Eleven people applied for the Recruiting Coordinator position at Southwestern Illinois College (SWIC). As part of the four-person hiring committee, I reviewed all the résumés to help find the strongest candidates. 

Two were immediately disqualified for targeting the wrong position in their cover letters.

Of the nine résumés that remained:

• 8 were not professionally written. This is a guess, of course, but an educated one. The most visually appealing résumé included one with a two-column format and a photo. It was not selected.

• 6 were two pages; 2 were three pages long.

• All of them included a customized cover letter, as requested in the job ad.

• In general, my fellow committee members were much more critical of the cover letters than they were of the résumés. 

• 4 were selected for interviews. I agreed with three of those choices.

That’s where it stands as of this writing. By the time you read this, there is a good chance that an official offer has been extended and accepted. One person is going to have an even happier holiday season.

Eight will not…at least not as a SWIC employee.

Some of them will perhaps start a position at one of the 10 other jobs they applied for using the exact same résumé. Some of them will postpone their job search until after the new year. Some of them will go to holiday parties and tell their friends how tough the job market is right now.

And a large percentage of the unchosen will never suspect that NOT A SINGLE APPLICANT appeared to customize their résumé for the position. Some had professional experience that was more aligned with the job requirements, but clearly it was up to the reader to make that connection.

For some of them, it might not have made a difference.

But for those of you who serve clients in competitive job search situations, think of targeting the résumé as a bare minimum, drop-dead, gotta-do checklist item that is sure to help them stand out among a pool of DIY résumé writers.

Marketing guru Seth Godin said it this way:

“It’s so tempting to write for everyone. But everyone isn’t going to read your work, someone is….Name the people you’re writing for. Ignore everyone else.”

In the case of the new SWIC Recruiting Coordinator, someone who ignored that advice is still going to get a job offer. But the candidates who ignored that advice and were not interviewed could have increased their chances tremendously by thinking about the mindset of the people they were writing for.

I expect to see more of this dynamic as AI empowers people to try writing their own résumé or cover letter with a few simple prompts. In the wrong hands, AI is hardly an equalizer. It ensures we’ll have more work in the future. Strategic and authentic writing are both in high demand, still the byproduct of critical thinking.

I look at it this way. I see all these fancy video clips and recipes for the most appetizing meals and desserts, so simple even a non-cooking fool like me could do it. Except even if it turns out good, it’s an accident at best.

Stay in your lane, amateurs! Don’t you know that we’re trained for this?

Alvin has been involved in a lot of different engineering projects throughout his career. His original résumé mentioned quite a few of them in various levels of detail across four pages. The bulk of the detail captured his involvement with international projects that happened earlier in his career.

More recently, Alvin has been in consulting roles and wants to continue along those same lines. Reverse chronology is definitely in play…infinite chronology is not. 

In essence, he’s saying “I’ve done a lot of stuff all over the world, and because of that I have a lot to offer a stateside company who needs someone who knows how to walk that line between hands-on project management and strategic consulting.” 

The nature of project work gives the writer two distinct considerations to navigate:

1. Redundant types of assignments can be implied to the client’s advantage. Simply provide enough content for the reader to think through…then stop. As if to say “And I did similar work with this company and with this company and with this company.” The power lies in what you don’t say.

In Alvin’s case, this decision was pretty simple. If you want the reader to focus on “2015 to Present” or whatever time frame you choose, then the supporting material — or in this case, the lack thereof — needs to reflect that. You can help the reader focus on RIGHT NOW by taking away the kind of job-by-job analysis that comes with traditional handling of the reverse-chronological format.

2. Projects are researchable. You can go into detail about each one if you want to, or you can even provide a link on the page that allows the reader to opt for any deep-dive background information. But each one of the Notable Projects listed is a Google-able entity, with details that would let the reader know everything they wanted to know about its size and scope.

His project list spans a wide range of companies and countries. Is it essential for the reader to know his job title and the year he worked on each of them? Perhaps at some point, those details will become more relevant. But to do the kind of work he wants to do now, and to present all that in an easily digestible form without getting lost in the details…the answer is “no”.

A client who walks in the door with pride, experience, a solid reputation, and pages and pages of source information is often shocked by taking this kind of approach. I get that. It doesn’t have to be done my way to be effective. 

But I think where we sometimes go astray is when we assume that a second or even third page — by sheer volume alone — will carry the value we hope to convey. Given the shrinking nature of an average reader’s attention span, that can be a dangerous assumption to make.

Can implied value be equal to or greater than value that is overtly stated? Co-creating value in the mind of a résumé reader is a collaborative mental process, facilitated by a written process, that relies on a delicate balance between the known and the unknown. 

Keep in mind that, in this case, the decision to go with a one-page format was NOT pre-meditated. The goal was to showcase the most recent 10-year period, and then ask “Does the remaining content support or distract from seeing the client as a solution to the reader’s problem?” 

If I really wanted to drive that message home, would saying it louder help? If you believe it would, keep writing. If you believe the volume is sufficient, stop. Trust the process. Based on the quality of the content you present — as opposed to the amount of content you choose NOT to present — did you get the volume right?

A June 2024 research article in Science Advances presents another argument for writing simpler and more effective content. The research focused on how readers engaged with news headlines from the Washington Post and Upworthy, a storytelling website. Through a series of independent projects, they reached this conclusion:

“In both lab-controlled experiments and real-world trials, headlines that used common words with fewer syllables attracted more reader engagement. More analytic and complex headlines got fewer clicks, and some readers didn’t even remember them just minutes after seeing them.”

What are the implications for résumé writers?

For one, it is a reminder that résumé reading is often done in a competitive online environment where people are “economical with their attention.” No surprise there. But perhaps more importantly, the study revealed a gap between writers and readers, a “disconnect between what journalists think audiences will read and what they actually do.”

I believe that same gap is abundant across our industry. It applies to my work, your work, and anyone else who uses the written word to address a decision-making audience. And it applies to more than just headlines.

Our Fundamentals team recently explored one of the ways this might creep into your own work. A common concept among résumé writers is to “match the language of the job description” because the ATS will use that language as the basis for scanning résumé content to identify qualified candidates.

We looked at a randomly selected job description that included this phrase: 

“Set strategy for data governance work streams to ensure integrity and quality of large data sets that inform business decisions and optimize operations, influencing 3rd party vendors and internal analytics partners to manage timelines and deliverables.”

It might be grammatically correct, but that sentence received a negative score on more than one readability tool. It is a collection of syllables not worthy of being copied and pasted as is. It SOUNDS very corporate, but that’s about it. If it’s important enough to be included, it’s important enough to be included more simply.

A simplified version of that phrase might look like this: 

“Create plans to ensure important data is correct and useful, enabling better business decisions and work efficiency. Partner with outside companies and internal teams to track progress and meet deadlines.”

That’s much better from a readability standpoint because it has fewer words and syllables, but it comes at a price. If you regurgitate what was originally written, theoretically you stand a better chance of satisfying the ATS gods…but readability is compromised. If you revise what was originally written, you risk that ATS alignment…but stand a better chance of connecting with a human reader. Now imagine making that decision 25-50 times within the same document. The potential upside is huge.

To anyone studying for the CPRW credential or looking to improve the way their work resonates with readers, I wholeheartedly support the conclusion that researchers have once again affirmed: “When all else is equal, and you are on the fence…simpler language is better.”

[HINT: CPRW test submissions are graded by certified WRITERS, not electronic tools or certified readers. Play your hand accordingly.]

Plan A is Not an Option; Plan B is Whatever Else Works!

My analysis of the client’s source material is below:

• Format: Conversion from reverse-chronological to functional.

• Attributes: Roger has a 17-year career to sell, progressing from associate to director level in marketing-heavy roles. He has strong accomplishments throughout his career, advanced education, and a few testimonials to support his director and management-level qualifications.

• Challenges: His work history is a series of short-tenure positions, and the two-page, reverse-chronological format only brings attention to that. Short-tenure positions don’t carry the stigma they once did, but it stands out as a reason why his current approach might not be working.

• Target: He wants to apply for VP-level jobs.

Recognizing a pattern in his job history, I grouped it into three functional areas (see the colored sections in the original draft) and tied the dates to those areas so they covered a wider range. Each functional area featured one showcase position, with two previous positions in that area listed below it. All the dates were included but de-emphasized, and job titles were intentionally omitted.

I grouped nine jobs into three sets of three, such that job #1, job #4, and job #7 were minimally developed, and the rest not at all. The organizational pattern is both functional and reverse-chronological at the same time. Spreading the presentation across two pages defeats the purpose of switching the emphasis from dates and job titles to skills and accomplishments…so the presentation is kept to one page.

It’s a risky interpretation and it might not work…but a traditional approach is not really an option. This matches the story I want to tell, but it might not sit well with the reader.

You are a person who strives to maintain current best practices in a rapidly changing ecosystem. Out of curiosity, you might prompt your favorite AI platform with the same question you see written above. And if you did, you’d get a variety of answers depending on which platform you asked:

• Chat GPT was the most thorough, outlining 10 trends with brief explanations that have been edited here.

• Claude offered half as much content with the same prompt, including two (#2 and #3) that pretty much repeated the Chat GPT responses.

• Gemini provided only two answers, both of which were mentioned in at least one of the other two lists.

Do you see anything shocking in any of those lists? Probably not. The two that stood out the most to me were Video Résumés and Soft Skills emphasis, mainly because I have no plans to participate any time soon.

Soft skills are great if you can find a way to package them into testimonials or impactful accomplishments. But just listing them on a résumé is pandering to the whole ATS-as-decision-maker narrative that I find to be fantastically inaccurate. 

Video résumés are a next-generation concept. As one of the most tragically unhip dudes on the planet, I’m going to stick with words on the page.

Which leads me to these questions:

1. Which of these trends do you already incorporate into your work?

2. Which of these trends do you disagree with or tend to contradict each other?

3. Which of these trends are not really current trends at all?

4. What is the one trend that each of these AI platforms failed to identify?

5. What aspects of résumé writing are trend-proof and remain constant over the years?

I love having AI as my writing assistant, but blind truth it is not. Never underestimate the role of real intelligence in making résumé writing decisions. I’m putting my money on being able to tell the difference.

We spend so much time focusing on our clients’ past to help them secure a better future. What if the discussion of the future happened up front? More on that in a minute.

The Savannah Bananas are the Harlem Globetrotters of baseball. ESPN has called them the “Greatest Show in Sports” and they bring their show to millions of fans in cities all over the country.

They have a unique approach to the game that puts the ability to entertain fans at the forefront. Their website application includes such questions as “What makes you a great candidate for becoming a part of our team? What are your special talents? (other than your ability to play the game)? What will you do so that fans will remember and talk about you? Heavy use of video is encouraged.

Their three-step hiring process includes:

1. A video cover letter that allows the candidate to showcase their personality, NOT to list qualifications or work history. To fit into their energetic and fun-loving culture, you’d better be prepared to show who you are as an individual.

    

2. An essay to indicate how well you fit into their fan-centric philosophy, and how well you embody this core belief and can articulate your passion for and commitment to the fan experience.

    

3. A “Future Résumé” that shifts the emphasis from past experience to future ambition. Candidates are told to “outline your goals, what you aspire to achieve with the team, and how you envision your career growing with the Bananas.”

Good luck trying to find a template for that.

If our clients wanted to use this same approach, what would that look like?

The book “Banana Ball” by Jesse Cole is a fascinating read about how to re-think an entire industry. Among many innovative ideas and concepts, my favorite line appears on page 251: “Attention beats marketing — 1,000 percent of the time.”

In the spirit of Banana Ball, I created a future résumé for a daycare teacher who plans to pursue advanced education and a leadership career.

Would something like this make a positive impression on decision-makers in her industry?

Can you think of a scenario where one of your clients could use something like this to their advantage?

Could you market this as an additional product or service?

Isn’t getting the reader’s attention part of the game? You don’t have to be a baseball fan or a résumé writer to appreciate the possibilities. But first, you have to dare to re-imagine.

You just wrote a résumé for a Certified Treasury Professional (CTP). 

You researched keywords and highlighted the client’s progression through two previous finance jobs and employers. You captured his marketability for a targeted analyst role, which overlapped with many of the job duties and accomplishments in his most recent position with ABC Financial Services Company. You integrated a little dash of green to accentuate the color of money. You’re happy with the results, the client was happy with your work, and all is good in the world.

In a plot twist only a résumé writer would appreciate, your very next client is also a Certified Treasury Professional. All the research and wordsmithing you put into the previous project will surely help reduce the time it takes to write CTP #2. Heck, you could cut and paste the entire summary section and eliminate nearly an hour of work you poured into the first one.

Except CTP #2 is targeting a senior VP role, not an analyst role.

And CTP #2 took a completely different path to get where she is now.

And CTP #2 has twice the experience as CPT #1, including regional director-level positions in the US and abroad.

And CTP #2 has an advanced degree, speaks three languages, and spent seven years in accounts receivable for one of the largest non-profit organizations on the East Coast.

In other words, they are nothing alike.

Each client’s selling proposition is as unique as a snowflake. The résumés might contain common words, phrases, and skills, but the overall marketing message conveyed in the summary is like comparing a dictionary to a thesaurus.

CTP #1 featured a summary paragraph focused on progressive experience and contributions to specific treasury functions. The headline, sub-headline, and body text might look like this:

Financial/Treasury Analyst

Certified Treasury Professional | Association for Financial Professionals

Five years of progressive experience in billing, budget planning, and corporate treasury analysis roles. Recognized for process improvements, exceptional work ethic, and problem-solving contributions to fast-paced organizations, including oversight of key financial metrics for simultaneous field projects. Technical skills include MS Office, MS SQL, QuickBooks, and Tableau.

CTP #2 will feature a summary paragraph that previews a track record of success leading people, projects, and mission-critical resources under challenging conditions. The CTP designation serves as an adjunct credential. It might look like this:

Senior Finance Executive | Domestic & International Operations

Startup, Fast-Growth, Turnaround, & Transitional Leadership

Proven success leading strategic business/financial operations, complex budgeting, and analytical/reporting systems to drive strong and sustained bottom-line growth. Background includes diverse, multicultural environments in several countries; fluent in English, French, & German. A Certified Treasury Professional with deep knowledge of IFRS, US-GAAP, and Dual Standard Systems.

To write so generically that the words can be used universally is not the way to differentiate clients in a competitive market. A unique selling proposition is just that…so unique to the client that no one else can say the same thing. It is the ultimate single-use product. If your summary paragraph is reusable, it is unusable.

Writing a résumé for a client with a large volume of information isn’t the problem; the real problem is presenting that information in a way that doesn’t overwhelm the reader. If the words we choose are the fuel of the résumé, then it helps to have an organizing tool that can process that fuel while accommodating both volume and readability issues.

The hybrid résumé combines both functional and reverse-chronological components, and the framework allows for a lot of creativity in terms of how the content and formatting combine to showcase specific content. I used a hybrid style for the Sharon Tracey sample on the next page. Her lengthy tenure in education included a diverse skill set that became even more powerful as the context was added in the form of strategic sub-headlines.

When you have a lot of content to deal with, look for themes, consistencies, and content groupings that might be meaningful to the reader. There is a lot of versatility built into the hybrid résumé. The sub-headlines you choose are up to you, and the selection process is just as strategic as the rest of the content you include. Every sub-headline costs you an entire line of space, but the readability ROI is dramatically improved.

