Your first résumé writing session
What to expect in your earliest résumé writing sessions with me.
My goal is to fall in step alongside you as we work together to build your brand.
Over the years, I’ve developed short questionnaires, long questionnaires, and everything in between.
All of it comes down to me asking the right questions at the right time. This post will help prepare you if you’d like a running start to some of the questions I’ll ask as we go along.
Generally speaking, tell me a bit about what brings us together?
Seventy- to eighty-percent of answers contain some shade of this response:
I want my resume to pop
I want to cut through the noise
I believe I have several deep strengths and valuable, unique career experiences that should e extremely valuable in the right next opportunity.
I need my story to stand above others / show what makes me unique
Your answer was probably more creative, tidier, or more meaningful, but when I later ask those clients what makes them unique, or what makes their story stand above the rest, I get a long pause.
Which is usually followed by an attempt at an answer, but if I had my former recruiter hat on, I’d find a way to politely wrap the call.
I start with that bold and slightly sharp example because that kind of interaction is just a taste of the broader realities job seekers can expect to face once they get out there. (Even if the interaction is conducted lovely; it’s still the end result.)
It doesn’t thrill me to say it, but it’s the quickest way to illustrate a point: a recruiter has a job to do, and that is vetting candidates. Their judgment would be questioned if they couldn’t support to their own client (the hiring company) why they’re presenting you as one of three candidates from a field of 350+ people they vetted.
To confound things for a moment, you should know that writing a “résumé that pops” or a “LinkedIn profile that stands above others” is highly subjective. Netflix’s vice president of global policy could probably care less about a chief nursing officer’s resume, much less know if it “pops.” Also, what defines “pop?” In my world, design is important, but clarity comes first so design is more about the careful use of bold, italics, indents, bullets, etc., to push the skimming reader’s eye where you want it to land first. Then, it will “pop” if the reader finds something that meets their need. If it doesn’t, it will indeed pop like a balloon and you won’t get a call. Why? Because a resume isn’t going to be adored by every reader; it’s going to be useful for the readers for which it ws intended.
What does it all mean?
Happily, I’m not a recruiter any longer. I’m in your corner and I can be sure you have a meaningful answer when you encounter similar questions from hiring entities.
You don’t need to complete the following content, or you can just do part of it (it’s ordered by importance at this point in your project). If you’d like to get a running start, though, here’s at least an hour worth of homework:
Instead of crafting an elevator pitch that sounds like everyone else’s (and hence, falls into ears that have heard the same thing a million times), a strong personal brand—and therefore, a fantastic résumé—begins with identifying who your primary readers will be. Or who you’d like them to be.
Wait. What?
Yes, you need to identify who you’ll be writing for before we decide what to write.
If you’re doing the Resume Rebuild, we’re using a single job description to do that. If you’re using my Job Description Analysis, we’re using multiple job descriptions to find out what the job market is broadly asking of specific roles.
Assuming that is already under way in your project (or soon will be), it’s time to start teasing out the right pillars and elements of your story that will matter most to your intended reader.
In doing so, I find often that the answers help shape the immediate understanding about your differentiators, as well as your future conversations (interviews), and ultimately the breadth or depth of opportunities you then get to entertain.
Thankfully, even before you and I have conducted a single Zoom session, you can begin cobbling answers to questions you can anticipate during the job search process. Remember, first-line readers of your story (e.g., internal or external recruiters) will be keen to know these things before they move you forward in the process. Which means that by the time you reach a board or hiring committee, the details we suss below will have already been filtered. If you’ve made it to that point, you can assume you’re a fit with respect to those essential, make-or-break skills. (And at the hiring committee / board interview, it’s a lot about culture fit.)
Still, even at those meetings, the appearance of the story details we ultimately craft from your answers below will create a stronger connection with individual committee members—assuring them that you have the leadership skills they need.
Okay, enough yacking. Let’s press forward!
PRINCIPLES:
Size and scope matter, so use “range or top-end” figures
Below is an example using budget management as the skill.
There are all sorts of ways to use numbers to play up or downplay bits and pieces of your background. Collectively, they add up to your career story, and they position you for what’s next.
For instance, if you’ve managed a $500K budget, there’s a 99.9% chance you won’t be hired to manage a $50M budget.
Are there exceptions where someone without the right experience is indeed hired?
Yes.
But don’t forget to look down the road at how those placements turned out.
Consider these possible long-term scenarios:
The successful candidate initially charmed the hiring entity but then failed in the role.
