Resume Goals
The minute you become a recruiter, people start asking you to review their resumes. It’s like being an engineer and instantly becoming your family’s personal Geek Squad.
The tough part about resumes is there’s really no ‘right’ way to write one, but there are a lot of wrong ways. My general advice is your resume should be clean (the eye needs to know where to go), easy to read (concise bullet points, this isn’t an essay contest) and only a few pages (likely no one is looking past page 2).
Beyond that, the best way to build a resume is to approach it as if you were reviewing it yourself. If you were looking at resumes, what would you need to see to move someone forward?
First, let's consider the person reviewing your resume.
This person has likely never done your exact job - Of course this makes sense if your reviewer is a recruiter, but remember that most hiring managers have not done every job on their own team(s). Because of this, you shouldn’t assume they will understand deeply technical details, acronyms, etc.
This person is giving your resume 15 seconds - Reviewing resumes is only a small piece of this person’s job, and to be time efficient, they do it quickly. Don’t assume that someone is going to do a deep dive of your resume just because you took the time to apply.
This person is looking for reasons to decline you - If a resume reviewer chatted with every person who applied for a role, it would be a massive time suck (and maybe impossible?). Because of this, they need to weed out unqualified candidates. Don’t assume the reviewer believes you are qualified, you have to show them you are qualified.
If we are approaching writing a resume to cater to the above, your resume should include the following:
Buzzwords - Because the reviewer is doing a quick scan, they need to see particular words to be intrigued (likely ones discussed in their job posting). Obviously, don’t include buzzwords you don’t have experience in, but don’t be afraid of buzzwords because they aren’t ‘cool’ (for example - ‘devops’). Use buzzwords to your advantage. Adding a skills section where you list tech you’ve worked with is helpful. The goal is to make reviewers lives easier, because they won’t work for it, they will just decline you.
Why you? - Do not save information about why you are applying for this job for a cover letter. If your resume doesn’t show the why, your cover letter is likely never getting read. A lot of reviewers will scan a resume and if you have created enough intrigue, then they will read your cover letter. This information best lives in an ‘about me’, ‘objective/goal’ or ‘summary’ section (1-3 sentences) at the top of your resume.
Ex - Say you are a software engineer turned product manager and have decided to go back to software engineering. If you don’t mention this at all in your resume, I’m likely going to decline and assume you aren’t qualified or applied to the wrong job.
Drop the stats - I have not encountered anyone in my career who saw something like ‘increased ROI by 200%’ on a resume and was impressed by it. Most hiring managers I work with have negative feelings about stats on resumes (I’m not even totally sure why this is, but it’s the truth). When you are giving details about past jobs, focus on what you worked on and what you owned. Save the metrics and learnings details for conversations with recruiters and/or hiring managers.
Remember, a resume is a sales tool that you use to entice a reviewer enough to want to learn more. Sell yourself!