Here are seven instances when a hybrid résumé might be in your client’s best interest:

• Career Transitions: When transitioning to a new industry or role where the chronological work history might not directly align with the desired position, a hybrid format allows you to highlight relevant skills and experiences from various roles.

• Employment Gaps: If your client has significant work history gaps, a hybrid résumé can shift the focus to skills and accomplishments rather than the employment timeline.

• Varied Work Experience: For individuals with diverse work experiences in different industries or roles, a hybrid format enables you to showcase transferable skills and achievements effectively.

• Freelancers/Consultants: Freelancers, consultants, or contractors who have worked on multiple projects with different clients can highlight specific project outcomes or skills gained.

• Recent Graduates or Entry-Level Professionals: Entry-level professionals or recent graduates who may not have extensive work experience can use this format to emphasize relevant coursework, internships, volunteer work, or skills acquired during education.

• Highlighting Skills Over Experience: If your client has specific skills or competencies that carry more weight than the chronology of their work history, a hybrid résumé allows you to prioritize and showcase those skills prominently.

• Non-Traditional Career Paths: For individuals with non-linear or non-traditional career paths, the hybrid format can be the perfect way to present their diverse experiences and skills.

Packaging is the key here. The hybrid résumé can be challenging to format and structure, and it might not be considered suitable for all industries. Think of it as an extension of a dedicated skills section, which requires a visual balance of functional and chronological components. 

It’s not the right solution for every client, but it’s a handy alternative to have for just the right moment. A hybrid résumé format can be beneficial any time you want to present a cohesive narrative that strategically highlights qualifications, skills, and achievements in a way that is aligned with the targeted profession.

Depending on which research you believe, nonverbals are reported to contribute as much as 55% to overall communication. The tone of voice accounts for 38%, and actual spoken words contribute only 7%. Most commonly attributed to the work of Albert Mehrabian, these percentages refer specifically to how we convey feelings and attitudes in certain interpersonal situations.

On a much less scientific scale, some of those same dynamics are relative to the written word as well. Professional writers like you and I are trained to slave over every little nuance of the English language. Even if our reading audience barely got a passing grade on their high school term paper, we give them Shakespeare and assume they’ll appreciate the way our words dance and sing in dramatic structure.

But even the most untrained reader uses two overarching laws to evaluate résumé nonverbals:

The Law of Consistency | For as much as résumé writers “violate” common rules of the English language, they often overcome usage standards by doing so consistently. From capitalization and punctuation to the use of white space and color, visual consistency is a highly desirable trait from the reader’s perspective.

The Law of Contrast | The main purpose of formatting is to make sure certain content stands out compared to what is above it, below it, or beside it. Too much or too little is a subjective standard that only you can decide. Just know that your reader wants to make sense of your document quickly. Strong formatting choices provide the contrast to support and facilitate that process.

Some of the most common issues that involve the evaluation of résumé nonverbals include:

• Formatting/Layout: A simple, clean, and organized layout creates a visually appealing résumé. Use consistent formatting for headings, bullet points, and text alignment. Ensure a balanced use of white space to avoid a cluttered appearance and improve readability.

• Font and Font Size: Choose a professional and easy-to-read font (e.g., Georgia, Arial, Calibri, or Cambria). Stick to a consistent font family throughout the document. Typically, the header may have a larger font size (13-16 pt.), while the body of the résumé would be a more standard size (10-12 points).

• Bold, Italics, & Underlining: Use these formatting options selectively to emphasize key points such as job titles, company names, or achievements. Avoid overusing these styles to maintain readability.

• Bullet Points: Use bullet points strategically and consistently. If you use bullets to showcase accomplishments, choose a different content format for job duties or responsibilities. Bulleted lists can be scanned quickly, making it more likely that important information will be noticed.

• Consistent Styling: For example, if you bold your job titles, continue to do so consistently for each position. Consistency in styling contributes to a polished and professional appearance.

• Color: Adding a touch of color can help your résumé stand out. Use color sparingly and ensure it enhances rather than distracts from the content.

• Margins: Keep consistent and reasonable margins to maintain a balanced look (no smaller than .5” on all sides). Cramped or widened margins change the overall visual appeal.

• Lines and Dividers: Strategically use horizontal lines (borders) or dividers to separate sections and create a visual hierarchy. This can help guide the reader's eyes through the document.

• Date Formatting: Maintain a consistent format for dates (e.g., month and year) throughout your work experience section. Consistency in date formatting adds to the overall professionalism.

Relevant content will always be king, but résumé nonverbals help carry the message, too. Sometimes they speak louder than words, and when they do…what do your nonverbals say?

Special thanks to my baseball buddy and PARWCC colleague Tom Dezell for sharing a little treasure he found while purging his 20-year-old office files. Some of you might remember when the CPRW exam consisted of four modules that were sent to you and returned via fax, a technology that seems about as relevant as Morse code today.

• Module 1 was 15 multiple-choice questions designed to test your general knowledge of résumé writing principles and best practices. Here are some of the sample questions:

Which of the following characteristics help define a well-written cover letter and résumé as powerful tools in the job search?

1. Cover letters are actually on white or nearly white paper to make them “business-like”. Résumés benefit from colored paper to set them apart.

2. Both are written to help the employer see how well the applicant can meet the company’s needs.

3. The best cover letters and résumés are general, describing the applicant broadly enough so that the same package will work for many jobs.

4. Unlike a well-written résumé, a cover letter should be handwritten to show the applicant’s sincerity.

Which of the following statements about two-page résumés is true for the greatest number of clients?

1. Even clients who are experienced professionals or who have 20 or more years of background in their field should avoid two-page résumés because HR Directors prefer one page. Anything more is a waste of their time.

2. Résumé writers should always strive to do a minimum of two-page résumés, and often three or more pages. It makes the client look more impressive and minimizes questions that need to be asked in the interview.

3. Two-page résumés are often appropriate if needed to adequately present the client’s employment background and qualifications.

4. Since the cover letter is considered the first page of a résumé, all résumés are actually three pages in length.

• Module 2 was a proofreading test. You were given a pre-written cover letter sample and asked to circle the eight errors or mistakes. Including the physical address was NOT considered one of those errors.

• Module 3 was four essay questions. You were expected to write 125 words or less for each question, handwritten or typed, and you were instructed to include two or more answers per page to minimize the total number of pages that needed to be faxed. Here are three of the sample questions:

1. One of your clients is an automobile mechanic. Another is a regional sales manager. Apart from the specifics associated with each job, should the “product” you write for the mechanic differ from the one you write for the sales manager? How? Why?

2. There are hundreds of books and software programs on how to write résumés. Any one of them would probably cost less than a résumé that you prepare. Why should anyone engage a Certified Professional Résumé Writer?

3. John wants your help in preparing a résumé and cover letter. He has a solid background as an aeronautical engineer. He recently arrived in your city and doesn’t want to relocate again. But as far as you know, there are no companies in or near your city that would have use for an aeronautical engineer. How do you proceed?

The evaluation of the first three modules was always done in-house. Somewhere along the line those first three modules were dropped from the process, and the grading team had no idea because we only concerned ourselves with Module 4.

• Module 4 was the only part that remains today, where you are asked to create a résumé and cover letter for a fictitious client based on information that may or may not be relevant. Those fictitious clients come and go, but the writing challenges are completely different.

Whereas testing used to focus on your overall knowledge of the industry as well as the résumé product, those who plan to get certified in 2024 only need to focus on the writing. I hope you appreciate the evolution.

A friend of mine offered me an all-access pass to the behind-the-scenes hiring process for his company. All I had to do was promise not to name him, the position, or the company…a small admission price for what would undoubtedly be valuable and immediately usable research information.

The position was for an administrator at a Memphis-based educational services company, advertised via normal channels for a period of 60 days. The actual job description was intentionally brief, specifying the desire to find someone with an “appropriate” bachelor’s degree and a minimum of one year in related experience. The salary range was listed as $48,000-$52,000.

Only 11 people submitted a résumé and cover letter. Here are my thoughts:

• The most common deficiency in overall match rate was a lack of hard skills.

• One résumé was four pages long; two were three pages long; six were two pages; two were one page. Length had zero impact on their overall consideration.

• With the exception of possibly moving the Education section before the Experience section, there is no evidence that any attempt was made to tailor the résumé content to the job description.

• In one instance, the name of the résumé file submitted to the ATS was the name of a previous position they also applied to (and a part time one at that!).

• 10 of the 11 applicants started their cover letter with “I am writing to express my strong interest in the ___________________ position” … or a very similar introductory phrase. One started with: “I believe I am the best candidate for this position.”

Results:

• Five of the 11 people made it to the “Maybe” pile after an initial screening.

• Two of the five emerged as top interview candidates.

• A hiring decision will be made. Maybe even two.

Here is what I learned:

• It doesn’t appear that “tailoring your résumé” to the target job is common knowledge. What are the odds that out of 11 people, exactly zero would bother to follow this seemingly ground floor advice? Help your clients stand out with targeted messages, because it is NOT a common practice.

• “Stay in your lane” could very well apply to your clients, so don’t be afraid to initiate conversations about how they plan to use the work that you do for them. Apparently, it is considered normal to apply for jobs that kinda sorta maybe look like good targets. Based on what I saw here, I would guess that 60% of the population is off-target 90% of the time. Teach your clients how to take advantage of that sad little ratio.

• Cover letters are where the magic happens. And by magic, I mean a process that changes normal words and thoughts into sentences that try to sound more important than they are. You would never say “I engage problems with an optimistic approach for creative solutions.” So why would you write that way?

• The ATS system did not care if the résumé was in PDF or MS Word format. The ATS system itself did not do any keyword scanning or candidate screening.

• None of the candidate résumés scored higher than 22 on the JobScan matching rate tool.

• Writing a résumé and connecting with an audience are two different things. The first one checks a box; the other one makes a difference. In the absence of a true connection, apparently any old résumé will do.

The state of Oregon has more than 12,000 licensed attorneys…compared to only 2 CPRWs. Clearly, they needed to change something. 

Starting in May, Oregon law graduates can become licensed without taking the bar exam. According to a November 2023 article published in Reuters: 

“In addition to completing 675 hours of paid legal work, participants in Oregon’s new program must submit at least eight examples of legal writing, take the lead in at least two initial client interviews or client counseling sessions, and head up two negotiations, among other requirements. The applicants' portfolios would then be graded by Oregon bar examiners, and those with qualifying scores would be sworn into the state bar. Candidates may apply 100 hours of supervised legal work performed in law school clinics or internships toward the 675-hour requirement.”

It’s an interesting number. Let’s say PARWCC adopted a similar standard, and for the sake of simple math, let’s say the average résumé project takes five hours from start to finish.

If the Oregon standard was adapted to our industry, you would need to be a part of 135 résumé projects, submit at least eight examples of résumé writing, take the lead in at least two initial client interviews or client counseling sessions, and head up two negotiations for résumé services. Your portfolio would then be graded by certified examiners to earn your CPRW credential. 

You and I both know that’s not happening anytime soon, nor should it. But it begs the question: Just how much practice does it take to demonstrate the skill level required to pass the CPRW exam?

And the answer is: it depends.

Doing something 135 times should make a difference. But if you have a passion for writing résumés in the passive voice, after 135 attempts you have probably only learned a more efficient way to write in the passive voice. If you write approximately the same summary for this client as you did for the last one, all you have after 135 attempts is a more efficient way to write a generic summary paragraph.

In other words, you gain experience, but not growth. You can win the game without improving.

Students in the Fundamentals of Résumé Writing program — many of whom aspire to earn the CPRW credential — are exposed to the idea of “getting their reps” to improve their skills. Regardless of where or how they were previously trained, these students get direct feedback and specific ideas for minimizing the kind of “mistakes” that our grading team will expose in their review of your CPRW submission.

If there was a better way to lower the magic number from 135 to a fraction of that, I’d teach it.

Good information on how to write a résumé is abundant. The problem is that you can’t read your way to a writing certification any more than you can write your way into delivering a decent speech. Deliberate practice — simulating the same conditions and decision-making scenarios real clients will absolutely demand of you — is the best way I know to help aspiring writers approach the CPRW standard. The actual number is a byproduct of deliberate practice, deliberate coaching, and a willingness to embrace both the known and unknown.

If the CPRW credential is a 2024 resolution for you, here are three potential paths to choose from: 1) take the bar; 2) raise the bar; or 3) belly up to the bar for a bottle of wine and conversation. Only one will get you there.

[LEGAL DISCLAIMER: The choice of a résumé writer is an important decision and should not be based solely on advertisements.]

You are Writing more than ever, competing for the attention of Busy Readers who skim.

Communicate More Effectively in the Real World

I have never quoted myself before, but I’m about to. Last year at Thrive I said: “If you want to make a living today, work on your writing. If you want to make a living tomorrow, study how people read…then write and format accordingly.” So imagine my glee when I came across a book that reinforced this philosophy.

The book is by Todd Rogers and Jessica Lasky-Fink. He is a professor of public policy at Harvard in the John F. Kennedy School of Government, where she serves as a research director. Nothing about their respective 9-5 jobs suggests that they know anything about professional résumé writing. But let me share a few highlights with you.

On skimming:

“Busy readers aim to extract as much value as possible from a communication with as little time and attention as possible. To achieve this, they don’t always read linearly, line by line. They vary how they read to suit their goals. They may closely read one section, skim another, and jump around in yet another, searching for specific information that they consider relevant.”

“In the language of economics theory: Busy readers maximize their expected utility by continuously trying to predict whether the value of spending another second reading the message is greater than the benefit of spending that time and attention on something else.”

“As soon as the expected value of the next second spent reading is lower than the value of whatever else we would be doing instead, we stop.”

On scanning:

“Scanning involves jumping between sections of text, often guided by our selective attention and rules of thumb about where the most valuable information is likely to be.”

“Readers skip over large swaths of text, mainly landing on anchor points: headings, first sentences of paragraphs, images, and formatting that visually contrasts with the rest of the text. As with skimming, readers who are scanning sometimes jump backward to revisit sections previously skipped over.”

“…if the point of your message is to convey important information…you need to meet the busy readers on their own terms. They are going to skim and scan regardless. Writing in a way that helps them grasp key information as they do so will make their reading flow more smoothly while also helping you accomplish your goals as a writer.”

On formatting:

“The first question most of us ask when we see a map is, “What is this a map of?” Likewise, when we approach practical writing the first thing we ask is, “What is this about?” The easier writers make it for busy readers to orient themselves and answer that question, the more likely it is that those readers will engage and read the message.”

“Readers also widely recognize sub-bullets…are related to the higher-level bullets immediately above them. Consequently, readers may skip over the sub-bullets if the higher-level bullet point is not relevant to them.”

“As with words, ideas, and requests, less is more when it comes to formatting, too. Using too many types of formatting in a single message can leave readers unable to figure out what any of it means; they may be then less likely to read or understand the most important information. Use enough formatting, but no more.”

The book is full of examples and research studies that support their claims. Unless I overlooked it, the word “résumé” appears nowhere in its 242 pages. But Todd and Jessica are talking directly to all of us, especially when they say things like this: “The biggest mistake is that we think that our job is to write well when our job is actually to write effectively, which means writing in a way that makes it easy for the reader. Everything flows from that.”