The successful candidate began suffering anxiety, alone with the conundrum because they were in over their heads.
Here’s a brighter, albeit rarer, scenario:
The successful candidate received much-needed budget-related training and mentoring until that skill had sufficiently matured.
And the nuance doesn’t stop there.
Let’s say you have managed a $50M budget but you (a) don’t want to repeat that experience, or (b) you’re flexible about managing a smaller one, lest the hiring entity think you only want to manage budgets in the $50M ballpark.
All you need is a bit of framing.
A simple way to build a control around the topic of budgets is to present a range or a top end figure. Like this:
Developing and managing $2.5M to $50M budgets.
Developing and managing budgets up to $50M.
Each phrase gives you just enough nuance to set an expectation of your reader (aka, position yourself), and to control your own narrative.
You can further enhance your content by defining the type of budget if it supports your story (otherwise leave it generic). For instance:
Developing and managing $2.5M to $50M OPEX budgets.
Developing and managing OPEX budgets up to $50M.
Why not just say, “Developing and managing budgets?”
Several reasons; the first being that any recruiter or hiring entity worth their comp will screen this particular question. Why not help them rule you in or out before wasting their time. And yours.
Key resume questions, development principles, and framing ideas you ‘ll likely encounter as we work together.
BONUS TIP: If you haven’t managed a P&L, odds dip considerably if the role you’re seeking requires P&L management. Hence, if the type of role you’re aiming for requires P&L management, best fill that gap soonest! Need to get the experience? Yes, P&L management courses will help, but see if you can’t get on-the-job insights or training. And if you’re still early in your career, do whatever you can to get exposure to the P&L.
ASIDE: Need proof? P&L experience brings with it the greater likelihood that you’ll see problems on paper either before they arise, or you’ll be able to link symptoms and resolve systemic business problems. As someone marketing themselves, you’ll likely fall short of a P&L leadership role if you haven’t already managed a P&L. Here’s a Korn Ferry article demonstrating a P&L management nuance that inexperience would probably miss: Career Nomads: The Hidden P&L Cost.)
QUESTIONS:
Let’s start identifying those “range and top-end” answers.
These questions are pulled from my Workbook-Part C. They help me better understand you, and ultimately lead to an intentionally framed telling of your story, complete with the controls I mentioned above.
Don’t feel inhibited by getting exact numbers (although those are welcomed). We’ll have time for you to research the data later. If you’re unsure about any of the questions below, don’t worry. We’ll cover them together and I’ll guide you through the decision-making so your story ultimately says precisely what you want it to say. (As long as it’s truthful, of course.)
COMPANY SIZE:
The largest company I’ve worked for had $_________ in revenue/AUM when I started, and $_________ in revenue/AUM when I left.
The smallest company I’ve worked for had $_________ in revenue/AUM when I started, and $_________ in revenue/AUM when I left.
GUIDANCE: Keep in mind the distinction between revenue, AUM, all-agency budgets (e.g., nonprofits, government institutions), and other ways of defining an institution’s size. This is important because it quickly tells your reader the cultures and hierarchies you’ve been a part of, or led, and it can be a predictor of where you might be successful again.Any personal or company ratings / rankings I should know about?
Company example: Fortune rank and Fortune recognition (e.g., Best Places to Work); S&P; Small-, medium, large-cap). Stuck? A Google search like “company ranking types” should help.
Individual example: Rankings compared to other employees, industry acknowledgement.
COMPANY TYPES:
It’s important for me to understand what types of companies you’ve worked for, such as corporations, firms, institutions (e.g., nonprofit, higher ed), PE-owned, VC-funded, etc.
In fact, this isn’t a requirement just yet, but if you can have a few short descriptions for each place you’ve worked, we’ll use that raw content to:
Drive home gravitas (e.g., “American multinational technology company offering e-commerce, cloud computing, digital streaming, and artificial intelligence”)
Lighten the mood (e.g., “The earth’s most customer-centric company”)
Or even drill down into your particular area of the business (e.g., “Making a lasting impact that echoes through the technology, the product, and the company”)
As a side note, each of the above three examples is a description of Amazon. The first is useful for people in, say … corporate strategy / M&A … finance … compliance … maybe development; the second is useful for marketing … product management … supply chain … customer success; and the third was pulled from the Amazon Principal Engineering Community page and is perfect for folks like principal engineers and people on the innovation side.
Wikipedia isn’t an authority on much, but it’s a great place to start picking around for these types of descriptions. Also, web pages like “About” and “Investor Relations” will also get you properly started.
