Career Cube Blog

This past week I coached three clients on how to improve their resume. The biggest problems I commonly see are that either people put too much on their resume and make it virtually impossible for a hiring manager to cull out their relevant experiences, or their resumes are so thin it makes them look like they can barely walk and chew gum. This week let’s focus on the text-heavy resumes.

When I talk to the people who have too much on their resume, their explanation is that they’re using the “less is more” mentality. I was reviewing a resume of a woman who had over 15 years’ experience at various positions within her college’s communications department. She probably had 20 to 25 bullet points on there. Very overwhelming to read. As I read them one by one, I noticed that she would have a great one-liner about organizing her community’s first 9/11 memorial event followed by a bullet point about the fact that she can write a press release. I really had to convince her that an employer who saw that she organized that event-as well as several press conferences-would assume that she was capable of writing a press release (typically an entry-level job duty). Keeping the press release notation on there was not only reducing the amount of available page space she had to talk about her accomplishments, but it was making her look betwixt-and-between. It didn’t give me the impression that she was a high-powered communications professional who was poised for the next stage in her career.

I wrote stay or go comments about each bullet point. For the ones I thought should stay, I recommended that if they were part of the same project, that she group them together under a sub-heading-for example the 9/11 memorial event-so that they would give an employer the highlights of what she did to bring that large event together.

Think of it this way, why do you think that newspapers have big, bold headlines? Or those little callout boxes with an interesting quote? It’s to make it easier for people to read the paper and find topics that interest them. If you picked up a newspaper but couldn’t find articles that appealed to you-no matter how informative or well-written it was-you wouldn’t keep trying to read that newspaper. When you read a newspaper you skip to the stories that have interesting headlines and ignore the rest. Employers do the same thing. They have a pile of resumes to go through. They do NOT read every bulletpoint on your resume. They just don’t have time. But they will skim it to get an overall picture of who you are, and they will read the interesting parts they can find about your experience. The rest they will ignore.

Another pet peeve of mine. Don’t show me two different “versions” of your resume when all you’ve done is change 2 or 3 bulletpoints. That is not a different version. A different version of your resume describes either different experiences you have had that are specifically relevant to the job you’re applying for, or uses a different format completely. You can use some of the same bulletpoints-a person can only have so many outstanding experiences to write about-but what I recommend people do is to have a library of skillsets with bulletpoints describing their experience that they can easily cut and paste to create a “customized” resume for an employer.

For example, for the communications client above, I recommended that when she create her functional resume that she have sections describing her Marketing Experience, Event Planning, Public Relations, Leadership. So if she were applying for a position that required demonstrated Marketing and Event Planning, she could easily plug and play those pre-written sections into her resume without having to create something from scratch.

Lastly-when you read your resume, see if it accurately captures who you are as a professional. It should tell your story in an exciting and descriptive way-enough to paint a great picture of you to a person you have never met.

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