October is the 10th month of the year, which makes it mathematically and logistically ideal for: 

• Looking back at the year in progress to assess what’s working and what’s not.

• Looking ahead to plan any major changes for the year 2024.

• Leveraging your intangibles to make strategic decisions.

Looking Back

Assuming you have been in business all year, by the end of this month you will have a large enough sample size to create a meaningful report card of Key Performance Indicators. Something like this:

• Total clients served in 2023? __________

• Average # of clients per month? __________

• Total revenue in 2023? __________

• Average revenue per month? __________

• Average revenue per client? __________

• Total résumés (or cover letters or LinkedIn profiles or coaching sessions) __________

• Average revenue per client per service? __________

• Total # of packages sold in 2023? __________

• Average # of packages sold per month? __________

• Total revenue per package in 2023? __________

• Average revenue per package? __________

• Average time spent on revisions per project? _____________

• Prospect-to-customer conversion rate in 2023? __________

• Busiest month so far (revenue)? __________ Busiest month so far (# of clients?) __________

• Slowest month so far (revenue)? __________ Slowest month so far (# of clients)? __________

• Percentage of total 2023 clients via referrals? __________

Chances are pretty good that many of the answers to those questions will involve 1) dividing by 10, and 2) identifying at least one glaring number that made you scratch your head. It doesn’t matter what you count; what matters is that you take the time to work ON your business instead of just IN your business.

Looking Ahead

Depending on the story your numbers tell, the last two months of the year are a good time to think about your current business model. Knowing which numbers to change and knowing how to change them are two different things. But it’s not too soon to find the one or two things that are absolutely fundamental to your future success. PARWCC has a ton of resources to help you take your numbers where you want them to go. 

Leveraging Your Intangibles

If October is for counting your KPIs, November is for counting your blessings. Conduct a quick “Happiness Audit” to identify what parts of your business make you the happiest...and which parts subtract from your happiness. How can you leverage happiness to achieve even greater things in the next fiscal year? 

December is for giving yourself the gift of renewal. Conduct an “Energy Audit” to identify what parts of your business add fuel to your soul, and what parts really drain your energy. How do your audits contribute to the reality of your KPIs? Between KPIs and audit findings, which one is likely to drive change in the other?

Halloween, and the days leading up to it, can be serious fun. But 10 full months will have passed, and the next day is for serious go-getters. Strike while the math is easy.

Everybody seems to have a day these days, according to the National Day Archives (https://www.nationaldayarchives.com/).

National Career Coach Day is January 8.

Today is National College Colors Day.

My birthday will always coincide with National Bagel Day.

But résumé writers? We don’t have a day.

Until now. 

And I don’t think we need to pay $2,500 to make it happen like the National Day Archives would like us to. All we need to do is agree on the date and collectively honor “the little profession that could”.

Thanks to a lifetime of journaling, I was able to determine the exact date I showed up at The Résumé Center in Belleville, IL for my first day of work with absolutely zero résumé writing experience. It was also the day after I saw Patti LaBelle in concert at the Fox Theater in St. Louis, a memorable performance that foreshadowed the prosodic style of writing I would develop over the next several decades.

That date was September 19, 1988….as good a date as any to pay tribute to the people—past, present, and future—who associate pride and passion with the art and craft of selling people on paper.

So with the blessing of Doug and Margaret Phares, I hope you’ll put Tuesday, September 19, 2023 on your calendar as National Résumé Writer’s Day and do something special for yourself, your clients, or your colleagues on that day. And the year after that and the year after that and the year after that.

You have 18 days to plan…how are YOU going to celebrate?

Stacy Adams is an HR Generalist for one of the largest employers in Southern Illinois. This educational company has two branch locations, approximately 1,400 employees, and an average of 150 open positions at any given time ranging from full-time/part-time faculty positions to maintenance, IT, public safety, and administrative roles.

Stacy was kind enough to sit down with me and share her views on a number of job search topics. This interview took place on June 23, 2023. No résumé writers or career coaches were harmed before, during, or after the edited transcription of our discussion.

Tell us a little about your background.

I originally went to a two-year Christian community school to be a teacher, then transferred to a TV/Radio Broadcast track in a four-year communications program. My minor was theater. I graduated and took a job selling advertisements for a local newspaper for a while, and then started working for a temporary staffing organization. That’s where I fell in love with the HR functions I was exposed to, and leveraged that to an HR role in higher education. We’re the only department with the word “human” in our title. Even though we deal with a lot of rules and regulations, it’s not always so black and white when you’re dealing with people. And I really like the relationship-building side of it.

What ATS system do you use?

We use PeopleSoft, which is fairly common in higher education. But I would say the most popular right now is probably Workday.

Are you responsible for the job descriptions that get posted for every job?

We have nine different employee groups, and each one handles that a little differently. If it’s a brand new job, we partner with the department lead to create, research, or refine the job description that goes through board approval before it is published. Almost every job requires a résumé, cover letter, references, and transcripts.

Do you pay attention to the candidate materials submitted before the application deadline?

Anyone in HR or the relevant department can review applicants at any time. I tend to check my open jobs once a day, and I may notify the hiring manager if I see a particularly strong candidate, or vice versa. But for the most part, I prepare myself to see all the applicants as a whole before doing any screening.

How does the screening process work?

Every job we hire for has a search committee, and that number varies by department up to as many as 10 people for senior management positions. Everyone on the search committee for that job has access to the entire applicant pool and their application materials. 

Once the job closes, we let the search committee know and schedule a meeting to review all the candidates. At that meeting, each search committee member is expected to talk about their top picks.

Does your ATS screen anyone out?

No. We are an equal opportunity employer, so we consider all candidates assuming they meet the minimum qualifications. I might pick my Top 5, and then meet with the committee where each person also has a Top 5 list. If four people were in everyone’s Top 5, we’ll probably consider them first before talking about any outliers.

Nothing in our ATS system screens candidates for us. The only reason you would not be considered is if you failed to upload all the required materials.

To narrow down a large pool of strong candidates, we might do a brief virtual interview with just a couple of questions to help decide whether to bring someone in for a face-to-face interview. Or we might ask all of them to upload a video of themselves answering three specific questions before deciding who moves on in the process. These scenarios are especially helpful if our initial candidates are geographically distant and there would be additional expenses involved with coming to our location.

Would career coaches be smart to work with their clients on video interviewing?

Following the pandemic, definitely. Even those who work in brick-and-mortar locations have virtual meetings throughout the week, so that medium is definitely one to get comfortable with. And since our hiring process is so committee-driven, it’s entirely possible that perhaps one of the committee members can’t be there in person the day we decide to interview the Top 5 candidates. So the whole virtual technology thing is definitely something to make friends with.

How do you personally view the cover letter?

I view it as kind of a “love letter” as to why the candidate wants the job. I look at the résumé first, but I want the cover letter to tell me the “why”, the stuff that the résumé doesn’t tell me. So when the résumé doesn’t line up 100% with a certain position, I expect the cover letter to answer all my questions. I’m not a big fan of objectives on résumés, but I want to read a cover letter that explains why the candidate wants THIS job, not just any job. Or maybe they are from out of state and plan to move back here soon, or the military is moving them nearby. 

How would you advise a jobseeker if a cover letter wasn’t asked for specifically?

If the job ad said the cover letter was optional, I would definitely include one. If it was not asked for at all, I probably wouldn’t bother.

What do you like to see in a résumé?

I want it to look polished. Until I see your face, this IS your face. Never put your picture on your résumé. I still see a lot of pictures, and internally I cringe when that happens. I’m looking for clean page breaks. The babysitting job from 20 years ago doesn’t need to be there. I really only care about the work that is most related to the job you want. To me it speaks volumes about your professionalism and whether you really understand what this job is all about. I like to see the present job written in the present tense and past jobs written in the past tense. If you say you have attention to detail but the résumé has a lot of typos, that’s really not a good look. 

Do you see a lot of candidates who apply for jobs they are not evenly remotely qualified for?

Yes. I think they often see the minimum qualifications and decide that this is a job they could do. If a job requires a certain level of education AND a certain level of experience, candidates who meet those criteria are considered the strongest candidates. If the job requires a certain level of education OR related experience, the candidate without the educational requirements has a lot more leeway to position themselves as a viable candidate. In my situation, if the job requires an undergraduate degree, I can’t hire you without that.

Would you allow someone to come to your office directly to apply for a job?

That does happen. They will say, “I’m not very tech-savvy, and I just want to apply in person.” When it does, I refer them to someone on our career services staff who will sit down with them and walk them through the steps to apply online. The entire committee has to have access to their application, not just me.

How do you feel about the real fancy résumé designs that are popular these days?

We don’t have a color printer here, so color doesn’t make that much of an impact when printed copies are all in black and white. If I feel like the graphic approach takes away from the content, I don’t like that. I tell people to save their résumé as a PDF regardless. If you have the choice to submit your résumé as a Word doc or a PDF, I would always choose PDF and I much prefer reading them in that format. It doesn’t seem like a final draft to me unless it is in a PDF format. 

Do you have a preference for the order in which information appears on the résumé?

Not really. I just want it to look clean and I want to be able to find the information I need to make a decision. It doesn’t matter to me if you have a reverse-chronological or a skills-based format, as long I can make sense of the content that’s there.

Does LinkedIn come into play at all either before or after you reach your Top 5 list of candidates?

If someone references their LinkedIn profile in an interview, I might go check it out. But typically I stay away from any social media influence on the decision-making process. Other people in my search committee might approach this differently. 

What is your #1 red flag for résumés?

Pictures…all they do is give the reader a greater chance to use bias against you. I have to consider those candidates anyway because of our status as an equal opportunity employer, but corporate America might not be as forgiving. Listing your high school diploma and the year you got it allows me to know your age, so I would advise people against that. I just hired an 81-year-old based on her qualifications, and she is a fabulous employee.

Do you always check references?

Not always. But recently one of our committees was torn between two really strong candidates. References helped us break the tie as to who got the offer.

After being told that no one would hire her because she was a woman, Rachel Balkovec created a gender-neutral résumé where she changed her name to "Rae". She told CBS News that the response “was immediate." Rachel became the first female full-time hitting coach in a major league baseball organization in 2019 and is now the first woman to work as a full-time manager of a major league-affiliated team.

I thought about Rachel while working recently with a client whose name was ethnically-apparent and difficult to pronounce. He revealed that in the US he goes by the nickname "Derek", and even has an email address with that name. The résumé I created for him used that name as well. Along the way, he asked me:

"In my previous résumé and cover letters, I used to write my name this way: First Name (Derek) Last Name. The reason for this is to let the potential employer know that my legal first name is not Derek. Does this matter? When I am filling out job applications on any organization's job portal, they ask for my legal name. Will any confusion happen if they see my first name on the résumé and cover letter is "Derek" while all my academic qualifications and official documents, governmental IDs, bear my legal name?"

First, there is nothing wrong with using the Legal First Name + (Nickname) + Legal Last Name construction. I told him to fill out the application truthfully by all means, but don't feel like you have a legal obligation to do the same on the résumé. Even people with simple American names who go by a specific nickname have been known to leave off their legal first name. Write it how you would like to be addressed, a strategy that has worked pretty well for people like James Paul McCartney and Peter Gene Hernandez (Bruno Mars).

Second, I want the reader to feel ZERO confusion or hesitation about reaching out to you. Using "Derek" removes that possibility. Job seekers face any number of human biases in the job search process anyway...why feed the system? At the end of the day, I like and recommend the “Derek” approach. It's just more user-friendly and universal. Save your legal name for the application. 

Speaking of human bias…an Oct 2019 article about ethnicity name bias asked--and answered--the question: "Do applicants with white-sounding names have an unfair advantage when looking for jobs?” Research suggests they do. You can find that article here. [NOTE: the phrase “white-sounding names” was used in reference to a direct quote from former British prime minister David Cameron in his 2015 address at the Conservative Party conference.]

A separate artificial intelligence study led by two professors from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School found evidence of discrimination against white women and minority men among employers looking to hire candidates with science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) majors.

Highlights from the study included:

• Companies hiring for STEM roles rated candidates with female and minority names lower than candidates with white male names.

• Employers placed significant value on the quality of the internships candidates held prior to their senior year in college. Firms indicated that they would choose a candidate with a 3.6 GPA and a prestigious internship over a candidate with a 4.0 who didn't have that type of experience.

• Employers generally rated female and minority candidates lower in "get-ability," meaning they believed those candidates were less likely to accept a job offer.

• Employers placed no value in students having low-skilled summer jobs during their senior-year summer.

As long as human beings are the ones who are essentially hard-wiring biases into the algorithms of artificial intelligence tools, don't expect a level playing field for people like Rachel or Derek any time soon. As marketing professionals, we can help our clients remain competitive, and we can do it in a way that is both honest and strategic.

Even after more than 30 years of doing this, I still deal with the occasional unhappy camper. Here is one of my recent favorites, reprinted verbatim with typos and all:

“John: This needs to be redone, it looks horrible the whole the format everything I am not sure if this is your first time doing this but horrible. Please have someone else take over. Thanks, RB”

There was a time when a comment like this would have really set me off. Today, I take a very neutral and emotionless approach…this guy is not happy, period.

I wrote him back and told him that no one else needed to take over, that I could deliver the project he wanted. And the reason I felt that way was because I took some formatting liberties with his résumé, using a design that I don’t recall ever using before. So it was new to me, too, and obviously not very appealing to him. Good to know. It took me all of 10 minutes to restore some traditional formatting assignments to his two-page résumé and send him a revised draft. And that was that. Unhappy camper packed up his tent and went home.

Had I fixated on the nasty tone of his message, I would have responded with some choice words of my own. I’m not a “the-customer-is-always-right” kind of guy, and I have very little patience for clients who think they can sling personal attacks and hide behind a keyboard while they do it.

Sometimes I tell them so. If it costs me business, I’m okay with that.

But this guy?

He just wanted the résumé redone, he wanted to be heard, and he expressed himself with the classless eloquence of a modern politician. Now he can take his cranky old self and bother someone else. He had no idea that the distance between what he saw and what he wanted was very small…therein lies part of the magic in what we do.

If you write résumés for any length of time, this WILL happen to you.

Just remember, it’s not a reflection of your skills and it doesn’t have to be a power struggle with a know-it-all client. It’s just a problem that gets solved. 

Don’t let their words slap the ego out of your talent. That’s your signature written in invisible ink in the bottom right-hand corner of their résumé. Don’t be afraid to stand by it. 

Happy clients are always preferred, but if your clients are happy and you’re not...résumé writing becomes just one more way to lose your soul.

What if Your Words Had to Live Forever?

My recent trip to the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, NY was an exercise in sports euphoria. That was to be expected. What I didn't expect was a lesson in résumé writing.

The Hall itself featured plaque after plaque of its 340 members, each one displayed on an oak wall with a sculpted bronze likeness and a brief block of biographical text that is usually in the vicinity of 85 to 90 words.

Think about that for a moment. No matter how long the career was...no matter what individual accomplishments they accumulated along the way...no matter what position they played....no matter if they were an executive, a player, or a broadcaster...the limit for the text is less than 100 words. Every plaque has these things in common:

• Each phrase is worthy of a deeper dive.

• Each word is measured for its ability to convey both meaning and imagery.

• Quantifiable metrics are sprinkled in to draw attention to the most outstanding accomplishments.

