes, so we are just going to briefly touch on some points here.

Do you use someone to write your resume?  This can help, and it may depend on your skill sets. Are you a good writer? Are you organized and detail oriented?  There are many people that will be happy to take your money and give you suggestions on what your resume should look like. However, which one will should you trust this work to and what is a fair price? Talk to a few people and get some referrals from people you know.  Some of the resume writing and the style will be personal preference, but some of it is good form and tactical. This is where a professional may be helpful.  Just understand that every single person will have a different take on it and offer you an opinion. No matter who you send your resume to review, they will have comments and suggestions for you.

There are many decisions to make on your resume.

• Look and feel of the layout?

• Which font to use and what size?

• How many pages?

• Specific words to be included?

• Titles to use for past jobs?

• Bullets to use under past jobs?

• Non-work-related topics to include?

• The list goes on…

First and foremost, make sure that it looks professional. Don’t ‘throw something’ together and put it out there. Be sure that there are NO typos.  Work on the phrasing and word choices. People are going to make decisions based on what they see and read. Your first impression starts with this document. Have someone, or a couple someone’s, read through it and get their comments, read it out loud to someone, or at least to yourself. Speaking the words out loud will force you to slow down, appreciate the flow and ensure that the sentences make sense.

The general outline of the resume is fairly straight forward, but here are some suggestions.

• Header:

  • Your name must be clear, legible and obvious on the page.  It will be laying in piles on desks, and you want your name to be easy to find. 

  • Then include contact information: e-mail, cell phone, and Linked In account link.

• Executive Summary:

  • This is a newer section, and it shouldn’t be too long, but you have an opportunity here to summarize who you are, what you bring to a new role and why any company would be lucky to have you. You are also showing an example of your writing style, so be careful.

• Professional Experience:

  • Jobs listed in reverse order…most recent job first, and your earliest job at the end.

• Education:

  • The degrees you have and from which institutions.

  • Continuing education classes you have taken of significance.

  • Training programs that you have been through.

• Interests (and perhaps Achievements):

  • A free form area for you to highlight non-work related aspects of your life.

Two pages is the generally suggested length to keep resumes’ down to.  A single page is o.k. for the first 1-2 positions perhaps, but after that it is probably too light.  But you can also have too much written down.  Four pages or more is too much.  Sure, you are interesting and have accomplished a lot, but people are not going to read that much, and it tells the reader that you didn’t take the time to pick out the most important items. It can be acceptable to slightly exceed the 2-page rule and have a resume that is 2.5–3 pages, but only after you get 25-30 years into your career. 

Layout the general body of your resume and then start to really think about what you want to highlight under each area and past role.  You can begin with the summary and then build all the sub-bullets and supporting details to build on this.  Or you could go in reverse and begin with the details and build toward the summary writing.  

The Executive Summary will take time and many revisions to get the right tone, detail and selection of words.  This is probably the most important place to use impactful words carefully.  It needs to impress the reader but be readable. It needs to communicate what you have done, but also what you are going to do for the next company fortunate enough to have you on their team.  Keep it under 150 words and hopefully closer to 100 or even less.  This section also shouldn’t take more than 20-25% of the first page of your resume.

As you build out your Professional Experiences you will have some decisions to make.  One of the first will be the titles that you put on paper for each role. Every company and industry have their own approach to titles. You need to ensure that the general spirit of your prior role is represented, but you can likely take some creative license in how to specifically state it. Use titles that are generally familiar with people, keep them fairly short and give a little breadth to them. Instead of being the ‘Business Development Executive and Pricing Leader of Global Paper Products’, you might want to use ‘Global Business Development Executive’.  You can help fill in more details if/when you get in the interview, and it is important. You also may want to slant these titles a little higher or perhaps a little lower in the readers perspective depending on which role you are applying for.  You could substitute ‘Leader’ for ‘Executive.’ Tell the truth, but you have some ability to put a helpful ‘spin’ on the role and make it easier for the reader to relate to what you did.

You will also need to decide if you use months and years to frame up each role or if you simplify to just years.  This decision will depend on how many roles you have had and in what frequency.  The shorter the time at each company and the more frequent the change, then the use of months and years is likely appropriate. The longer your career has been and the fewer transitions, then years are probably enough and help to simplify.

Once you have the roles identified, then you need to build the content under each one. A suggestion is to start this process by writing out as many bullets and thoughts about past positions as you can.  Get enough on paper that you can now come back and edit it down.  This also starts to build several bullets that you might want to insert into different resumes for different positions.

In the bullets you will want to try and incorporate action words, numbers and results.  Numbers can really help people quantify the impact you had or what you accomplished. ‘I doubled sales in my territory in 3 years’ is more impactful than, ‘I grew sales significantly.’  What did you help you past companies accomplish and how does this give the next company an idea of what you can do for them? The most important bullets will be your most recent 1-3 positions.  Every position earlier in your career should have fewer and fewer bullets, until some of them will not have any bullets.

Education.  It is important to be factual here.  Most companies will not check, but some will, and it isn’t worth it to exaggerate here.  Grade Point Averages are optional, but if they are impressive and you are earlier in your career, then it’s a positive worth including.  The ‘Cum Laude’ phrases are worth including too.  These bullets get shorter and including some Latin is always a good idea.

Finally, we get down to Interests.  The sole purpose of this area is to show that you are a rounded out human being and list some things that you enjoy and may relate to others. This section is to create relational touchpoint opportunities with the person interviewing you.  Sports, humanitarian efforts, roles in support of kids, hobbies, etc.  If you do your homework early enough and channel your inner ‘International Spy’ characteristics, you could advance scout some of the key people via social media and see if there are some common areas of interest that you could add for that particular resume.  You both were on the rowing team, you both like quilting, you both like the same sports team, etc.

You now have complete document.  You will want to think critically and make some adaptations for each key job you are applying for.  The use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to scan and filter down resumes is a common practice now.  Read through the job description and make sure that key words and phrases used by the hiring company are a part of your resume.  You also have the opportunity to use AI in this process.  It is possible to input the job description, your resume and ask the AI engine to alter the resume to better align with the job description.  You will need to proofread and adjust this to insure nothing is mis-stated, but its an interesting tool and strategy. 

This is a key part of your Job Transition efforts.  It is NOT the only part.  Take a wholistic approach to this process, but don’t skimp on this area.