Do you have an exceptional resume? Take my word for it: it’s not that hard!
In this episode of Refractive Podcast, host Johnny Guidry shares a treasure trove of my best tips on creating a great, effective resume, gathered from over 16 years of HR, Training, and Talent Sourcing experience. Following this guidance will give you resume that will at least be taken seriously, and at best will get you in the interview chair to share how you can be of value to a new employer. Good luck!
For similarly themed content, try these episodes: Jumpstart (or Refresh) your Job Search or Dr. Karen Barnard- The Courage to Change Careers. The Refractive YouTube page is chock-full of uplifting content. You’ll find it here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6y-HQ1_9-xMnZyq7dhRl4A
Find below the transcript of this episode. Visit http://www.refractivecoaching.com for more info on the Refractive family of services, including resume and LinkedIn services and interview preparation.
Hello. Hello. Good afternoon. This is Johnny G. Welcome to refractive. Today’s episode is about how to elevate your resume. I was an HR director and uh, I spent 16 of my years involved in all aspects of HR from training to recruiting to benefits and compensation. And I have to say I’ve been surprised how mysterious resumes still seem to people. So since this was something that I was an expert in in my last career, I thought I would share with you some tips on how to make your resume friendly to a hiring manager. There are certain types of formatting and content that make a resume difficult to process and when someone is going through a stack of 20 or 30 resumes, anything that makes it less simple to process is going to place you at a disadvantage. So that’s what we’re going to focus on today.
I do want to warn you upfront, the transitions from topic to topic won’t be very smooth because I did sit down and draft out simply a list of the most important aspects to cover. So we will be hopping from topic to topic and I hope you’ll bear with me as we do that. So let’s dive right in. You know I’m going to quickly glance over some things that might be common sense, but they’re important to underlie. First of all, don’t lie. Um, a lot of hiring managers do check references and it’s important that you don’t lie about your length of employment, your title, your responsibilities, or your achievements as well. I also want to encourage you to stick to the common length guideline of one resume page per 10 years of professional experience. If you want to vary from that, it’s up to you. But again, um, it does, it does get noticed if you have an unusually long resume.
I also think it’s a good time to point out that there are certain industries that have their own resume guidelines. If that applies to you, you already know what I’m talking about. So take this with a grain of salt. If you work for the federal government, if you are in visual media or some other type of role where resume formatting and content are a little bit special, you know, I feel that brief employment generally doesn’t have much value to add on a resume. If you work somewhere two, three, or four months, it’s probably not worth putting on your resume. You haven’t even finished your training and onboarding yet and you most likely weren’t fully productive yet. So it doesn’t give me as a hiring manager information as to what you’re capable of. What it does is indicate that you might be a flight risk. So I don’t recommend putting brief employment.
I’ve met some applicants who were hired into very prestigious companies and so they wrongly assumed that even if they work there for three, four or five months, um, it was advantageous to show that they were hired by XYZ company and that is not generally the case. I speak for me, but I do feel that that’s a pretty solid piece of advice. I want to talk as well about parallel structure and when I say parallel structure, I’m talking about consistency in the way your resume is written and in the way your resume looks and is formatted. I’ll go down a few points here that I think will really help you to have a resume that looks pleasing to the eye. You know, you can pick up slight differences in line spacing and also the way your margins look and font size can really make your resume look like a patchwork.
First of all, if you’re going to write in full sentences, then you need to write in full sentences for your whole resume. If you’re going to write in bullet point format, keep that format through your whole resume without full sentence structure. Personally, there’s only one type of resume where I would even use full sentence structure and that would be on what we call a skill based resume. If you don’t have a lot of professional experience and titles behind you but you are skilled in certain essential valuable ways, you might want to present a resume in a more sentence or paragraph type format based skill by skill so that you can provide the context to explain why you’re qualified, why you’re skilled in this way, but if you’re talking about achievements in your legacies in your previous employment or if you’re talking about the why your education is exceptional and qualifies you for a role, you should be using bullet point format. This is how business decision makers write themselves. You don’t need to worry about full subject verbs in a lot of cases. You can get down to the nitty gritty and leave out unnecessary words, but you’ve got to be consistent. If you flop back and forth, it makes your resume look careless. Font size really matters. In my opinion. There shouldn’t be more than three different font sizes in a resume. I have a slightly larger font size for my name, maybe 14 or 16 I don’t go more than that. You don’t want to look pretentious. I do want people to quickly see my name and so I make it a little bit larger and that is the only place in my whole resume where I use that 14 point font. The next size would be for my section headers and for my section headers, like experience, education skills. In those headers I might use a 12 point font and then for everything else I’ll probably use an 11 or a 10.5 font and it’s as simple as that. Any more font variations makes your resume start to look a little bit sloppy. Don’t put a larger size font for the name of your company. Don’t put a uh, an italics for the dates that you worked in a place like all of that variation creates a very subtle, subliminal confusion that the eyes and the brain have to overcome so it works against you rather than making you look like a highly