• Each line communicates cohesive thoughts as well as incomplete narratives of greatness.

It seems that the same way we sell Joe Smith--the Chief Marketing Executive at ABC Company--is not unlike the way we immortalize Lou Brock of the St. Louis Cardinals. The difference is the words we write for our clients don't have to live forever. In fact, if everything goes according to plan, the words we write will be obsolete as quickly as possible. Clients who win a new job qualify immediately for a different résumé moving forward. That could be two weeks, two years, or 10 years from now. If the Hall of Fame honors immortality, résumé writing honors sudden death.

The real takeaway for me is that the economic use of the English language is a device that accompanies the best of the best. If the next Qualifications Summary you wrote had to live forever, would you be okay with the word choice? Do the words you write get in the way, or do they help transport the reader to a place of greater appreciation and engagement? It’s something to aspire to.

"No one really wants to read a document. They just want to know what it says." ~ Anon

[Original article published in the Résumé Writers Notebook]

Darren was a repeat client whose original résumé focused on his five-year tenure at a local electrical supply company in Nashville, Tennessee. He progressed rapidly during those five years from counter sales to inside sales and finally to outside sales, where he thrived and became a top-performer for the company. 

Fast forward two years. 

Darren had used his previous résumé to help land a National Account Manager position with a Canadian-based company. His run of success continued. Because of the way we previously cataloged his experience, he knew to keep notes of his accomplishments along the way.

Instead of electrical supplies, this time Darren specialized primarily in the grocery sector of consumer products. And instead of only a regional focus, Darren expanded his scope to work with some of the largest and most well-known grocery brands across the country. The kind of names that, if you’re working in that sector, represent the holy grail of national accounts. 

His career thus far was the equivalent of an under-the-radar minor league prospect who finally made it to the major leagues, enjoyed a strong rookie season, and really came into his own during his sophomore year. From a résumé perspective, it was important to spend as much space as possible describing those first two years of his major league success. This proved that 1) his rookie season was not a fluke, 2) his skill set yielded repeatable results in a game with higher stakes, and 3) there was no reason to assume he couldn’t do it again.

No major league player describes his or her career — even if it’s only two years — using the accolades and details from their time in the minor leagues, so that is the approach I took for the rewrite. You can still see his minor league progression and baseball card-sized highlights in a one-row table at the bottom of the résumé, distilled to two sentences and four lines of text.

But the star of this presentation is the way he handled those national accounts, so those are featured prominently in approximately the same amount of space we used to capture all five job titles with his previous employer. Looking ahead to Darren’s next move, I would expect to see that list of nine accounts reduced to maybe his top three or four, depending on the context and the scope of his new job.

Stories change, and so does the time and space it takes to tell them. The next time you have a client whose most recent efforts deserve the greatest amount of attention, think about how you position what comes after that. Does it support the current role, or is it a distraction?

So many times the essence of a résumé is distilled through two simple questions: what have you done and how well did you do it? Creative-types build portfolios to showcase their work because in many ways they carry more weight than the chronology of an employment history, but applying for work through traditional channels requires a bit of both. You can’t just submit a piece of paper or link with a note that says “Here’s my portfolio…have a nice day.”

Using a common structure, you can see how the following sample captures essential elements of both a résumé and a portfolio. It was originally a two-page presentation, with the second page dedicated to more projects and more pictures. Whittled down to one page, only a few highlights remain to achieve the same result.

And the question I ask myself is this; what does the résumé actually say?

To me it says “I’ve done my job at an award-winning level for three different employers spanning more than 15 years. Here is a representation of some projects I have been involved in and what I am capable of doing for you.…would you like to see/know more?

And that’s it.

For as much time as we spend in the details of our clients’ professional lives, selling a client on paper requires decisions about which details to leave in, which to leave out, and packaging them in a way that helps the reader get to a favorable decision point. We all process that information differently, and that’s how it should be.

By the time we get to a final draft, it is difficult to calculate or appreciate the number of decisions that have been made. What remains is a product that is supposed to open doors and facilitate a much deeper discussion of hard skills, soft skills, and everything in between. A complete stranger will make decisions about the fit and marketability of your client based only on what remains, NOT what could have been.

I could have easily made this a chronological presentation, with project highlights presented accordingly under each job…but I didn’t.

I could have easily added more details for each project…but I didn’t.

I could have easily directed the reader to a portfolio link, maybe just list the projects here by name and dedicate more space to the typical job description/accomplishments type of information…but I didn’t.

For all the things I could have done, any shift in priorities would have also slightly changed what I wanted the résumé to say (and likely the space in which I wanted to say it!). As little as people actually enjoy the process of reading, a résumé that talks has got to carry some kind of advantage.

Take a close look at either a résumé you are currently working on or maybe even the last résumé project you completed. What does it actually say? Does it speak impact and value to a variety of readers? Can the reader visualize your client doing whatever it is that they do best, for them? 

If you can answer the question, “What does it actually say?” in three sentences or less, you get it. 

Now share THAT brief and brilliant story with the world in a cover letter and you win the real prize.

We are writers. 

We string words and thoughts together in ways most people can’t, and we do so to help people improve the health of their respective professional situations. Résumé writers in particular have a specialized relationship with “healing” powers that borrow in part from the economy of Hemingway, the style of E.E. Cummings, and the empowering voice of Maya Angelou.

And because we are professional writers, our clients deserve to know that the words we choose specifically for them are cloaked in good intentions, diligent research, ethical principles, and the most current version of best practices.

Physicians Bertalan Meskó and Brennan Spiegel recognized the same dynamic in the medical community. While the Hippocratic Oath has been around for centuries and has been revised as recently as 1948 by the World Medical Association, “the rise of digital health has dramatically changed the practice of medicine in a way that could not have been easily predicted at the time Hippocrates outlined his ethical principles of medicine.”

In 2022, Meskó and Spiegel published a proposed update to the Oath in the Journal of Medical Internet Research to reflect the changing demands of 21st-century health care. With a few modifications, this could work for our own noble profession as well:

1. I will respect the hard-won gains and lessons of those writers, coaches, and clients in whose steps I walk, and gladly share such knowledge as is mine with those who are to follow.

2. I will apply, for the benefit of clients employed, unemployed, and under-employed, all measures that are required to prevent negative perceptions and capture the essence of their marketability.

3. I will remember that there is an art to résumé writing as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the writer’s blunt turn-of-phrase or the programmer’s algorithm.

4. I will treat my clients in professional partnership, and I will not be ashamed to say ‘I know not,’ nor will I fail to call in my colleagues when the skills of another are needed for a client’s benefit.

5. I will respect the privacy of my clients and their data, for their professional job search problems are not disclosed to me so that the world may know.

6. I will remember that I do not write solely for a pre-designed form, a data point, or the artificial intelligence of a sophisticated ATS platform, but for a human being as well.

These modifications reflect changes in our industry brought about by the digital revolution, advances in client empowerment, and the evolving role of technology in the everyday practice of résumé writing. In loving memory of PARW co-founder Frank Fox, I hope we continue to uphold the kind of standards that keep our industry relevant and impactful for our clients in years to come.

Every once in a while, an opportunity presents itself that’s too hard to pass up. That happened to me last month when a paralegal client named Michelle needed to update her résumé. It was the perfect storm of circumstances because:

1. She held the same job for the last 10 years.

2. Her skill set was consistent with what you would expect from a paralegal with 10 years of experience; nothing very exciting there.

3. I was only able to extract a few modest accomplishments.

Once I realized that I would probably not be able to create much of a strategic advantage from the content alone, I thought about formatting options. You can’t out-format bad content, but you can complement it to the point where the overall impression gets a little boost.

And that’s when I remembered that Microsoft Word has a legal document template, which served as the basis for the sample you see here. I modified it slightly and changed the font to Bookman based on the research below, which can be found in “Typography for Lawyers” by attorney and Harvard-trained typographer Matthew Butterick:

“…The US Supreme Court requires that Century family fonts must be used in all briefs. Recently, the Supreme Court of Virginia released a new list of acceptable fonts. And The US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit states that lawyers should avoid using Times New Roman—so their audience will be less likely to scan legal briefs quickly without retaining the document’s contents. The Florida Supreme Court also recently released new appellate rules regarding fonts for lawyers. The new rules include changing page and word count limits for legal briefs and appeals filings for documents produced on computers. Specifically, they require that lawyers use Arial or Bookman Old Style in 14-point to ensure readability on monitors.”

I didn’t want the format or the font choice to dominate; I just wanted the résumé to resemble a piece of legal documentation so that it would be different from other vanilla presentations. It is essentially a skills-based résumé in a gift-wrapped package.

For those of you keeping score at home, recommended serif fonts for legal documents include: Bookman Old Style. Baskerville, Century, Georgia. Recommended sans serif fonts for legal documents include: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica.

More importantly, don’t be afraid to show that your client knows how to “speak the language” of their targeted profession. If the name of the game is to stand out, a unique format can help accomplish that.

For the past few months, I have been featuring the work of some of our members instead of my own. After the last Thrive conference, it struck me how we have so many people writing résumés after only a few years at the level of quality it took some of us old-timers at least a decade to achieve. This is a good thing.

But more importantly, I wanted to emphasize how important it is to share your work with others as part of your personal growth strategy. Since everybody has unique perspectives and style preferences, it is easy to gain insight through the eyes of other people, whether they are certified writers or not. The value is in the first impression.

Sometimes that value is learning what NOT to do. A colleague might suggest taking a certain formatting approach that doesn’t resonate with you. So you stick with your guns, resolute that the choices you made serve the client better. Sometimes that value is seeing an option you never even thought about, and one you can use from that day forward to help more clients in the future. The good, the bad, and the ugly all come out to play…but you decide which new ideas become part of your repertoire.

THAT’s what was missing in the pre-internet days. It wasn’t until the mid-1990s that books of résumé samples started being published on a wide scale. For the first time, we could SEE each other’s work, and we could appreciate the diversity of products our clients were being asked to pay for. For the first time, we could read a book written in our own peculiar language. In professional development terms, it was a game changer.

And because it was such a game changer, I strongly recommend to anyone that they find a way to incorporate this dynamic into their 2023 growth plan. Who are you sharing your work with?

How hard would it be for small groups of writers to conduct a Zoom call once a month, with each person sharing work and soliciting feedback from the group? How hard would it be to bring a small portfolio of your work to the next Thrive conference and listen to the impressions of your colleagues? How many first impressions does a résumé get?

I realize it is an act of bravery to share your work with others, but the growth potential is exponential. You’ll find that our community is a fascinating mix of dedicated professionals whose ideas come in all shapes and sizes. The more tools you have, the better prepared you will be to handle whatever challenges come your way. I am reminded of the popular anecdote below:

Why Do You Join an Association?

You don't buy a newspaper, you buy NEWS.

You don't buy life insurance, you buy SECURITY.

You don't buy glasses, you buy VISION.

You don’t buy circus tickets, you buy THRILLS.

You don't buy awnings, you buy SHADE.

You don’t buy a lamp, you buy LIGHT.

You don't buy a membership in an association. You buy the cooperation of people in your profession with whom you can join hands to do the things that you cannot do alone.

I shared the following sample with a few of my colleagues, and as a result, I changed a few things to improve the presentation. The body text is Calibri Light, the headings are Calibri, and the vertical border bars to the left of the bullets are a new design feature for me that I really like and will use quite a bit in the future. 

Do you know what kind of first impression readers have about your work? Do you want to know? If so, make sharing part of your game plan in the new year. Happy Holidays to all!!

Résumé writers love it when a client’s background and target are in perfect alignment — until they decide to move the target ever so slightly and you have to come up with a strategy that honors one of two possible directions.

Our featured writer described it this way: “This résumé was difficult because I was working with a client who had very specific experience – working in home healthcare management and elder care. His education and work history were all focused in those areas, but he wanted to move into a sales leadership role while keeping the door open to remain in the healthcare arena. I had to balance his somewhat ambiguous career objectives with content that would communicate his unique value to hiring managers across industries.”

Notice how a well-developed “Core Competencies” section can help accomplish this goal and showcase precisely those skills that are relevant to the client’s situation. Also, the job descriptions are very brief — allowing more space to beef up the quantifiable and transferable data for each position. You don’t get selected as the 2021 Best Résumé Service in your area by handing out bad advice; see Mark’s comments below and the sample that follows.

Writer Profile

1. Name: Mark Misiano

2. Location: Richmond, VA 

3. Joined PARW/CC in: 2018

4. Started writing résumés in: 2018

5. Earned CPRW in: 2018

6. College/Degrees: Bachelor of Science in Business Administration and Master of Business Administration

7. How are you attracting new clients?

• LinkedIn ProFinder

• Local media advertising (magazines to affluent neighborhoods) 

• Word of mouth 

• Professional networking groups 

• Google Ad campaigns 

8. Best advice for someone just getting started in the industry: 

• Set yourself up for success by creating systems that work for you by trying different methods and processes. Finding ways to move quickly through non-revenue generating tasks will save you time and give you the opportunity to focus on the tasks that bring in money. Once you have your repeatable and simple systems in place, it’ll be easier to grow and manage more work without the stress. 

• Never underestimate the power of your network. You might make a random connection who recommends you to their brother’s wife’s neighbor – that’s a new client you never would have found! Be able to explain what you do and how you bring value in less than 30 seconds, and others will spread the word for you.

• I tell job seekers that two characteristics land offers: tenacity and authenticity. The same applies to our industry. If you can be both tenacious and authentic, you’ve done half the work already. Remember that people are buying *you* and your expertise. 

Melissa Figueroa reminds us there are some ground rule differences between these two documents:

1.     A CV is used for academic and research positions. A résumé is used for jobs in the industry. It includes professional experience and education.

2.     A CV focuses on accomplishments related to research, teaching, and service. A résumé focuses on accomplishments and highlights skills.

3.     A CV is self-display. You show how much you have done in the past; everything counts. A résumé is a marketing tool. You show how much you can do in the future; you are more selective on the things you want to include to make your case.

4.     A CV is long. You want to include as much information as you can. A résumé is concise. You are more selective with information.

5.     Although considered outdated in résumé writing, Times New Roman is the preferred typeface in CV writing. The entire formatting approach is pretty basic…flush left, a little bold type, and underlined section headings.

Since this client is in the Education sector, Melissa used the APA format for the publication and conference entries. Also, the client is a student. If the client were a professor, she would have added an “Academic Appointments” section after “Education.”

Finally, while language proficiency levels can be presented in different ways, Melissa prefers to use the standards by the Inter-Agency Language Roundtable (ILR) scale set by the U.S. Foreign Service Institute. Here is an article that explains how to highlight language proficiency during the job search.

Writer Profile

·       Name: Melissa Figueroa

·       Location: Ithaca, NY

·       Joined PARW/CC in: 2021

·       Started writing résumés in: 2021

·       Earned CPRW in: 2022

·       College/Degrees: Ph.D. in Spanish Literature, Cornell University

·       Business Model: During this year, my focus has been increasing brand awareness. The main purpose of my business is to spread the message that professionals with language degrees can do more than teaching. However, I plan to expand my target market at some point. To increase brand awareness, I post daily on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. I subcontract with ResumeWriters.com.

·       Best advice for someone just getting started in the industry: Be humble and learn from others who have been writing résumés longer than you. Be mindful of your learning and embrace deliberate practice to make progress. Writing résumés is a craft and it takes time to master it. Practice every week.

