The “Art” of the resume

I’ve been supporting an organisation with some outplacement work which has given rise to reflection and discussion around what constitutes a ‘good’ resume.   Concurrently, I’ve been supporting another organisation with screening and shortlisting from advertising they ran for two very different roles.     And the difference between resumes in different verticals is enormous.

Keep it simple.   Your resume is your ‘selling document’ and your resume reviewer, human or not, will see a huge number of applications if you’re responding to advertised roles.

Don’t:

• Crowd the page with too many words or tiny font. If it is hard to read, it won’t be read.
• Be creative unless you are a creative. No crazy fonts, layouts or pictures please.
• Waste space on page 1 with your bio. If you’re no longer an early career person, your education or degree classification won’t get you a role.   Your experience is the more valuable information.
• Similarly with your address, phone number and email address. Engage your audience and they will look for that information.    Equally, don’t forget to include your contact details!
• State your hobbies and interests unless they are interesting. No “cooking, dining out and seeing friends”.
• Make it more than 4 pages
• Simply add your current role to the resume you last updated years ago.
• Use Times New Roman font – that’s a definite age give away!
• Don’t use your AI friend of choice – you won’t sound like you and other AI tools will pick up on that

Do:

• Make a brief statement about who you are professionally and what you want to do or are interested in. This can easily be “tweaked” for different roles.
• Articulate your professional experience clearly and with concurrent dates from the most recent role backwards.
• If you have held successive roles with one organisation over time, lead with consolidated dates so you don’t look ‘jumpy’ and then itemise each role with respective dates.   Remember people skim read dates first.
• If you have had a break, explain the break. It’s better to be clear than ambiguous.
• Include one line explaining who your previous employers are and what they do. Unless you have enjoyed a career with Google, Coca-Cola and Amazon, don’t assume your reader knows who each employer is.
• Curtail the detail on roles you held more than 10 years ago. We may want to see the progression overall, but we don’t need the detail.
• Highlight achievements but don’t repeat the same thing for each role.
• Pop your resume and the advert or JD into your AI friend of choice and ask for hints or tips and then rewrite suggestions in your words

Maidin Mistry
Divisional Manager