Let's call it what it is. A Curriculum Vitae (a.k.a. Resume) is a sales tool. It is one of the few ways - arguably the most important one - to sell your skillset, explain your role fit, and promote your candidacy to a prospective employer. It should, therefore, be given the thought and diligence it deserves, whether you are a fresh college graduate looking to land your first job or a seasoned senior executive aiming to move to a new job or company.
COMMON MISPERCEPTIONS
Here are some of the most common misperceptions and myths I hear quite a lot when I talk to people looking for new career opportunities.
I am a senior executive well-known in the industry. My accomplishments speak for themselves, I don’t need a CV.
I should create a generic "one size fits all’" document, because I will be applying to multiple roles. The more broad it is, the more roles it will appeal to.
I should include everything I have ever done.
CVs should not be longer than one page.
Fancy formatting is a must but don’t use color.
Everyone lies on their CV and therefore, I must lie too, in order to land a job.
Over the years, I have received and consumed many CVs as a hiring manager and an interviewer. I have also coached and helped many people prepare and update their CVs to increase their chances of being selected to be interviewed. Here below are some of my findings and tips:
AT A HIGH LEVEL
Take the time to prepare a solid CV. You probably are accomplished and your accomplishments do probably speak for themselves but they will not express your interest in a role or promote your candidacy. You still need to self-represent and present your case with a solid CV.
Tell the truth. I recently came across a stat that over 55% of American people admit to lying on their resume at least once, and more than 4/5th of Irish people feel they need to lie on their CV to land a job. Fascinating, isn’t it? My advise is to not do it - and not only because (brutal) honesty is one of my values and I am worried about my guilty conscious every time I feel like I might lie, but also because it’s hard to keep track of lies and it’s really easy to check the validity of your claims these days. It might be that the employers didn’t do good due diligence during the hiring process and you were able to pull it off. But then when it comes to delivering on the things you said you had experience in, were proficient in etc., you will be exposed and it won’t be pretty. While you might be intentional about what to include in your CV, how to best sell, present and promote yourself (more on this later in the article), blatant lies are not advised or necessary for that matter.
Tell a story. Your CV should be a completely harmonious exercise and have a clear story line. Even if it’s not as obvious as it might be to you to the person reading it, it should tell your career story - whether it is gradual and strong progress up the ladder or the fact that you have moved laterally quite a few times (e.g. from sales to marketing to business development) to build a strong foundation or the different skillsets you built throughout your positions (project management, people management, solutions architect etc.) that presumably fit the role you are applying for, there should be an overarching story flow that makes everything fit together.
LANGUAGE AND FORMAT
Make your CV a quick read. It’s important that it’s easy for your audience to read and skim your CV - otherwise they won’t read it. People are short on time and they read lots of CVs. Use bullet points and be punchy.
Keep your CV to a reasonable length. Two pages is a good rule of thumb especially for people with prior work experience, though three pages is not taboo, and one page may very well be adequate, if you are a fresh graduate or a junior executive.
Be relevant. While you might have a “master” version of your CV, do tweak and adjust it to the role and company you are applying to. If they are looking for strong people managers, you might emphasize your people management experience in the executive summary. If the job spec is calling for strong business acumen and product knowledge, you might go heavy on examples from your career to date that demonstrate that. It is also worth noting that it helps to use words that are used in the job description / qualification criteria. Often times, the first eyes on your CV are not those people who you will be working with / for and thus understand the role in depth. While this shouldn’t be used as a superficial manipulation tactic and an AI hack, it will catch the attention of the robot or human crawler who is filtering the CVs more if you refer to your skillset as “account management” or “product specialism” if that’s what the job spec is calling for, as opposed to e.g. client relationship ownership or domain expertise.
Make your language and format consistent. This seems like an obvious one but I do come across many CVs that don’t follow this rule. If you start with a verb (e.g. “Pioneered the x program which yielded xyz in revenue), always keep that same format (e.g. do not have the next bullet point start with the subject “I was responsible for 7 project managers…”)
Use strong verbs. Be crisp and succinct. This isn’t the time or place to be humble. As opposed to, “Tried to work closely with coworkers to achieve the revenue targets”, say “Collaborated with coworkers to consistently (over)achieve x% of team sales targets”. Include where you led, coached, pioneered, spearheaded, managed, facilitated, directed, executed, etc. (see here more strong action verbs) as opposed to where you tried, attempted, experimented, failed, observed, etc.
Be as specific as possible. Use data and metrics and focus on your impact and value. It’s amazing how many people have strong communication skills, a growth mindset, and ability to thrive in ambiguity these days. You can skip that blurb and instead include things like “Managed 7 account managers”, “Owned a portfolio of $4B”, “Grew sales from X to Y”, “Partnered with XYZ to organize x # of events attended by y # of people with a CSAT score of z%.”
Be conscious of the format you are using. Don’t be tempted to use small font to make more text fit, don’t make it cluttered or overwhelming to read and consume. Use bullet points, bold text, italics, underlined text, color, and spacing if you see fit, to distinguish things and make your CV esthetically pleasing. No matter what you do, don’t overdo it. A CV with too many colors might be more distracting than appealing. Now, if you do decide to overdo it (you might be deciding to take a risk to make a statement, which is absolutely allowed), own it. Think about Google making its logo super colorful when the general advise on the street is to use one or two colors max. They decided to not be a conventional company and went out there to show it in so many ways.