NOTE: Melissa recently accepted the position of Undergraduate Career Advisor at the Whitman Career Center Services at Syracuse University. You can contact Melissa at melissafigueroa1605@gmail.com, or find her on LinkedIn.

As one of our recent Elite Circle Résumé Winners, Teresa Hutton has quickly developed a real flair for the art and craft of marketing people on paper. She faced a challenge you might be able to relate to:“The challenge with the Jean St. Croix résumé is the client has intuitive leadership and business skills, and is passionate about developing teams, team members, and the environment in which they work. Finding a way to highlight and balance the two sides on one page (by request of the client), and note previous positions and skills took a bit of trial and error.”

Résumé writers LIVE in the world of trial and error…but we all took a different path to get there.

Writer Profile

·       Name: Teresa Hutton

·       Location: New Berlin, WI

·       Joined PARW/CC in: 2021

·       Started writing résumés in: 2021

·       Earned CPRW in: 2021

·       College/Degrees: BS & MS Electrical Engineering

·       How does an electrical/software engineer find their way to the world of professional résumé writing? I followed a piece of advice I learned some time ago – “follow-up on what is catching your attention”. After years of self-development, I started sharing what I learned and found I really enjoyed it. I started getting asked to look over résumés and updating my résumé writing skills grabbed my attention. I signed up for the Fundamentals of Résumé Writing course and volunteered to write résumés for my friends, family, and neighbors for practice. I found people were not only willing to let me write their résumé but were excited about it. I received positive feedback on my work. And, because I enjoy writing résumés – each is a puzzle to solve – I am pursuing it as a business.

·       Business Model: I’m working on ramping up marketing as a goal for this year. Currently I have a business page on LinkedIn with a goal to post weekly. I also make sure my friends, neighbors, and family know I’m in the business of writing résumés (on the side until I build up the business a bit more). To get the word out locally I signed up to teach a one-night résumé writing workshop at my city’s rec center.  I currently offer a free 30-minute résumé review. Clients sign up for a day and time for the review and submit their résumé on my website. After the review I send a link to sign up to work with me. If the client chooses to work with me, they pay in advance via credit card on the website and I get to work writing their résumé!

·       Best advice for someone just getting started in the industry: Practice and get feedback by offering to write résumés for everyone you know. This will help you increase your confidence when you begin to charge for your services because you will know how to:

·       handle feedback and change requests,

·       understand what different people are looking for,

·       identify common areas résumés can be improved,

·       and it will give you a portfolio of résumés for people to view if they want to understand your approach.

You can contact Teresa at teresa.hutton@hey.com, visit her web page here, or find her on LinkedIn.

Along with creative fiction and textile art, Alicia has recently added résumé writing to her list of professional skills. Her unique perspective came in handy with a client who wanted to transition from administration and real estate jobs that paid the bills to something she was truly passionate about — Animal Activism. Because the client already had a personal website, Alicia made it a point to borrow from that branding template to match the color scheme and font in the résumé. The following sample shows you how she brought it all together.

Other formatting and strategy decisions included:

·       Using quotes and content personalization to showcase the client’s passion and sense of mission on equal footing with job skills and impact.

·       Grouping her animal activism and administrative experience in a quasi-functional style.

·       Emphasizing her time spent living overseas and fluency in multiple languages.

·       Setting the client up to launch or justify her entry into legislative fights for animal rights.

Writer Profile

·       Name: Alicia Hall

·       Location: Redmond, WA

·       Joined PARW/CC in: March 2021

·       Started writing résumés in (year): 2021

·       Earned CPRW in (year): August 2021 (plus the CDCS in 2021 and the CVCS in 2022)

·       College/Degrees: BA in Comparative History of Ideas from University of Washington, Seattle, WA; MA in Teaching Social Sciences 6-12 from Western Governors University, Salt Lake City, UT

·       Business Model (How are you attracting clients? Do you have a website? Do you work for another company? Do you subcontract?): I subcontract with resumewriters.com. I’m paid by order and usually average about 12 packages per 2-week period since starting there in August 2021. I have had personal clients find me through LinkedIn but those are rare. I adore having someone else find the clients so I can focus on the writing part that I’m passionate about. Resumewriters.com also compensates me for my phone time spent with clients doing some mild career coaching and confidence building. I do have my own LLC for billing resumewriters.com and paying myself just in case someday I want to really start an independent business.

·       Best advice for someone just getting started in the industry: Remember what you are worth. You’ve done a lot to get here, and your expertise is valuable. Take the time to figure out what you need and what you want to consider yourself successful – talk to mentors and colleagues. Also, figure out a reliable and consistent system that works for your brain to track orders, clients, and correspondence – the more promptly you give clients individual attention, the happier they are.

You can contact Alicia at alicia.hall.writer@gmail.com or via LinkedIn.

Chase Lee started writing résumés six years ago. He recently worked with a successful female entrepreneur who is currently studying for a master’s degree in Bangkok and wants to return to corporate work after several years mixed with running her own company, freelance experience, a gap year, and other positions. While she is weighing options between finance and sales/business development jobs, she knows she wants to pursue her career in other international cities.       

Among his many strategy decisions, Chase outlined these in particular:           

• Highlight skillsets related to the target positions with numerical results.       
• Design a brief introduction to summarize her roles and responsibilities so recruiters/hiring managers can quickly understand her background.       
• Utilize boldface and underline numerical achievements and other essential information to catch the recruiter’s eyes.
• Showcase “interests” to differentiate her and show her caring and “willing-to-take-challenges” personality.                   
• Adjust the working period in the entrepreneurial experience to make the overall timeline more consistent.                   
• Re-package her working titles from Founder/CEO to “Director”, “Co-founder” and highlight only the job functions related to her target position.                   

His client loved the use of essential keywords and the conciseness of a one-page résumé, as well as the way he handled her skillsets, her working geography and timeline, and her overall competencies. She was also impressed with how each bullet point was straight to the point and still allowed her personality to shine through. Chase has a genuine passion for the art and craft of résumé writing...not to mention a six-year head start on the certification process! See his story and sample below:

Name: Chase Lee

Location: Taiwan

Joined PARW/CC in: 2022

Started writing résumés in: 2016

Earned CPRW in: Preparing to get certified this year. College/Degrees: B.B.A. in International Business; B.A. in Slavic Language & Literature, National Chengchi University Business Model: 1) Establish a professional website to build brand identity; 2) produce digital content (blogs, job/ interview articles, and social media posts) to make the website more SEO-relevant, cost-effective, and customer- friendly; 3) acquire customers via word-of-mouth, referrals, and SEO rankings.       

Best advice for someone just getting started in the industry:           

“Be open-minded, brave, and bold to clients from various industries and positions even if you don’t understand their expertise. Get trained in best practices and always be confident about yourself. Join PARW/CC—a community to interact with industry peers. (I wish I had found PARW/CC earlier!!!)”               

You can contact Chase at chase.yc.lee@gmail.com or via LinkedIn.

Among the many things I learned at the Thrive conference was that the talent level of our membership is pretty impressive. I want to showcase some of that talent here, and give you a behind-the-scenes look at some of the people who choose to play this game. We’ll start with Gabby.

Gabby worked on a résumé for a college junior who was seeking an animation/motion design internship position to prepare for graduation the following year. Because the student’s professional experience was limited to one paid event, Gabby featured details about her academic and extracurricular activity, as well as school projects that included art exhibitions and a literary/art journal for her college.

She also pressed the student for information about accomplishments, soft skills, and personality traits with questions like “How do you interact with others in a work environment?”, “What accomplishment are you proudest of?”, and “What do you think makes you stand out from others who will be applying to the same positions?”. These questions helped her build the keyword focus and personal branding statements. Gabby used shapes to add creative, graphic elements to the résumé and a callout box to highlight her awards.

Gabby is a new grad herself; see her story and sample below:

• Name: Gabrielle Maury, MSE, CPRW, CDCS

• Location: Tampa, FL

• Started writing résumés in: 2019
• Joined PARW/CC in: November 2020

• Earned CPRW in: 2021

• College: MS Degree in Hospitality Entrepreneurship; BS Degree in Entrepreneurship; BA Degree in Theatre, all from Florida State University.

• Business Model: “I am currently a “solopreneur”; over the next year or two, I hope to expand my team and adjust my business model now that I have graduated. Currently, I write résumés, cover letters, and LinkedIn profiles for a wide range of professionals from students to director-level. My website is www.RefinedResumesLLC.com and at this time, I am attracting clients via word of mouth/referrals, through Google (SEO), and social media marketing.”
• Best advice for someone just getting started in the industry: “It is imperative to get practice with as many résumés as you can, join a community, keep learning and earning credentials, and learn how to take constructive criticism. By joining a community like PARW/CC, I was able to learn so much about the industry that helped me grow my business. Not only that, but I met my peers and grew connections with a TON of like-minded people who are happy to share their knowledge with me.”

“Of course, being a PARWCC member allowed me to be credentialed as well, which validated my business and allowed me to command higher prices for my work. Within the community, peers with decades of experience have offered their advice and feedback. Being able to take all of the feedback with grace and integrate it into my work has made me the strong résumé writer I am today. So, get your “reps in”! You will be great.”

You can contact Gabby at gmaury@parwcc.com.

With greater and greater frequency, I get asked about marketing college graduates who have little to no experience in their field. While the circumstances are always different, we’re in the business of selling what they have…not what they don’t.

If all they have is coursework and a track record of unrelated part-time experience, that’s what we sell. You can dig and dig all day to find little golden nuggets that speak to their work ethic, reliability, punctuality, and any number of other soft skills. Or you can just let it stand on its own, which is the way I tend to lean.

In terms of a hierarchy of marketable content, I go through a mental checklist that looks something like this:

1. Targeted experience/internships (and the strongest accomplishments available, quantifiable or not)
2. Targeted certifications (great for researching the “language”)
3. Targeted projects/outcomes (individual or group)
4. Related experience/internships (and the strongest accomplishments available, quantifiable or not)
5. Testimonials about work performance
6. Leadership Activities (while in school)
7. Related coursework (featured either as key words or summary content)
8. Soft skills (“show” is always better than “tell”)
9. Human interest stories (“three things you need to know about me”)
10. Volunteer work (if it’s targeted, it counts as #1 on the list)

In the case of Steve Hines, I’ll walk you through what few moving parts there are:

• His functional targets are clearly stated at the top.
• The Summary is actually content borrowed from the course catalog, all on target and all with the appropriate amount of “spin” — which is to say he’s not claiming to be anything more than knowledgeable about any of these concepts. At the very least, demonstrate that your client can speak in the workforce vernacular.
• The Education section features relevant course titles. Some of those courses are represented in the Summary language above, which is a little stronger than a simple keyword list that we use for a more experienced worker. But the courses cover a lot of ground and provide plenty of breathing room to explore in an interview.
• The rest is placeholder information that supports his claim of working part-time for 10 years. Any development of the unrelated experience would distract from the real message. Golf is a great business networking game, so let’s leave it at that.

Compared to the way I see other professionals handle this exercise, mine is a very understated approach. But I prefer that and feel like the greater injustice would be to try to oversell minimal accomplishments (see the “light bulb” pullout above). From my perspective, résumé writing has always been about giving the reader “related” content. The difference is that today it seems to be more like “give the reader related content—and NOTHING else!” The only way to pull that off is to be comfortable with sometimes not saying a lot, to trust in the process of being strategically vague.

Steve Hines would be wise to work on a well-researched cover letter that outlines why he would be a good fit for any given target company. He is leaving the world of 10-page papers and moving forward with a document that contains only six full sentences. That tells you everything you need to know about how trainable he is.

Based on the draft that I started with, I wanted to make sure two things happened:

1. Drastically minimize the length and detail of the job descriptions to bring more emphasis to the accomplishments.
2. Showcase progression in the banking industry…but not so much that it distracted from the most recent experience, which was consistent with jobs he was targeting.

With more than 15 years of experience in the industry, Weston has every right to be proud of the stops he made along the way. But if he wants to continue to pursue the path of financial crimes, the last three years will have the greatest marketability.

Everything else is fine in terms of subtext and industry knowledge, but there is not much reason to dedicate a ton of real estate to secondary roles. Clients have a tendency to push back when you cut too much from their original draft, so it’s important to communicate your strategy in a convincing way.

Notice how the redistribution of content impacts the balance between duties and accomplishments. Weston might very well apply for jobs internally at ABC Bank, where his previous experience would likely carry the most value. But even if he decides to go outside the company, the energy required for the reader to put all the pieces together is minimal.

Even though the Operations job spans the largest time period (11 years), it doesn’t command a larger block of space because it serves as a placeholder for experience that is only somewhat related to the target…good to have, okay to mention, but nowhere near worthy of the nine lines of generalized and accomplishment-less text he dedicated to the original draft. Nothing of value from those original nine lines has been omitted; just condensed and rewritten for easier consumption.

I pay attention to that balancing act, like, ALL. THE. TIME. While it is only a fraction of the total decisions made to get from point A to point B, it might be among the most important.

I wrote this article seven years ago, but it might be even more relevant today...especially after you consider the words of Joanne Lipman published by Time Magazine in May 2021:

“As the post-pandemic great reopening unfolds, millions of others are also reassessing their relationship to their jobs…Millions of people have spent the past year re-evaluating their priorities. How much time do they want to spend in an office? Where do they want to live if they can work remotely? Do they want to switch careers? For many, this has become a moment to literally redefine what is work.”

Our industry is especially vulnerable to this movement. Résumé writers and career coaches who operate one-person companies know all too well the effort it takes to keep all the plates spinning and the cash flowing. The clients you serve today are dealing with unprecedented issues, so it’s certainly okay if the business you envisioned a year or two ago and the one you have now are two different things. But it shouldn’t require a pandemic-sized shift to evaluate whether things are moving in the right direction. You can do that anytime.

***************************

In the movie “Happy Feet”, our favorite penguin named Mumble is unable to sing like the rest of his peers. Mumble’s unique heart song is expressed instead through dancing, a strange behavior that complicates his love life and does not sit well with the elders.

He is eventually exiled and begins a journey to self-discovery that includes elephant seals, penguins that speak in a Spanish accent, theme parks, and other destinations for which he is not quite suited. Only after a long struggle does Mumble finally end up in a place where his unique gifts are celebrated, realizing that his own heart song has become the expression of his identity that he cannot escape no matter where he goes.

It’s easy for job seekers to have simply forgotten how to play their own heart song. They start out moving in one direction, then life takes them another way, then another, and another. They chase money, opportunity, personal growth, professional advancement, travel, power, status, and other legitimate ends. And one day they wake up a complete stranger to themselves, wondering where it all went off track. In that moment, they are not playing their own music. It happens more than you might think.

Entrepreneurs are not immune to this either. They begin as willing slaves to their passion and their talent and their customers. Then they quickly learn that they have to wear multiple hats and please multiple customers to be successful. And one day they wake up and realize they have a business that serves clients but not themselves. Left unattended, passion slips out the back door in search of a hammock, while they resentfully punch the clock to fill their 14-hour day with tasks that have nothing to do with their passion or their talent. In that moment, they are not playing their own music anymore.