creative, thoughtful individual. I also want to encourage you to keep an eye on your formatting. What is the line spacing between lines, between paragraphs and your margins? It can be very tempting when you are trying to adhere to the one page rule for 10 years of experience to shrink your margins and to shrink the space between lines. But again, you need to think about the user experience for your resume. Is it pleasant to review this document or does it look like a congested block of letters? Be strategic. Be smart, edit down so that you don’t have to cram too much writing into the page, but whatever you do, however you fix your margins, however you fix your line spacings, be consistent with that. The same goes for the use of punctuation. If you’re going to end a bullet point with a sentence, no one’s going to freak out over that, but that means you got up and every bullet point with a sentence. If you’re not going to end a bullet point with a sentence, that’s my preference. Then don’t use periods. A period means you’re ending a sentence and if you’re using a bullet point, you’re probably not using sentence structure, so you could use a semi-colon. Um, you could use a dash, you could use other types of punctuation, but it’s a little bit contradictory to use end of sentence punctuation when you’re not using sentences. Again, this is a more minor point, but in my, I noticed this as a hiring manager and it communicates to me that the person I’m dealing with has a certain, a certain understanding of professional presentation and communication. It shows your skill in presenting yourself in a polished way. So that’s my recommendation. Feel free to follow your gut on that. I want to also, as we’re talking about parallel structure, encourage you to use numbers rather than spell out numbers. Now when you write in English, if you use a number in the beginning of a sentence, you’re supposed to spell it out unless it’s a long hyphenated number. So you would spell out the number nine or the number seven, but you would use the actual digits for 26 that’s if it’s at the beginning of a sentence. However, in a resume, I don’t recommend spelling out numbers. It it’s jarring when you see it, it feels unnecessary.
Something that’s very valuable is to develop a list of action words that you can pull from as you write your resume. This is classic resume advice. I even heard about this back when I was in high school a million years ago, but still it does matter. You want to show what your legacy and impact has been in your university or in your previous jobs achieved, designed, innovated. These are valuable words to use so that you show that you’re not passive in you approach your work. Come up with a nice long list of them that feels genuine to you and try not to use the same action word per entry. So if I worked at company a and if I have three or four bullet points, I’m not going to use the same action word again in company a when I get down to company B. If I have to use one of those previous action words again, I can, but I’m going to also mix it up with more words. What we’re talking about here is a subliminal message to the person reading your resume that you’ve put thought and care into making this effective, simple and pleasant. And when you read the same word over and over in a document, in a book, in any type of writing, it’s obvious and it sticks out and it kind of jars you a little bit out of your scan of the document. Again, I think this is important for upgrading and elevating the quality of a resume. It’s not necessarily going to keep you from getting an interview, but it’s something that adds bonus points.
Make sure that you are using the appropriate tense. Are you writing in present tense or past tense? So if you are describing things that you’re currently undertaking in your present job, you’re going to use the present tense. If it’s a project that’s already over, use the past tense. This is about refining and elevating. I want your resume to be better than average by the time you finish listening to this podcast, and that’s my goal. You know, you could pay six or $700 if you want to go have a professional, write your resume for you. But if that’s not something that’s realistic for you, if you follow the guidelines that I’m giving you, your resume will be better than average. It will be able to compete head to head with most other resumes.
References are not so necessary on a resume anymore. The old resume format from 20 years ago had an objective at the top of the resume and it had references at the end of a resume. Over time. We started to see the format of references available upon request. You don’t need to put that on there and you don’t need to put your references on there at all. I know as a hiring manager that if I asked for references, you’re going to give me references. So you don’t need to inform me of that and I’m not going to call references before I meet with you. There’s a whole list of reasons I won’t go into why we don’t check references. Typically before we, uh, before we contact a candidate. So if you, if you have exceptional references, high ranking accomplished people who are willing to vouch for you, bring it to the interview, bring a nice formatted document that matches the look and feel of your resume and has the references on it, but don’t include it in the resume. It’s not necessary. Also, the objective is not necessary anymore. It is a waste of very valuable resume space. Back in the day when you would job hunt, there was a lot more cold calling than today because the only way to advertise jobs was the newspaper. Today, it is relatively inexpensive and easy to advertise jobs. So people are not just walking into random companies to ask to present a resume as much. So here’s what I would say about the objective. If you are cold calling a company, you can put an objective on the top of the resume that is specific to that company and explained the type of job you’re interested in because you’re applying for a job that’s not open. You’re basically asking to be put in a talent bank in case the job that you’re interested in opens in the future and objective in that case is helpful because as I need to look through candidates, if on your resume it says you’re interested in a regional sales job, then I know, okay, this is not an HR candidate. This is not a logistics candidate, this is not an administrative candidate. This person wants sales other than those rare exceptions and objective doesn’t help you and it looks outdated. So that’s my recommendation on that.