Note that we’ll choose Option 1, Option 2, or Option 3, and stick with it so our approach to company descriptions run parallel throughout the resume. That said, at least we get to have a bit of fun at the beginning as we decide which approach best fits your intentions.
COMPANY INFLUENCE:
Geography
What countries, continents, regions, etc., have you worked in, had influence over, driven growth across, etc.? You can list this by number of continents and/or countries, as well as their names. Examples of how we might use this content:
XYZ leadership across EMEA, APAC, and the Americas.
XYZ leadership across 180+ countries and 4 continents.
Don’t get hung up on this yet. We’ll have plenty of time to figure out the right pitch and balance for your story and go-forward intentions.
BUDGET / MONEY MANAGEMENT:
The largest budget I’ve ever managed is/was: $________ at [Company Name]. OR, I’ve managed budgets in size ranging from $________ to $________.
Budget type/s: ____________
GUIDANCE: Is it a revenue stream / volume? Or a cost center? Is it a division budget, or shall we drill down into the weeds (e.g., operating, development, marketing, staffing)? It’s up to you and you’ll need to interpret your answer based on your industry norms.
Any related notes: ___________________.
E.G., “I managed a $50M ten years ago, but since then I haven’t managed a budget larger than $8.7M.”
PEOPLE MANAGEMENT:
What is the largest group of people you have ever managed?
Direct reports: _____
Indirect reports: _____
Dotted line reports: _____
Functional / cross-functional reports: _____Who do you customarily work with cross-functionally? List all, even if it’s a long list. We’ll slice, dice, bucket, and cull later: ________________________.
E.G., board, C-suite members, operating partners, other executives; strategy, planning, commercialization, legal, integration; technology, engineering, product management/development, marketing; human resources; etc.
YOUR BRAND:
YOU AT A GLANCE:
If you haven’t already thrown up your hands, I’d like to move into some questions we’ll entertain several (or many) times during our work together.
Asked plainly, the question would be, “What is your personal / professional brand?”
Asked that question directly, however, always—and I mean always—turns even the most outwardly successful, well-known people into a stammering fit.
So, I like breaking down the question, picking at it many times throughout a project as we dive deep, surface for perspective, and then dive deep again. I’ll lay the groundwork here and if ideas bubble up—now or when you’re next on a trail, at the grocery store, or in the shower (the place where all inspiration happens)—jot or dictate those fleeting moments into your phone.
Why does personal / professional brand matter?
Your personal / professional brand will likely be the last thing to come together in our work, but it’ll be the first thing your readers learn about you. And if all goes well, we might even shift your self-perception.
Let’s dive in. Here’s some free-form thinking to get the creativity flowing.
What’s the secret to showing high-level impact?
Okay, there’s no secret, it’s just plain hard work on our part to figure that out.
Who are you at the highest level?
We’re moving into a topic that’s both fun and challenging. We’re starting to cook with fire. The copy I present in the image below (ignoring the obnoxious highlighting), seems so easy when reading the final product (the opening summary), but it’s not that easy to wire together.
I’ve designed this section to (a) explain the concept, and (b) help you begin framing your career from a 10,000 foot perspective. I use a fruit-picking example because it’s silly and universally understandable. Note that I’ve never written for someone with the career path in the example—and probably won’t—so it’s merely for the purposes of example.
This step will let us begin summarizing your career and ultimately crafting your elevator pitch (cheesy phrase, but you get the point). The content we develop from the ideas you unearth here will likely become (a) opening material for your résumé, (b) usable material for your LinkedIn Summary and executive bio, and (c) talking points when you meet with others to discuss your career.
[RELATED BLOG POST: “Don’t Call it an Interview.”]
Traces of the ideas we develop can even become one-line bios (e.g., Twitter bios, which are also add-ons and take a ridiculous long time to get right).
These introductory, big picture ideas might even be supported in your résumé in the form of mid-level scope-of-work statements or accomplishment bullet points.
To kick things off, let’s visit an example from 2009, as well as the thinking behind it:
It’s written in résumé parlance, that being first-person tone of voice, with personal pronouns redacted. (Articles of speech are also frequently redacted from résumé writing.)
“Designing or leading development of 200+ enterprise and consumer products over 27 years—driving $50B+ in aggregate revenue.”
“Designing or leading development of 200+ enterprise and consumer products over 27 years—collectively driving $50B+ in revenue.”