And if someone like that comes to me for help, one of the most important things I can do is to lead them back to themselves. To help them remember why they started down their path in the first place. To help them realize how their career path is supposed to serve THEM. To help them honor that melodic place inside where the sound of their own music and their sense of purpose are in harmony. One without the other is a recipe for compromise, and compromise is lose-lose. I like the sound of win-win better, and I like working with people who feel the same way.

Are you playing your own music, or is that Sweet Home Alabama I hear in the background?

Good song. It’s just not yours.

According to my client, Karen, the first draft I created for her was “excessively masculine.”

This gave me pause. On the one hand, I am a male, so producing masculine work should not come as a surprise to anyone. On the other hand, I have never consciously assigned gender qualities to my work. And maybe that’s the point. Maybe I should.

I turned to the Almighty Google for help with this one. Using the search term “masculine and feminine résumé formats”, here is what I learned:

1. Freeresumes.com offers a free MS Word template called “the Feminine Résumé”, featuring pink and black colors and a photo in a two-column format.

    

2. Smashresume.com offers a free Masculine Résumé Template, also in two columns with a black and gold theme and some nice graphic elements.

    

3. A 2017 article by David Luther claims that “hiring managers favor masculine résumé styles over résumés with proper format and spelling”. Here are a few of his conclusions based on a review of 7.5 million résumés:

    

   • Men deviate from the norms and make mistakes more often.
   • Women’s résumés tend to be more colorful and verbose, less objective and concise.
   • Women had higher character and word counts; men presented more specific content and detail about previous jobs.
   • Men were more than twice as likely to use bulleted lists, while women were twice as likely to use a personal statement or executive summary.
   • Almost a third of the women had non-traditional sections like Personal Attributes, versus only three percent of the men.
   • In Australia, men’s résumés were preferred over women’s even in a blind hiring situation where the name of the candidate was removed.

    

4. A 2018 article by Meredith Lepore highlighted research by the University College London and the recruiting platform Oleeo. They analyzed more than 200,000 résumés from around the world in four key job sectors — financial services, IT, management consulting, and retail. Here is how the Top 10 résumé words differed between men and women in financial services:

    

   • Male: equity, portfolio, investment, capital, analyst, finance, market, stock, interests, technical

• Female: organize, event, volunteer, assistant, social, student, marketing, community, department, plan

Apparently 90% of the Top 10 words men used in male résumés were powerful proper nouns and nouns, whereas only 68% of the Top 10 terms on female resumes used the same.

None of this is particularly helpful to me…except to say that the client who classified my work as “excessively masculine” has no idea that according to the research, I might have been doing her a favor. I’ll include the sample here and you can decide for yourself. If you need me for anything, I’ll be over here eating an excessively masculine bag of chips and taking an excessively masculine approach to serving other clients.

Steve is kind of a big shot in the travel industry. His career spans more than 20 years in Arizona, Iowa, Florida, and North Carolina for different companies that all contributed to his expertise in corporate travel.

He’s written about it, talked about it, hosted webinars, and has fluency in every travel software application known to man. In one version of his original résumé, the word “travel” appears 49 times, including six out of seven job titles, once in the headline, six times in the summary, and an average of five times in every job description.

When asked what he disliked about his current résumé, Steve said it was too “travel-focused” and that he wanted to leverage a more generalized skill set that could work across different industries or roles. So the goal here was not to completely lose the travel element, but certainly to change its context.

I focused on two areas in particular:

• Job titles: I noticed many references to Steve’s work in the context of building and leading travel PROGRAMS for these different corporate entities. In that sense, Steve was actually a Program Manager, a term I normally loathe for its vagueness but might have a use for in this case. So “Associate Director, Global Travel” became “Associate Global Program Director”; “Vice President - Global Travel Management & Operations” became “VP – Program Management & Operations”, and so on. Job titles are not typically among the things we consider open for interpretation, but it sure made sense in this case.

• Job descriptions: Instead of writing out full sentences, I condensed the content to focus on lists of key words/transferable skills, including the inevitable inclusion of a few travel-related terms. This put the emphasis on the accomplishments, which offered a more universal spin on his skill set. I used this same construction throughout both pages of the document.

Those two strategy decisions helped me reduce the number of times “travel” appeared from 49 to 15. It’s not in the headline, it’s not in the summary paragraph. and it’s not a prominent feature of the presentation at all. It has gone from being the center piece to simply being incidental.

One final thing: I shared this draft when it was about 90% finished with three colleagues — Melissa Figueroa, Laura Peppard, and Towanda Wall-Palmer. Their feedback helped me think through and finalize my decisions, and for that I am grateful. The moral of the story is this: If you think the best way to improve your writing is to only share it with people who are more experienced than you…think again.

The CPRW exam grades writers on their “interpretation of strengths”, perhaps the single most important criteria and certainly the reason why even less-experienced writers can bring value to your work. Make 2022 the year you seek out another pair of eyes from time to time.

Every once in a while, we get the opportunity to create a résumé format that serves as a visual clue of the client’s profession.

• Like the restaurant manager whose résumé looks like a menu, complete with headings like “appetizers” or “a la carte”.
• Or the social media manager whose résumé looks like a Facebook or LinkedIn page (a little research will let you match the fonts and colors exactly).
• Or the optometrist whose cover letter reads like an eye chart (presented at the 1999 PARW/CC Conference in Colorado Springs).
• Or the cyber-terrorist investigator whose résumé looks like a non-stop string of gobbledygook letters until the yellow highlighting reveals an “encrypted” message.

Those opportunities are fewer and fewer these days, as ATS systems continue to test the limits of creativity and humans lean toward the safety of a more traditional approach. While the object of this game is to stand out, there is still a fear that standing out too far might be counter-productive.

Luckily, not everyone restricts their job search to online-only strategies, and not everyone is against trying something out-of-the-box. And when those two forces are aligned, you can inject a little fun into the equation.

So don’t bring me a diagnostic radiologist and think for one second that the draft is NOT going to look like an x-ray image. I do this to give the client a sense of what COULD be done, not to suggest that it’s the only way. In fact, this particular client ultimately chose a more conservative presentation.

When form and function meet, it’s hard to resist creating something unique and provocative. It’s certainly not the right approach for everyone. But for the right client in the right profession with the right mindset on the right day…a little magic can happen.

Speaking of which...I hope you take the time to make this the happiest holiday season ever, and that 2022 is a magical year for you from start to finish!

When a golf professional comes to me for résumé assistance, he could not be in better hands. I routinely explore parts of a golf course he will never see. I’m about 10 lessons away from boosting my skills from consistently bad to unpredictably bad. It turns out the object of the game is to take the fewest number of swings possible, which is the perfect metaphor for helping a PGA Class A Member navigate a history of job changes almost every year since 2004.

Gary has worked at a bunch of resort-level courses in the Southwest US, holding positions like Director of Golf, Head Golf Pro, and Golf Sales Manager, and General Manager. He has basically done a lot of the same job duties at each of these locations, and people in the industry know from his job title alone what a day in his life was like.

But changing jobs every year? That seems excessive for non-consulting roles, even in the most transient professions. I just don’t think it looks good on paper.

So I created an Experience section with a collective date range at the top, gaining two advantages: 1) I could pick and choose which jobs to showcase and which to leave out. Golf course name recognition would now drive the organizational pattern, not chronology; 2) I didn’t have to associate dates with the actual jobs themselves; the reader knows that the jobs fall into that date range. At this point, that’s all they need to know.

Gary functioned essentially as a retail manager and not a B2B sales representative (his job target). But he has been affiliated with certain high-profile national brands, and he certainly has all the pedigree to suggest he might know a thing or two about the finer points of the game. In fact, his depth of understanding about golf as a sport, as a brand, and as a business is actually a value proposition that deserves prioritized headline placement.

Among a wide range of mostly unremarkable managerial duties, I also tried to sprinkle in just enough quantifiability to suggest a more business-savvy candidate. The color, shading, and graphics take up space that allow me to use less content to fill the page. The final draft was only 407 words total (almost the same as this column), considerably fewer than my average one-page résumé. When redundancy is high and volume is low, taking fewer swings is par for the course.

Now if I could just get my golf score to trend the same way.

My client had a two-page résumé for one reason and one reason only…because with six jobs over a span of 19 years, it takes a lot of vertical space to write 5-7 job duties for each one. Many of the job duties were redundant, quantifiable accomplishments were virtually non-existent, and the only hint of a strategic decision was the fact that the employment blocks were cut off perfectly between page one and page two.

When the content presentation does not reward the reader — in other words, if your format relies on saying the same thing over and over and over — you’re better off with a different strategy. A second page is never justified just because the obituary approach says it is. Do your reader a favor instead.

Since this guy was targeting landscaping management roles, the skills to highlight the most were his previous landscape management skills. I chose three (Personnel, Operations, and Account Management), setting those up as subtitles with three examples under each one (NOT two, NOT four…three!).

Listing the job titles, employers, and dates in one place satisfies the reader’s demand for chronology, and yet beneath that you get a much more targeted list of relevant and marketable job duties. When the quantifiability factor is low, structure can become even stronger currency.

It doesn’t take long to see the flexibility of this hybrid approach. This might be the closest I’ve come to writing a functional résumé this year, and yet the chronological integrity is intact. In a skills-based job like landscaping, the actual “where and when” details become less important. Can you actually do the work? Help the reader find an answer to that question.

The use of color and the turf-based font for the name are supposed to be incidental, not necessarily elements that dominate the presentation. More importantly — especially compared to the two-page storybook approach we started with — this version consists of nine blocks of text with varying line lengths:

• Block #1 — Summary Paragraph — 2 sentences, 3 lines of text
• Block #2 — Leadership Attributes — 3 lines of text
• Block #3 — Licenses — 2 lines of text
• Block #4 — Summary of Professional Experience — 4 lines of text
• Block #5 — Personnel Skills — 3 bullets, 5 lines of text
• Block #6 — Operations Skills — 3 bullets, 4 lines of text
• Block #7 — Account Management Skills — 3 bullets, 3 lines of text
• Block #8 — Previous Experience — 3 lines of text
• Block #9 — Education — 1 line of text

Readability is through the roof because information is presented in a format that supports bite-sized blocks and targeted skills …. something the obituary simply cannot do. With or without the quantifiable content we all try to collect and display, the reader can still draw conclusions about whether this guy is worthy of a phone call.

From Three Blind Mice to the Three Little Pigs to the symbols of the Holy Trinity, our minds are pre-wired to process information presented in triplicate. Wikipedia suggests that the “audience of this form of text is also thereby more likely to remember the information conveyed because having three entities combines both brevity and rhythm with having the smallest amount of information to create a pattern.”

Even with four or five possible management skills at my disposal, I limited the discussion to three. You can argue all you want about the quality of the content, but “Short. Memorable. Powerful.” is a bulletproof organizational strategy, and maybe just enough to make a difference.

It seems at least once a year we approach the topic of networking résumés. A recent client had great success using a very simple format that I wanted to share with you. Several themes are worth noting:

1. The primary vehicle for “using” this type of résumé is a conversation…one without the other is less than ideal. Design the résumé to make conversation easier.
2. Research has obviously been done in advance…specific target companies and contacts are listed by name. Clients who embrace the discipline of a self-directed job search just need a little direction.
3. The “résumé” part consists of a headline, subhead, a three-line qualifications summary, and a three-line employment history. That’s it. That’s enough to have a conversation.
4. If your client’s entire job search strategy was based on having three conversations like this per week, how do you think that would compare to the client who only filled out three online applications each week but had no such conversations?
5. Since the end-game is still a job-winning interview, your client still needs a strong traditional résumé. Are you the resource for one or both products?
6. This requires quite a bit of strategic effort on behalf of the client. That’s one of the reasons they might choose to avoid it, and it’s also one of the reasons why the payoffs are so much greater. Once clients understand that they are learning to shop where the lines are shorter, they tend to see the potential ROI.
7. The real magic is that if your client is truly in conversation with someone who wants to help, other opportunities will almost certainly emerge that go beyond the scope of just those specific contacts targeted. In other words, the more specific the request, the more you tap into the mechanism that sorts things similarly. You just don’t get that to the same extent with a general request, like “who do you know who works in financial services? It’s counter-intuitive, but proven effective.
8. In addition to actually creating the document for the client, coaching the client how to use it is actually another revenue source.
9. The optimal scenario is like this: Two people, preferably face-to-face, with computers and phones in hand for quick reference-checking, emailing, and texting capabilities, for a structured one-hour conversation using the networking résumé as a meeting agenda. In terms of both quality and quantity of activity, your client will learn how to navigate the hidden job market and use this approach to his/her benefit for the rest of their working life. And they’ll have you to thank.
10. Assuming your client uses this approach to gain a strong introduction somewhere along the line, it opens the door for other products like e-notes and cover letters. How does the networker approach the target? Surely you wouldn’t put your clients in a situation that you weren’t willing to help them get out of…for a nominal fee, of course.

A networking résumé has a real place in the job search strategy toolbox. Even allowing for social distancing, clients who know how to engage people in meaningful conversations about work will always hold a strategic advantage over those who rely solely on keyboard connections.

My client was a lifelong legal assistant with 29 years of experience dating back to 1991, including 24 years specializing in medical malpractice defense and, most recently, three years on the plaintiff side specializing in personal injury. She worked for primarily one boss until he retired, prompting her to switch employers, law fields, and sides of the counselor's table.

Without knowing anything more, you already have a pretty good idea about my client’s skill set.

When I pressed Helena for accomplishments, she talked about how she got up to speed quickly in her new direction thanks in part to a year spent mostly in quarantine. Check. She talked about how her diligent research skills came in handy many a time. Check. And she talked about how she helped bring her old boss out of the dark ages to embrace the perils of the World Wide Web. Check. Not a lot of usable material there in my opinion, but maybe a skills-based profession like this doesn’t require as much.

I decided to do a little research to see if I could uncover some kind of angle. I came across an article by Jason Steed, an appellate and commercial litigation attorney who is also a former English professor with a Ph.D. in English & American literature. His 2020 blog post for Thomson Reuters contained these nuggets:

• The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit advises lawyers against using Times New Roman. More on that in a minute.
• The appellate court in Connecticut actually requires briefs to use Arial or Univers.
• The U.S. Supreme Court has long required lawyers to use a font from the “Century family”.

I also learned that a 2010 book called “Typography for Lawyers” by Matthew Butterick is considered an industry standard for designing legal documents, with instruction that ranges from fonts to nonbreaking spaces to block quotations to the one-forward-space rule.

Butterick refers to Times New Roman as “the font of least resistance”, and says that “Times New Roman is not a font choice so much as the absence of a font choice, like the blackness of deep space is not a color. To look at Times New Roman is to gaze into the void.”

You can find his list of font recommendations here.

Back to my client. Two other conclusions drove my decisions: 1) Accomplishments were not going to tell the story I wanted them to, and that was okay; 2) Once the redundancy factor of similar job descriptions was removed, the only things left were easily conveyed in list form.

In the true spirit of a legal brief, brevity is the theme. The summary has two sentences that briefly describe her situation...and that’s it. No fluff, no spin, no long-winded explanations. No other full sentences at all, unless you count the reference letter excerpt in the lower right corner. The font is Century Schoolbook.

To stand out in a world of densely-populated presentations, do your reader a favor and try going in the opposite direction. Helena loved this approach; now we’ll see how the market responds to an entire résumé strategy built on two sentences and the truth.