Okay. There are typically three different formats for a resume. There is an experience based format where your jobs take center stage. What qualifies you for what you’re applying for or the places and positions that you’ve worked in the past. The second format is a skill based resume and this is useful for someone who is transitioning from one industry to another. So maybe the jobs you’ve held don’t make a lot of sense for what you’re applying for today, but there are transferable skills. This is great for like military people who are looking to transition into civilian life or again moving from one industry to another. If you want to go from the medical industry to the education industry, then your medical abilities might be less relevant than your critical thinking skills or your project management skills or your talent development abilities or your, you know, leadership skills. So these are how you might apply into a skill based resume. What a skill-based resume looks like. And you can Google this and you’ll see examples. It’s going to list in priority from the most exceptional, rare, important, valuable specialized skill on down a nice list of skills that are relevant to a very specific job for which you’re applying. And under each of those skills there’s going to be a list of either bullet points or this is the format I mentioned earlier where you might use full sentence structure, although I still think bullet points are fine and you’ll explain why you have that skill. So if I’m putting project management as one of my skills, I might put bullet point. Um, when I worked for Omega hospital, I oversaw the full rollout of a new purchasing management software. This was a $7 million project and I was the key stakeholder in ensuring the successful rollout. This involved periodic meetings, setting milestones and holding various executives accountable. Okay. And then I moved to another bullet point where I talk about another instance of project management skills. You know, when I was at Mississippi state university, I single handedly founded the students initiative for recycling and this involved a 400 person rollout, including all Greek societies as well as other extracurricular organizations. Between March and July we instituted a full campus rollout and I led a team of 20 people to drive this process. Okay. And so these are how you would back up your claim that you’re good in project management and then you’ll go to the next skill. Maybe your next skill is talent development and you’ll talk about where you had impact with that skill over the course of your careers. So that’s the second format. That’s a skill based resume.
The third format is education based resume. And so if you may have only had one or two professional roles but your education is truly exceptional or if your education contains really important experiences that qualify you such as internships and uh, thesis projects that are specialized to the type of role that you are going to. This is where you’re going to start with your education and it’s not so important to just put a summary of where you went to school and when you graduated. Just like with this skill based resume, you’re going to flesh out why this education experience is relevant for you being hired in this very specific role. And then after you put the educational experience, if you’ve held part time jobs or maybe full time jobs that aren’t related to your career, you would put those afterwards in their own section. Typically in an experience based resume, your jobs go first and your education goes last, but in this case you’d put your education first and you would put your jobs last.
All right, so we’re making some good progress here. I’m hoping that you’re resonating with this information and that you’re finding it helpful. This is the type of guidance that I really wish I had 15 years ago when I was just a few years into my career. All right. I want to just make one quick point about the dates of employment. Sometimes people will only put years when they are listing their various jobs. And I got to tell you, this is a pet peeve for a lot of hiring managers because if you say I worked for Amazon web services from 2015 to 2018, there’s a big difference between January, 2015 to December, 2018 or December, 2015 to January, 2018. That’s a difference of close to two years and you’re not telling me that information. I want to encourage you to put months and years. But again, don’t lie because if we check references, typically the only information a company will give when we call to check references are title and dates of employment. And in every large company I’ve worked for, if someone’s dates of employment were more than 90 days off from what they put on their resume, they were in eligible for hire, even if they were an exceptional candidate, they lied. And uh, that was a deal breaker. So this was not just one policy. This was in every big company I’ve ever worked for. So I want to encourage you to be honest with that. And putting those months does matter. It looks like you’re trying to hide short employment. If you only put the years and leave out the months.
Internships are also something that you want to make sure you include. If they are relevant. Now they may have been very important to your educational experience, but you may have changed the type of jobs you’re applying for and an internship may no longer be relevant. So you have a limited amount of space that you’re working with on a resume. Make sure that you’re choosing wisely. There’s nothing wrong with putting a job on your resume that’s not relevant. Um, in fact, it’s better to put a substantial length of employment job down, even if it’s not relevant than to have that blank space. But, um, if you’re fighting for space, you’re gonna leave irrelevant information off. And that might be internships that might be part time jobs or other types of information.
A couple of quick pace guidance to share with you. Now, um, stuff that doesn’t take a lot of explanation, but just some quick topics for you to keep in mind. Abbreviations, if you’re going to abbreviate abbreviate, if you’re not going to abbreviate, don’t. be consistent. Be consistent. That is important.