Notice the subtle variation after the em dash. That’s a personal preference thing. Totally up to you. In fact….
Most of our work together will be (a) your personal preference and (b) my twenty-plus years of experience, blended up to (c) a perfectly pitched story that holds all of the framing, layering, and simplicity needed to properly represent you in your absence.
So the above example was the first time I used the aggregating concept. I came up with it because of something the client said, I asked if he’d be game to try counting the products and then the top-line revenue, and then we decided what to do with it.
I’ve used used the concept for every résumé since, and it not only flows as a high-level idea into executive bios but also into the body of the clients’ About section on LinkedIn.
Ultimately, the above client and I decided that $50B+ in aggregate revenue (which he pulled from public reports to the Street) felt a bit too heavy for the résumé. He emailed three weeks later, however, saying that he would toss the $50B+ into the conversation within 10 minutes of meeting a recruiter or while networking or interviewing generally, and the room would “light up,” as he phrased it.
This, by the way, is one of many subtle “positioning” examples. Is it your brand? Probably not. It was his. It characterized his body of work at a 10,00-foot, career overview level. A true executive summary. Ultimately, it was he who decided which parts he wanted to own on paper and which parts were perhaps best reserved for verbal sharing (or not), depending on the audience.
It’s also an example of “controls” I like to build into a client’s story. Language that influences.
Here’s another example:
It’s also written in first-person with personal pronouns redacted, but we do have to include the “the” article of speech. Otherwise it just sounds too off.
“Leading teams of 3 to 35 in the development of 24 medical devices, including 3 that founded a $3B/year subsidiary.”
This was also 2009, and it was the second client I tested my new idea on. She was less interested in presenting an aggregate revenue value, but she loved sharing that three of those medical devices had been foundational to a well-known subsidiary’s value.
Again, she hadn’t considered presenting a “body of work” concept at the top of her résumé. Remember, though: I hadn’t either. Her project was only the second time I’d entertained the idea.
P.S. Her product numbers were significantly lower because of the time it takes to develop a medical device in a highly regulated industry. On the other hand, the first client decided to include version releases in addition to first-ever products, so his product count could have characterized his product count at a much lower number. Again, that was his decision. (I sometimes have this issue when I ask a client how many people they’ve mentored all of them. Most say 3 to 6, while one said 350 people! He’d been the tip-top leader of several huge sales forces, and he was 100% certain and proud that he had mentored them. It’s helpful to ask the question, entertain the possibilities, and finally choose the answer that best fits you.)
Interestingly, you could almost hear both of the above people straighten in their chairs as a result of this single question. Actually, not as a result of the question; the answer to the question was what made them see themselves differently.
Now let’s focus on you.
If your stomach is in your throat right about now, FEAR NOT. We’ll get your aggregate value figured out whether you’re just out of school or if the things you do (e.g., policy development, Wall Street analysis) don’t feel like they can be aggregated as easily as something like product development.
This bullet uses a fruit picking example to try to simplify this effort. Let’s have a read:
“Over the past 20+ years, I’ve harvested 18 types of fruit, led teams of up to 4 direct and 150 indirect reports, generating 30 tons of product distributed across 9 countries—collectively driving $3B+ in revenue.”
Now, slap on your sunglasses or shield your eyes!
The colors in this image (a screenshot from on of my workbooks) is intended to share how the above numbers were derived.
Light blue: years’ experience, aggregated in the “Across 20+ years” sentence.
Yellow: product, also presented in the same sentence (notice that Company A, B, and C—where the person worked—actually total 29 types of fruit, but the aggregate sentence shows only 18 types of fruit; that’s because bananas showed up in all three companies, while kiwi showed up in only one)
Light green: people our fictional client worked with or led
Black: geography
Dark green: revenue / earnings
YOUR FIRST ATTEMPT:
If you’re not blind by now, let’s get into your story. Let’s also move from fruit to more concrete examples from real clients (details fictionalized).
“I hear you: “All this work for a few sentences?”
Me: “Yes. This is how we differentiate. Put in the work now and you’ll never have to do it again, you’ll just keep adding as you go forward.””
Drawing from memory and perhaps new discoveries now that we’ve opened up this madness, it’s time to take a crack at bundling themes and ideas from your own background so we can eventually present you at a 10,000 foot perspective.
In other words, if we weren’t confined to a single job, or even a single company, but instead zoomed out and looked at your career in the aggregate—stepping back to examine your body of work—what would we discover?