 

I just graded three CPRW candidate submissions. For as long as I’ve been evaluating these, and given how the subtleties of the résumé writing industry have changed over the years, it’s amazing to me how certain issues seem to arise again and again and again. Let me talk you through some of the most common ones that I see. To be clear, no single item on this list represents a reason for a pass/fail decision. But the accumulative effect of these and other questionable tactics tends to go hand in hand with undesirable outcomes:

1. Including a client’s physical address has shifted from “standard” to “occasional use” to “a bad idea” (except for the most specific applications). It has become the anti-Nike slogan…just don’t do it! Including only city, state, and zip code is the new standard, and the dynamics of the post-Covid remote workforce make even those few placeholders less relevant.

    

2. Poor print quality is rarely a problem when you’re dealing with digital résumé submissions. The problem is that as it currently stands, the CPRW testing process still involves the distribution of hard copies. Until that changes, CPRW candidates would be wise to not overlook this simple reality. Fairly or unfairly, people draw conclusions about written documents (and the people whose names are at the top of them) based on their visual quality. Good enough is not even close to being good enough.

    

3. Somewhere there is a memo circulating that says “bulleted statements of any length do not require any kind of punctuation”. I would destroy that memo. To capture the more complex CAR stories that our clients tell, compound sentence structures with semi-colons and commas can be a writer’s best friend. How someone would choose to punctuate a sentence internally and then casually leave off the period at the end is beyond my comprehension. But the more revealing question is…why would you give the reader—who might be at an 8^th grade English level—the opportunity to claim “typo” because of a missing key stroke? (Cue the anti-Nike music here)

    

4. One cover letter I’m looking at is formatted into three paragraphs…this is good. The first and shortest one is eight lines of space; the others are 13 and 10 lines, respectively. This is not so good. It LOOKS like a lot of reading. There is no formula for the “right” length, but the trend is toward e-notes and much shorter forms of communication. The word “letter” itself is almost an archaic concept. There is a time and place for an eloquent and beautifully-crafted targeting tool, but don’t think for one second that a margin-to-margin essay is a persuasive advantage. This is a classic example of our own words getting in the way of the message.

    

5. Those pretty colored bullets are a nice touch. The problem is that every line of text has one, so there is no visual distinction between job duties and accomplishments. Your job is to help feed the reader’s information sorting mechanism, so they don’t have to read and categorize at the same time. Not only does a blanket of bullets practically nullify their emphatic effect, the real crime is that the accomplishments don’t stand out at all. And if your client’s accomplishments don’t stand out, what exactly are you selling?

    

6. Remember when we used to read actual newspapers? Exciting headlines would grab you, and front-page stories would fill a few column inches before they were “jumped” to section C7 a few pages away. Sometimes you went and finished the story; sometimes you didn’t. That is exactly what happens when you split a two-page resume in the middle of an employment description. Sometimes the reader goes along, sometimes not. You could argue that is always the case with a multi-page document, but I sure wouldn’t complicate that with a format that interrupted the reader’s flow. This reader might have a job to fill and 50 other candidate résumés to wade through, and you’re asking them to suspend a thought, flip a page, and read at the same time? As if reading wasn’t hard enough. (NOTE: If you don’t know how to make the adjustments to prevent this from happening, it is a formatting issue. If you simply choose to not recognize this as a potential problem, it is a strategy issue. Either way, it is always a readability issue.)

Just as the virtues of faith, hope, and love describe eternal moral gifts for many people, the virtues of strategy, common sense, and readability are the secret sauce of real résumé magic. And the greatest of these is readability. Of the three CPRW candidates who tested today, it appears that two of them already understand this. If you recognize any of the six issues outlined above in your own work, reach out and let’s work through them together.

Actually my client had several jobs…but only one that I really wanted to feature. Over the last six years she worked her way through the social work field from Intake Specialist (2 years) to Senior Intake Specialist (1 year) to her current role as Program Supervisor/Group Facilitator, which started in 2018.

The progression is notable. The progression is an important part of her story. The progression is something that most everybody she’ll be competing with won’t be able to say. But her desire to move into a Program Director role—which she feels she won’t get at her current employer—tells me everything I need to know about how to prioritize the presentation. To me, that helps differentiate what’s important from what’s essential.

I don’t want the reader to work too hard to see the value. So the Supervisor role is the only piece of employment that commands more than 30% of the available space. The rest get 2-4 lines at best, and the Intake roles are lumped together beneath the Supervisor role with no job description or accomplishments…not because they don’t exist, but because that’s not what she’s selling. To expand on those would be a distraction.

Her background could have very easily been expanded to two pages. But that second page would have been filled with internships and junior positions that explain how she got where she is, but don’t necessarily contribute to her overall marketability today.

I think about that a lot when I write. For a second page to exist, the conditions have to be such that I feel the reader is getting rewarded for turning the page. Either the picture becomes more complete, the progression becomes more compelling, or the consistently superlative performance at every step along the way leaves an exceptionally strong impression.

So for me the trick is always to get the first-page content set…THEN make decisions about what to do with the rest of it. My decision to focus on the Supervisor role left me with the bottom one-third of the first page to either 1) fit everything else in, or 2) start blowing up job descriptions and accomplishments for every previous position starting with the most recent Senior Intake Specialist job, and then worrying about the logistics of jumping the page.

Obviously I chose to abbreviate everything. My client was pleased with this, but it’s always a 50/50 chance the client will specifically ask for that second page no matter what. In cases where I suspect it might be a problem, I make sure the client knows upfront exactly how I see the strategy playing out so they won’t be so surprised to see their whole life whittled down to résumé sound bites. A little pre-emptive strike to help them understand my “why” can go a long way…especially knowing it can all be revised to suit their taste.

The shaded border box in the Summary (Key Strengths) is repeated in the Supervisor job description below, and then again in the Education/Training section at the bottom. I like the balance of repeated formatting themes, plus it breaks up the reading from paragraphs to bullet points in the middle of the page.

With only 61 lines of text on the page, 23 are dedicated to her current position (38%). Margins are .5” top/bottom and .7” left/right. The body text is 10-point Calibri font, the sections headings are 12-point, the employers are 13-point, and the job titles are 11-point. The color was chosen randomly, and the shaded boxes are not so gray that you have to use bold print to read the text inside them. The space between the section headings and the text is .7” (I really don’t like to go much smaller than that). The headline is 14-point.

In these days of hyper-challenged attention spans, I like the idea using the résumé strategically and letting the LinkedIn profile carry the burden of chronology…especially when the focus is really on only one job.

Résumé writers put themselves in some interesting situations. The accumulation of “firsts” is a process that takes time and requires the ability to get in just thismuch over your head…and find your way out. Your first senior executive, your first military transition, your first career changer, your first Sales Planning Manager…using everything you know to that point, the résumé writer accepts the challenge and ends up with a new tool in the tool box for future reference.

To celebrate this diversity of our struggles and growth, try spending the next few months tracking some of your success stories with a simple game of Bingo.

You can play across, up and down, diagonally, or go for the blackout Bingo by covering all 25 squares. There is no time limit, but you can’t cover a square based on what you have done in the past…it has to be from this day forward. If you’re lucky, one situation will allow you to cover more than one square.

Let the games begin!

PS: Some of you might be interested in adding your own content to the Bingo game (HINT HINT…It can be used as an excellent training tool!). It’s easy enough to duplicate this with a 5x5 table, but if you prefer, shoot me an email and I’ll send you the original MS Word version of this so you can modify it to suit your taste.

I can name this tune in just a few notes:

• One employer.
• Two jobs.
• Three lines of summary material and Core Strengths.
• Four-line job descriptions.
• Five bullets for each job.
• A graphic element at the top that takes up space and adds visual appeal for someone in a creative field.
• A “lively” font choice (Candara).

And that’s it.

When I deconstruct a résumé sample, those are the kind of things I look for. We like to say that “content is king”—and it is—but other variables obviously contribute to the overall impression.

A 2018 study done by TopResume confirmed that professionally written résumés are perceived differently by recruiters and achieve better results for their clients…no surprise there. To me, the most interesting thing about the study was that the professionally written résumés scored highest in this key area— How “polished” do you consider this candidate to be?

For those of you who skew toward writing for an ATS audience first, this is a real area of opportunity. ATS doesn’t measure polish…that’s a human thing. And apparently it makes a difference.

In the study, 157 talent acquisition professionals/recruiters rated the professionally written résumé as “highly polished” nearly twice as much. One of the participants was quoted as saying “A polished résumé is clean, consistent, and easy to understand. It clearly articulates what you do, what you want to do, and, essentially, tells your story ... This is important because your résumé is likely in a stack with many others. If it’s not clear and easy to read, it’s very easy [for recruiters] to just flip to the next person.”

While it’s easy to absorb and understand those words conceptually, the second part of that quote reveals once again how the humanity of job search shows up in a behavioral sense.

They’ll just flip to the next person. Let that sink in for a second.

When your job is to scroll through a non-stop feed of candidates—kinda like scrolling your Facebook newsfeed in search of intelligent life—polish makes a difference.

While working with this client, I was convinced that I had all the information I needed to make a strong argument on paper. The colored ribbons across the top were the last elements I created, not the first. They represent polish, not substance.

The study concluded that a “polished” résumé “does a good job of balancing the visual elements within your document so readers can quickly scan it and understand your career narrative…How the information is formatted on a résumé is just as important as the information itself.”

Almost as if the human reader suddenly matters again.

A Book with No Title

My client had been both a Project Manager (PM) and a Business Analyst (BA) her entire career, spanning more than 20 years. Often —but not always—the roles overlapped into a hybrid position that included a little bit of both disciplines. Many of these were relatively short-term assignments. While this is not uncommon, it added a layer of complexity. Of the seven jobs showcased on the resume, the last six had a version of “Project Manager” in the title.

In her own words, Lynn described the challenge:

“I want to return back to where I started in software development as a Business Analyst. I am bored with Project Management and lost my passion for it a few years ago. My resume needs to somehow highlight my ability to be a Business Analyst and I am not sure how to do that. Also, I was a BA from 1995 - 2000 and that work is so old it is not on my resume anymore.”

I went round and round with several different scenarios on how to handle this. The most current job with an actual Business Analyst title was 2010 to 2014. So I could have easily pulled that up front in a Relevant Experience section, but in the end I decided against that for two reasons: 1) I don’t like to mess with the reader’s preference for reverse chronology or their ability to easily access the job that represents “to Present”; and 2) some of those Project Management jobs along the way actually included some decent Business Analyst experience as well. Irrespective of the actual job title, they WERE relevant.

Instead I chose to do something I have done maybe once or twice in the last 20 years: omit the job titles completely.

The success of this strategy hinged on five things:

1. I used the headline and summary to plant “hybrid” seeds, and I want the reader to apply the whole “hybrid” model of thinking to the entire experience section.
2. Having no job title means that the reader could not be biased toward a distinction between BA or PM roles. In some cases, it was pretty obvious…but the bias was gone.
3. The only job title (Senior BA) on the resume is used passively with the Freddie Mac position from 2010 to 2014 on the second page.
4. Research suggests that “while it’s very common for a single individual to perform both roles, especially in smaller organizations with limited budgets, most experts will agree that the best case scenario is a project with an effective project manager and an effective business analyst.” In other words, knowing how one role impacts the other can be a strategic advantage.
5. A cover letter continues the thought that having experience in both “makes it more likely for companies to avoid requested solutions that would not have solved the underlying business problem in the first place.”

You probably can’t get away with eliminating job titles on an application. But if you had the choice of selling either creative dissonance, mild confusion, or blatant contradiction, which one would you choose?

There are more ways than ever to make money as a professional résumé writer. Here are a few business models to consider; before you decide which one works best for you, understand that they are not mutually exclusive, and that doing business more than one way at the same time can expand your skill set and, perhaps more importantly, complement the lifestyle you want your business to provide:

1) The Full-Service Business Owner This means that you take 100% responsibility for acquiring and managing clients, as well as the pricing and services you want to provide. Today that usually means building a website, complete with some kind of e-commerce function to allow for online financial transactions. It also means learning how to drive traffic to your website, and developing a system of strategic messaging to convert prospects into clients. The best way to research this is to visit the websites of some of your colleagues and start making a list of the features you like and don’t like. Doing business this way also means you are choosing to be the CEO of the company, as well as the CMO, the CFO, the CIO, the CSO (Chief Strategy Officer), the CAO (Chief Administrative Officer), the Customer Service Manager, the SEO Specialist, and the writer…all at the same time. You wear all the hats, cover all the expenses, and reap all the financial rewards. Some writers choose from the start to build a team of writers and pay them a percentage of the overall fee to handle the writing part, thereby allowing them to focus more on customer service and client acquisition activities. This is more of a true entrepreneurial model, requiring the same startup tools and due diligence as any other business…. PLUS, the writing skills (either yours or someone else’s) to deliver quality service.

2) The Institutional Writer This means that you work for another institution in a full-time or part-time capacity, and your salary is tied to a number of services you provide, résumé writing among them. So if you work in a college career services, government, or non-profit office that offers a host of other services, you gain the benefit of writing résumés for an in-need population. But you have no involvement with acquiring clients, and the amount of money you make is not tied to how many résumés you actually write.

3) The Contract Writer This means that you write on a per-project basis for another writer or company. Since they assume all the marketing costs and the risk of acquiring clients, the pay is much lower. Some contract jobs require you to have direct contact with the client; in other cases, you have no client contact and create documents based on notes or worksheets with assorted intake information (see below).

4) The Ghostwriter This means you that you write on a per-project basis for another writer or company, and you have little or no direct client contact. The documents you create are funneled through a leadership team that handles the hand-off to and communication with the customer. In many cases, the client has no idea you are the actual author. This model tends to pay the least, but allows for the greatest amount of flexibility because the writer is not tied to scheduling client appointments. Hybrids of each of those business models exist as well.

The important thing to remember is that no matter how you choose to monetize résumé writing, make sure you create a business model that works for you and your life. Regardless of whether you get paid by the project or by the hour, TIME is the variable that becomes hardest to manage. If you strive to write two projects a day, and a project takes an average of four hours to complete, an eight-hour day will leave little time for anything else. It doesn’t take long to create an unsustainable business model, so be sure to think realistically about how you want to budget your time and resources.

The 28% Solution

If résumés were job obituaries, my client might have had the grandest tombstone of all...17 jobs in 22 years spanning Mortgage, Pharmaceutical Sales, and Executive Recruiting. His longest tenure was six years, with many jobs lasting a year or less. During Wally’s most recent stretch in the mortgage industry from 2016 to Present, he was on his sixth different employer.

Even for the mortgage industry, where transient histories are a little more common, this seemed excessive. Keep in mind there was enough evidence to show he could produce, but how do you sell that? Certainly not using reverse-chronology, which is always my first choice. And probably not with a branding strategy that says “I’m great, I’m great, I’m great…I just move around a lot.” Plan B was definitely in order.

So I looked to group the experience by industry. It was not exactly a straight line, but within the parameters of being truthful you could make this argument:

• Mortgage Industry — 2016 to Present
• Pharmaceutical Sales and Executive Recruiting | 2011 to 2016
• Mortgage Industry again — 2001 to 2011

This became the basis of my organizing principle. Since he was targeting another mortgage position, I didn’t see the need to expose any of the 2011 to 2016 job history and the five positions he held during that time. Dates only.