Make sure that if you’re going to use color in a resume and most cases you want to do it very sparingly. I personally have only a blue color for my headings and my name. I don’t have any other coloring. I would get resumes from time to time that had big blocks of color. And you know, if you’re applying for a creative type role, that’s fine. But otherwise it can look gimmicky. It’s better for you to look refined and professional. Uh, in most cases. So it doesn’t mean you can’t have some contemporary flair, but edit down, right? Think like in project runway, a lot of times the advice was look at what you designed and take the last thing away. You should do that with your resume as well. If it looks busy, if it looks gimmicky, if it looks complicated, you should edit down. Also, photos are a no-no. Do not put photos on your resume and my European and Asian listeners on talking to you guys because in your cultures it’s expected that there’s a headshot, but in the U S it is not necessary. It’s not relevant and in fact it, again, it’s jarring and it’s distracting. We don’t want a photo on your resume. You shouldn’t either. It, it’s just not, I don’t know how to say. It changes the whole tone of the document and I don’t feel, and my colleagues that I’ve spoken with don’t feel that it improves the tone. We feel that it hurts it.
Be careful with putting social media information. Your LinkedIn is important. I feel like I could do an entire podcast episode just on LinkedIn because it’s so essential nowadays and maybe I’ll do that. You can put your LinkedIn link there, but you should not necessarily put your Facebook link or anything else like that. There is typically information in Facebook that could be detrimental. Everything from your political views to pictures of you at a bar. These are just things that if you invite someone to look at your Facebook, then you need to expect that they’re going to have a reaction to it. Is it fair to penalize someone because they put a picture of their 30th birthday holding a beer in each hand and partying? No. Maybe that’s not fair. But you asked me to look at a picture of you partying and I’m trying to hire a professional. So be aware of the impact of giving social media information. In fact, when I job hunt, I lock all my social media accounts to private because they don’t want them being visible to someone who might make an incorrect assumption about me from that information
Portfolios. If you are, I used to hire a lot of cooks and chefs and people like that. If you’re going to include a portfolio, make it professional, make it look good, put it in some sort of binding. Um, do not just list a string of photos at the end of your resume. It’s not, um, it doesn’t leave a good impression. So if you are artistic, put that artistic and stylistic gift of yours into designing a portfolio and you can decide how to uh, how to do that. You could put links to a website. That’s something that’s popular now and it’s really affordable. Um, but make sure your website with your portfolio images again, looks professional and looks bought fully done.
One of the last things that I want to say is if you are uploading a resume, you should use a PDF format. There are people who don’t have the same version of word processing software as you, and the minute that occurs, your margins can be off, your font type and font size can be off and it can make your resume very difficult to read. It can really make it look like a jumble of words. So I recommend using a PDF format always. It’s typically free to save a document in PDF format from any word processing software and it maintains the crisp look of your document.
Also, LinkedIn needs to match your resume. So just be careful, don’t have discrepancies and dates of employment, don’t have discrepancies in titles. Make them match. It’s okay if LinkedIn has more experience and more information than your resume, but it certainly should not have less and it should not argue with your resume in any way.
Cover letters are up to you. If you do use a cover letter, it should provide contextual information based on why you are worth the time. What is it that you’re going to do for this company? What proof do you have based on your previous experiences that you are worth meeting? That’s the only question you should be answering on a cover letter. Otherwise it’s not worth my time as a hiring manager to read it and I’d just rather not have one than skim through it and put it down. Be mindful with your cover letters and your cover letters should never be generic. They should be personalized to the company with the name of the hiring manager. If you can find it out, you can make a phone call and ask that question. It’s not that hard to find out the name of the hiring manager, but it needs to be personalized to the company and the hiring manager and the content should be personalized to the job opening. If it’s not, I immediately stop reading it. If, if I get the slightest whiff of a form letter, I do not read it because it’s it, it’s lazy. So, uh, that’s my perspective on cover letters.
Guys, if you have questions, I’m happy to answer questions. Email me at johnny@refractivecoaching.com and I, uh, you know, I look forward to being of service again. My whole mission right now is to be the best person I can be by helping others do the same. And if I’m gonna hold your hand on this journey of awakening, it’s important that you have a job that feels right to your heart and soul. And that’s my goal for today and for this episode. It’s not about digging deeper into this physical world. It’s about empowering yourself to get the job of your dream that fits you. And that’s what I want to help you do as you go out there, be good to each other and never, ever forget to aim your light. Have a great day.
This has been refracteive. I’m Johnny G. I am a personal and career coach located in Washington, DC. I work both in person and remotely with people who are ready to look inside, tune into their intuition, discover their purpose, and live the life of their dreams. If I can be of service to you, please reach out to me on Twitter at refractive life. Find me on Facebook at www.facebook.com/refractive coaching. You can visit me on my website@refractivecoaching.com or you can email me at Johnny@refractivecoaching.com. Thanks so much. And again, don’t forget, aim your light.