Absolutely feel free to consider other formats and self-differentiating ideas. Think about Elle Woods’ iconic Harvard application essay video in Legally Blonde - it was pretty out there, especially for the time, but it did challenge the status quo, make her stand out as well as demonstrate courage and uniqueness. People are so bored with the standard these days, they will welcome a little something different and you will make a mark. Once again, if you do decide to “overdo” it, make sure it’s tasteful.
Use a well-known digital format (e.g. Word) and pdf your resume where you can so it prints / looks in tact when the other side is viewing it.
Proofread and edit mercilessly. Typos, misspellings, awkward spacing, language errors do get noticed, and are seen as a sign of unprofessionalism and a lack of attention to detail.
CONTENT AND SECTIONS OF THE CV
Include an intro or a summary at the beginning. While there is no consensus on this, I am of the school of thought that an intro, an executive summary that highlights your skillset and what makes you a good fit to the role is helpful. Treat it as a TL,DR and as opposed to making it generic and arguably worthless (“I thrive in ambiguity”), highlight the points to answer the question, “Why should I hire you?”
Use a reverse chronological order and use more space (elaborate more) your current or most recent position as opposed to earlier ones. I.e. we probably don’t need to understand the details of what you did during your internship 10 years ago (even though it might be nice to see that you interned at The New York Times as a college senior) but it might be useful to understand you are now managing an org of 100 people and have responsibility over $x billion revenue, etc.
Include your education following your professional experience. Depending on where you are in your career and your seniority, you might just include a few lines and the topline facts (e.g. name and location of your university and the subjects / majors studied) or if you are more junior and you feel the specific courses you took or the specific programs you led / were involved in will be relevant, you can decide to give those a mention too (e.g. President of the Model United Nations Club, Honors course in Linear Algebra, etc.)
Include your hobbies and extracurriculars at the end. No need to write a long laundry list but a brief and tasteful mention of extracurriculars show that you are a wholesome person and not just your work, and sometimes are a good basis for connection. (e.g. if the recruiter / hiring manager also loves basketball like you do)
Make sure you understand the company values as well as the role itself and cater your message and style accordingly. If the company is more conventional, then perhaps an out there Legally Blonde video is not the right format. If they encourage innovation and creativity, then you might just go for it. When I was in middle school, I had an eccentric English literature teacher, Mr. Corona, who said he is tired of "the mundane", so he introduced funny tricks in the class. He would ask us brain teasers and mind twisters which were fun to solve (and presumably helped with our "English as a second language" skillset) but were certainly not part of the curriculum. When he gave us a standard, "boring" exam one day with very “boring” questions, I crossed out the essay questions and asked my own questions and wrote essays on topics I thought were more striking and controversial about George Orwell’s "Animal Farm" and William Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet". He was the right audience for this kind of creativity and I scored 100% on that exam and a few subsequent ones (I continued to do the same thing!) While Mr. Corona clearly was the right audience for this level of creativity, I know many teachers who would have not appreciated it one bit. Thou must know thine audience!
Include reference links to more information and materials. Most CVs are prepared and sent in the digital format these days, so feel free to share links where appropriate. If there is a conference you spoke at, you might link to the Youtube video of your talk. If you have a website, you might reference it. Also important is to include your Linkedin profile. Some recruiters and hiring managers prefer to look at Linkedin profiles instead of CVs because not only it is a format they are used to consuming, therefore might find easier to chew, but also Linkedin profiles include things like your recommendations, references, contacts, projects, etc.
Only use explanations where necessary. Where you worked for a start-up or a boutique firm that is not necessarily well-known and/or are applying to a role outside of the industry / country you are currently working in / you have worked in, you might include a sentence explaining what the company does, the employee size, market cap, etc. If you work for Microsoft Azure as a Cloud specialist in New York and you are applying to AWS for a Cloud consultant position in San Francisco, all's probably clear and known to the recruiter / hiring manager and you might want to reserve the space for something else worth mentioning.
And lastly... a word on cover letters:
Cover letters used to be a lot more common when I was first applying for roles 15-20 years ago. Now they are seen more of a formality and are no longer required for the most part. I am indifferent when it comes to choosing to include one or not. What I do think is important, however, is to make it worth the readers’ time, if you do decide to include one. As opposed to the generic, “This is my name, here is my contact information, contact me at your convenience. By the way, I have strong communication skills and am known for my ability to thrive in ambiguity, and would be an asset to your company of course” (this constitutes a “worthless” cover letter), you can use it to explain why they should hire you with a personal story - e.g. you are interested in this role because when you were 5 your dad took you to the outer space museum and you’ve always wanted to be a space engineer since then, you studied it in college and are now ready to take on the big challenge of taking humans to Mars, and other relevant / important bits your CV does not include / detail like for instance career breaks or notable career shifts. Similar to the CV ground rules, be punchy and succinct, and use bullet points where applicable.
Connect with me at merve@leadrisecoaching.com if you have any questions / comments / experiences you would like to share on CV writing.
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