That left two blocks of mortgage experience covering 15 years. Of the two, the most recent stretch deserved the most emphasis, during which time he did essentially the same job at different places with a few different job titles and occasional senior-level responsibilities. I promptly got out my machete and went to work.

Knowing that the draft I produced would look NOTHING like what he was used to, I sent Wally a pre-emptive note to prepare him for what I saw and why I was about to take drastic such measures. To my surprise, he agreed with my philosophy. But after reviewing the first draft, Wally told me he had just landed ANOTHER new job in the mortgage industry…so now make that SEVEN jobs since 2016!

If my organizing principle was to use the collective dates 2016 to Present, it didn’t really matter how many jobs he held during that time because I was only going to showcase a few of them anyway. And the ones that I did feature would not have start and stop dates associated with them.

I used that same approach with the second block of mortgage experience as well, choosing instead to showcase only the job that carried both a promotion and a more reasonable tenure. The rest was ignored.

On the one hand, Wally’s got his work cut out for him trying to use this résumé in tandem with an online application. If that happens, he’ll almost certainly have to be a little more forthcoming about all the twists and turns he’s had in his career. Who knows how that will be perceived.

On the other hand, he certainly doesn’t seem to have a problem finding a job. KEEPING it might be a challenge, but in the “man’s-got-to-do-what-a-man’s got-to-do” column, Wally knows how to put food on the table. He’s the only client I ever had who got a new job between the first and second draft of the résumé. What does he need me for?

It makes me wonder if I did him any favors by using such a format, but I’ll share it with you and you can decide for yourself. I chose Bookman Old Style as the font, which is my go-to when I want a little bit of text to take up a whole lot of space. The language is pretty subdued, as I had time reconciling the use of superlatives to describe a career with only occasional flashes of sustained above-average performance. Selling much more than competence and longevity seemed inconsistent with the whole story, and apparently unnecessary as well.

Of the 18 jobs Wally’s had, this résumé features minimal information about five (28%). The rest deserve a proper burial.

Vince was on a good run. He’d spent the last four years working as a corporate attorney with an early-stage tech company, and he wanted to leverage that experience to latch onto another rising star. Familiar with the pace and the all-encompassing legal jurisdiction required to advise the business owners through all phases of go-to-market preparation, Vince prided himself on being both an operations guy and a legal expert.

There was nothing extraordinary about the chronology of his career: his recent four-year stint, a previous four-year stint with a different high-profile law firm, and in between he had a cup of coffee as a contract attorney that served as a placeholder more than anything else. So we had plenty of ammunition to work with spanning his last 10 years of experience.

Outside of that, a few challenges emerged: 1) there were several list-intensive elements; 2) a one-page presentation would have been very crowded; and 3) a second page would not have been very full using traditional margins and font sizes. This was the perfect recipe to try a two-column format.

If you’re familiar with my work, you know that I tend to prefer horizontal lists because space can be more economized that way. But using a two-column format, I WANT the lists to extend vertically on the page (not necessarily in alphabetical order, although I chose to do that this time).

By using the smaller left-side column for three lists on the first page, and two lists on the second page, that information occupies a great deal more space. It also allows me to start the body of the résumé just to the left of center page, also occupying more overall space, but more importantly allowing me to frame only the most recent job experience on the first page.

The short-tenure contract job that starts the second page is almost an afterthought, which is exactly what I want. I used arrows for the left-column bullets, with traditional rounded bullets in the right-side column. Throw in some shading, a little splash of color, and strategic use of both vertical and horizontal lines with a lot of justified text…just the right amount of spice to fill up two pages.

When I was finished, Vince actually wanted to see a one-column presentation as well. I was happy to oblige, but then I was back to horizontal lists and plain-Jane formatting. Perhaps the conservative leanings of the legal industry make this a better choice. For a two-column format, the original was pretty tame to begin with in my opinion. And besides…why do people still try so hard to fit in when the name of the game is learning how to stand out?

When the introduction of ATS systems almost demanded a more generic approach to résumé writing, those of us who were gut-punched had a hard time reconciling the desire to be creative with the new rules for doing what was best for the client. Those ATS systems in 2021 are now more sophisticated and capable of supporting formats that stray from vanilla formulas, sometimes quite dramatically. I’m going to spend more time playing that game this year.

In his Dec 17 blog post, Seth Godin uses the game of Monopoly to describe how some of that lost artistry can be reclaimed:

“We invent all sorts of trappings and decide that the trappings are our work. They’re not. There are only a handful of games that most people decide to play… games that have boundaries, other players, connections and outcomes. You can switch from one set of trappings to another much more easily than you imagine, particularly if you focus on the basic building blocks of your game instead of the outward appearance. If someone takes away your playing piece, don’t fall into the trap of deciding you can’t play a game any longer. If someone tries to persuade you that the game is to make as much money as possible, realize that they need more insight and imagination. Whenever you can, it might pay to seek to create a game that works for you and for those you seek to serve. Because those games are the sustainable ones and the ones that you can play for a long time to come.”

After 13 years in the mortgage industry, my client decided to launch a career in medicine. Then, after 13 years in the medical field, my client decided to go back to the mortgage industry. The challenge was simple: convince the reader that even though my client Joseph hadn’t looked at a mortgage application in more than a decade, the success he had back then would suggest that he could easily regain his status as a top-producer and underwriter. A reverse chronological format would not tell that story. So I chose to showcase the mortgage experience first (Related Experience), which opened up  another  decision  point:  do  I  take  the  experience  back to 1994, or  do  I  cut  it  off  after  the  previous  position?  I  decided  that in this case, accounting for all 13 years showed the kind of longevity, consistency, and progression that most employers would find attractive. Federal regulations have changed quite a bit since the 2008 recession—which is right about the time Joseph LEFT the industry—but his underwriting certification is current and featured prominently at the top. Irrespective of the dates, the reader is bombarded with mortgage-relevant information in the top 2/3 of the document. Now…what to do with the bottom 1/3 of the page?

For most résumé anomalies, I recommend an unapologetic and straightforward approach as if the client has nothing to hide or shy away from. I don’t want the reader to have to scan through a bunch of unrelated medical employment data to get to what I really want them to see, but at the same time I don’t want to pretend it didn’t happen either. Leaving it off entirely creates more problems, so that’s not an option.

The 13 years he spent in the medical field became a four-line story limited to job titles, employer  names, and dates…so that entire time span  is  accounted for. Former military experience is thrown in there as well. The rest is education, which is unrelated to the mortgage field but appropriate given his career path.

I ended up with approximately 28 lines of text dedicated to his target field, compared to 8 lines of text dedicated to everything else. Think of what it “costs” the reader to make sense of the whole picture. In terms of time, it costs the reader very little.

Why not list the medical experience first to satisfy the reverse chronological purists? You could just reduce the whole experience to “13 years in various position in the medical field | 2007 to Present”—and THEN move on to the mortgage experience. That would also cost the reader very little time to process, and it would take up even less space than the four lines shown in the sample?

And the answer is…because I don’t want that.  The lead sentence in the  summary  says  “Returning  to the mortgage  industry  after  a  distinguished  career in medicine”. So the table has been set. Whereas a one-line summary opens up a lot of questions, a four- line summary answers those questions. It all comes down to “in what order do you want the information to be seen?”

The real process that requires employment information in reverse chronological form. This is not the strategy that best sells his mortgage skills, so we’ll have that discussion and generate self-directed job search options more favorable to his situation.

But to create a résumé strictly using an “application mentality” defeats the purpose of making strategic choices in the first place. Applications are legally binding documents. Résumés are marketing tools.

Big difference.

How to Eat at a Buffet a Résumé

Seth Godin’s blog post from June 22, 2020 has been weighing heavily on my mind for a few months now. He referenced a study of behavior at breakfast buffets,      and concluded that “optimizing marketers usually put the things they most want     to sell first.” Résumé writers certainly understand that concept.
I decided to check out the entire study. The more I read, the more I wanted to use this information to make a point about how we can influence the way decision- makers consume résumé information. But I didn’t really know where to start, and once I got started I didn’t know where to take it. After a few failed and very circular attempts, I almost scrapped the entire idea.
But then it hit me. What if I could present the actual study, or at least the abstract of the study, and my thoughts about it AT THE SAME TIME? And that’s what I did.
The abstract appears below verbatim, only I crossed out the parts about buffets and cheesy eggs and replaced them with the words and phrases that rang through my head as I read it. It takes a little persistence to digest this, but you’re good at reading between the lines.
Objective
Each day, tens of millions of restaurant goers, conference attendees, college students, military personnel, and school children jobseekers serve themselves
at buffets market themselves to the world – many being all-you-can-eat buffets using résumés that cram a bunch of information on a page with no sense of strategy. Knowing how the food order at a buffet information presented on a résumé triggers what a person selects the way a decision-maker consumes that information could be useful in guiding diners jobseekers to make healthier selections and more strategic choices with résumé presentation.
Method
The breakfast food selections résumés of 124 health conference attendees were tallied at two separate seven-item buffet lines screening lines (résumé features included cheesy eggs, potatoes, bacon, cinnamon rolls, low-fat granola, low-fat yogurt, and fruit headlines, sub-headlines, large paragraphs, small paragraphs, bullet points, long sentences, section headings, keywords, hard skills, and soft skills). The food order résumé information between the two lines was reversed (least healthy important to healthiest most important, and vise-versa). Participants were randomly assigned to choose their meal share their résumés from with one line or the other, and researchers recorded what participants selected how participants presented their information.


Results
With buffet foods résumé information and jobseeker skills, the first ones seen are the ones most selected noticed. Over 75% of the diners screeners selected noticed the first food information they saw, and the first three foods things a person screener encountered in the buffet résumé comprised 66% of all the foods messages they took consumed. Serving the less healthy foods less impactful information first led diners jobseekers to take 31% more total food items (p<0.001) present even more total information. Indeed, diners jobseekers in this line more frequently chose less healthy foods important résumé information in combinations, such as cheesy eggs and bacon (r= 0.47; p<0.001) large paragraphs and soft skills or cheesy eggs and fried potatoes (r= 0.37; p<0.001) long sentences (>20 words) and lack of key words. This co- selection of healthier foods more powerful information was less common.
Conclusions
Three words summarize these results: First foods most important information first. What ends up on   a   buffet   diner’s   plate   decision-maker’s   mind   is dramatically determined by the  presentation  order of food résumé information. Rearranging food order résumé information from healthiest to least healthy most powerful to least powerful can nudge unknowing or even resistant diners decision-makers toward a healthier meal more favorable decision, helping make them slim by design jobseekers increase their chances for an interview. Health-conscious diners, Smart jobseekers can proactively start at the healthier end of the line present their information accordingly or hire a professional to help them, and this same basic principle of “first foods most” “important information first” may be relevant in other contexts – such as when serving or passing food at family dinners.

Ronald is an accountant by trade. | think of accounting as one of those “lifeguard”
professions, which means the title alone tells you pretty much everything you
need to know about the work. Sure there are variations and specialties and
unique accomplishments worth mentioning, but there is no need to spend a lot
of résumé real estate going over the redundancies that come with the territory.

Besides, in Ronald's case there is a little bit more to the story. He has had only two
employers over the last six years. For the first one, he started as a Night Auditor
and was promoted three times in two years to a management position. For the
second one, he started as a Staff Accountant and was promoted twice in two
years to the Supervisory role he currently holds.

That's what | want to sell. That's what | want the reader to see. And if | use a
straight reverse-chronological approach—providing a little information about
all seven jobs he's held along the way—! might be well into a second page and
repeating certain terminology multiple times.

To avoid that, | lumped all three jobs together with his current employer and all
CareerReady15@gmail.com four jobs with his previous employer, along with the dates and shaded borders to
help the progression stand out. More importantly, the discussion beneath each
grouping relates only to the most senior position.

Why would you sell Algebra | when the client has Algebra || experience...which, by definition, IMPLIES the mastery
of Algebra |? By extension, assuming Ronald wants to keep climbing UP the ladder of success—and he does—his
management-level accomplishments carry the most weight anyway.

Wendy Enelow mentioned last month in her Spotlight on You message how she enjoyed seeing the mileage our
industry has gotten from her phrase “Promoted through a series of increasingly responsible positions” ...and it is
put to prominent use in this presentation as well.

The other advantage of this organizational pattern is that reader has a fewer number of starts and stops. With only
two employers featured, and really only one block of information under each employer, the reader's capacity for
digesting Ronald's story is greatly enhanced. Seven jobs, seven job descriptions, andseven blocks of accomplishments
tax the reader's threshold (see what | did there?) for not just overall content, but for the STORY that he's trying to
convey as well.

AS a variation, maybe you could spend more time flushing out each of the jobs with the most current employer, but
treat the previous employer with this condensed approach.

Or maybe you bring in the margins, bump up the font size, flush out ALL of the job descriptions, and essentially
reserve the first page for his current employer and the second page for his previous one.

With the possible exception of senior executives who have a long tenure of senior executive roles, | tend to gravitate
toward the format where the reader's attention span is less challenged. Of the hundreds of other potential candidates
Ronald will be competing with for his next position...how many will approach this the same way?

Would you like to see your work featured in a future Résumé Magic column?
Send your submission to careerready15@gmail.com for consideration.

CareerReady15@gmail.com

A Series of Short-Tenure Positions

The only thing worse than a résumé that’s too long is a résumé that’s REDUNDANT and too long. When a client has experience dating back before 2005 or so, it’s likely that some kind of summarization strategy will come into play. And that was the case with my client Steve, whose career dated back to 1990.

But there was another challenge as well. Here is an outline of his experience:

Job #1: 2016 to 2020 Job #2: 2015 to 2016 Job #3: 2014 to 2015

Job #4: 2013 to 2014 Job #5: 2012 to 2013 Job #6: 2006 to 2012

Four jobs in four years (2012 to 2016) does not exactly put the reader in a position to say “yes” with confidence. Steve’s story continues like this:

Job #7: 2004 to 2006 Job #8: 2003 to 2004 Job #9: 1990 to 2003

These jobs crossed a few different industries but were otherwise pretty related in terms of scope and duties. So a straight reverse-chronological approach would be equivalent to saying: “Well I did this job here, then I did pretty much the same job here but only for a year, and then the same job here for a year...” and so on and so on. Sure, the accomplishments would be different, but good luck holding the reader’s attention long enough to sell them.

As you can tell on the sample, I made some serious strategic decisions. Here is the same outline as above, only I put in bold the parts I decided to keep:

Job #1: 2016 to 2020
Job #2: 2015 to 2016
Job #3: 2014 to 2015 (delete)
Job #4: 2013 to 2014 (delete)
Job #5: 2012 to 2013 (delete)
Job #6: 2006 to 2012 (summarize with no dates... Job #7: 2004 to 2006 (delete)
Job #8: 2003 to 2004 (delete)
Job #9: 1990 to 2003 (summarize with no dates)

I even listed #6 and #9 under a sub-heading called “Summary of Previous Experience” just to let the readers know that I was doing them a favor by condensing the whole presentation (wink, wink). If I included dates with Job #6 or #9, I would actually be creating gaps that would surely raise suspicion even more, so those are left off entirely. The effectiveness of this entire approach hinges on whether five recent years of experience is enough to get the phone to ring. I’m betting it is, but I could be wrong.

Would you like to see your work featured in a future Résumé Magic column? Send your submission to careerready15@gmail.com
for consideration.