Client A zoomed out and realized that s/he has developed (or been part of development) on 25 major products across her 18 year career. Furthermore, she often felt like transitioning from B2C, to B2B, and then to regulated B2C was jarring to her story. Not a traditional path. So she always felt a bit of angst when discussing her career arc.
On reflection, she recognized that her strengths, abilities, and effectiveness as a leader today is actually made stronger because of the path her career took. This was in part because of the evolution of industry norms, the seniority she had reached, the likelihood that she might be a “purple squirrel,” and her own self-perception. She also did some research and realized that products she has been on over her career have yielded $18B+ in revenue over time.
Client B zoomed out and realized that he has designed 5 comprehensive HR programs at 4 companies in 15 years (one during an acquisition integration). Not only that, but two CEOs officially recognized him—one in writing, one at an all-hands meeting—as a strategic business partner. Those programs impacted 8 client groups totaling 40,000+ people on 3 continents (or in 20+ countries).
Client C did the math and realized that s/he led, co-led, or participated on more than 150 campaigns across a 20-year career for products or initiatives that brought in roughly $600M over the same period.
What’s your own aggregate discovery? (All I want is your attempt at creating summary content, no matter how rough.)
If you’re not sure, take multiple approaches. The runway is wide open still.
A BIT MORE TO NOODLE ON FOR LEADERS:
So, this is a slightly amorphous section, so think of this exercise as if you and I were talking to each other directly. That means you can zoom in, zoom out, or whatever you like. Don’t limit yourself. We’ll package and organize it later. Also, feel free to skip this section if it doesn’t apply to you.
Here we go:
Have you had one or more all-time professional accomplishments? Any watershed moments? How about career milestones that defined an industry, a business line, a product, or a service?
If so, here are some ways to think about that part of your story.
You can:
Call attention to something that already exist in your resume
Share a long-forgotten lauded experience
Tell me about a highlight that you’ve considered mundane until now (it may feel mundane to you, but it might not be to someone else, especially if they don’t know you yet; let’s examine it)
You can also:
Call out accomplishments or experiences from the distant past that would to make a case for why you want to return to that same type of work in the future. For instance, if I wanted to return to retained executive search (which I don’t, however I do offer “Strategic Introductions” for long-time clients), I’d need to somehow position examples of my retained search work from the early- to mid-2000s. I’d also need to wire-frame how my current work—which I began before entering search, then did in parallel, and finally continued on my own—would amplify my recruiting abilities. I’d probably want to share the network I’ve cultivated since retained search, although much like my own clients it would have to protect actual names. Obviously, sharing names would be number one no-no.
SOFT SKILLS:
Although people argue about the importance of soft skills, soft skills can indeed help explain how you lead. For instance, if I wasn’t able to listen, stay interested, and recognize patterns, I’d fail in my work. EQ and an abilty to context switch quickly are two soft skill examples.
If there are soft skills you’d like to try weaving in your story, list them here, particularly if you can tie them to your leadership style:
POINT OF VIEW:
It takes years to develop a point of view—a term often reserved for great artists and leaders.
But if you’ve worked long enough, whether or not you realize it, you have what started with a set of opinions that, over time, developed into a point of view that guides you. A vision that you’ll fight for.
Mine? Résumé writing is far more than slapping words on paper. Far more than simply editing existing content. Résumé writing is a tool that helps people make deeply important career decisions, reset perspectives, discover new directions, and assess the feasibility of the things they dream about—which are sometimes feasible, and sometimes not. I believe each of us fits somewhere. By mid-career, it's our job to find that fit—making ourselves visible in a way that authentically draws opportunity and like-minded people.
What’s your point of view?
Another way to answer the same question is to finish this sentence: “I believe _________________________________________.
Simon Sinek spoke at TEDx some years ago, and had a fascinating idea about how the limbic brain responds to the phrase “I believe.” Here’s the talk: “How great leaders inspire action.”Stuck? What are the things in your work life that get your hackles up? What do you sometimes find yourself on a soapbox about? What do you argue with others about? How have you made things better in a way that is uniquely you?
ONE MORE TO PONDER:
You’ve dug deep, so it’s time for kind-of a big question.
What DON’T you want your readers to miss about you?
If you’ve made it this far, my hat is off to you. This isn’t easy work, but remember that you’ll never lose what we put together and you’ll certainly be mindful of it in the future. Many, many clients return for updates entirely different people than when I first met them. Everything from too-massive spreadsheets to summaries and reports so we can refresh their story!
For now, hold tight. It will get easier.