10 Reasons Your Executive Resume Needs a Major Face Lift

Revisiting and updating your executive resume at least once a year is a smart career move . . . even when you’re not actively job-hunting.

But, this goes beyond revising your resume with your latest accomplishments and to reflect career advances – new jobs, responsibilities, education, training, etc.

In addition, you’ll probably need to revamp the look and content of the entire document.

The way executive resumes look and read has evolved over time. They will continue to do so to meet the needs of the job seeker and those assessing her/him as a candidate.

You shouldn’t ignore the new ways and send out an old fashioned resume. You’ll be presenting yourself as someone who is not up to date with the new world of work.

And, an old fashioned resume can set you up for age discrimination from the get-go.

If your resume is still partying like it’s 1999 (or even 5 years ago), it’s a dinosaur.

It probably lacks critical information and includes arbitrary and superfluous information that won’t help you.

And it probably doesn’t look like a modern resume.

10 Reasons Your Executive Resume Needs a Major Face Lift

Your resume needs an overhaul if it:

1. Lacks targeting

You want your resume to indicate to employers that you are a good fit for their company or organization, right?

How can you do that if you aren’t targeting select employers you want to work for, determining what they’re looking for in candidates, and showing in your resume that you meet their specific requirements?

Your resume needs to be designed to target specific employers – aligning your qualifications, qualities and areas of expertise with what they’re looking for in candidates.

If there’s no targeting, it probably won’t resonate with anyone. It won’t help to prequalify you as a potential good hiring investment.

2. Neglects personal branding

Of course, your resume needs to include all the hard skills and strengths you offer that your target employers are looking for.

These days, it also needs to convey a feel for your personality, by highlighting your personal brand.

Branding in your resume helps you differentiate the unique value you offer from everyone else competing for the same jobs.

And it helps generate chemistry for who you are, what you’re like to work with, how you make things happen, and what you have to offer that no one else does.

3. Includes an executive resume objective statement

It may be hard to believe, but I’m still seeing these dinosaurs in some executive resumes.

For the 25+ years I’ve been writing resumes, I have NEVER included an objective statement.

Instead of telling employers what YOU want from them, tell them what you’ll DO for them.

4. Neglects strategic positioning in prime real estate

Your resume needs to immediately capture and hold attention.

Think about the hundreds (or more) resumes that recruiters and other hiring professionals may be reviewing for any given job.

The easier you make it for them to get to the information about you they need to see, the more likely you’ll stay in the running.

All too often, I’ve seen resumes that hide important info on the second page.

It’s okay, in fact it’s wise, to bring forward relevant info to the summary section at the top of the first page.

Any content that sits “above the fold” (top third or half of the first page), should succinctly market your value.

Think of this section as a stand-alone snapshot of your value-add. Make it say enough about you to support your good-fit.

When done well, it will entice readers to keep going to the end of your resume.

Design this important real estate to capture attention, provide an overall snapshot of your value proposition, and compel them to want to read further.

5. Neglects career success stories

Your resume should tell your career brand story.

One of the biggest executive resume mistakes is providing generic content that could apply to anyone competing for the same jobs.

The more specific you are about who you are and what you have to offer, the easier it will be for hiring professionals to see you on the job, adding value.

Instead of vaguely saying

“Increased revenue 23% by rolling out new cost-cutting initiatives.”

Explain the backstory that got you there. How did you do it?

Use the C-A-Rs (Challenge – Actions – Results) or S-T-A-Rs (Situation – Tasks – Actions – Results) method to detail specific contributions to past employers.

Your C-A-Rs stories help employers see how you’ll add value as an employee of theirs. They also help make your resume an interesting read.

6. Relies on anemic executive resume-speak

As noted above, too much generic information about you does little to help people assessing you understand your potential value.

Avoid the dull resume clichés that dilute your personal brand.

Too many resumes are bloated with over-used, boring phrases like these:

• Responsible for . . .
• Demonstrated success at . . .
• Proven track record of success
• Forward-thinking
• Team leader/team player
• Superior (or excellent) communication skills
• Seasoned professional
• Results-oriented/results-driven professional
• Met or exceeded expectations
• Bottom line-oriented

Instead, use precise and differentiating language and robust action verbs (accelerate, optimize, monetize, pioneer, revitalize, transform, etc.).

7. Pays no attention to readability

Always keep in mind that you want to make it as easy as possible for people to read all of your resume.

It needs white space. Paragraph-long sentences and long blocks of information with no breaks are hard on the reader. 

White space and short-form, precision writing are the way to go.

Many people will be viewing your resume on small screens. That means that mobile optimization of your resume is no longer optional.

Resume writer and former recruiter Lisa Rangel advises:

In this day and age, please do not send executive resumes that don’t look beautiful on small screens…. the Apples, the Androids, the phones, the tablets, the watches, yada yada yada.

Once it’s polished to perfection, send the PDF to yourself and view it on your phone. Then send it to a friend with a different operating system and find out how it looks.

Otherwise, you might as well just plop it into a top hat and, alakazam, watch it turn into a rabbit or something.

What it *won’t* turn into: an interview. If the formatting’s jacked, it never stood a chance of getting you to the next step.

8. Isn’t modernized and optimized

Show that you’re social media savvy and up to date with the new world of work.

Add hyperlinks in your resume to:

• Your LinkedIn profile in the contact information at the top, unless you have a minimal profile and aren’t active there. If that’s the case, it’s time to get busy on LinkedIn.
• Your other social media accounts in the contact information, if you’re active there.
• Any relevant articles, publications or media coverage you’ve noted anywhere in the content.

9. Isn’t complemented by an ATS-friendly executive resume version

You’ll need attractively formatted Word and PDF versions of your resume for human eyeballs, when you’re applying for jobs, networking and interviewing.

You’ll also need a stripped down text version that will make it through Applicant Tracking Systems.

Recruiters and companies configure their resume ATS based on the jobs they’re trying to fill, their needs and the kinds of talent they want.

Here’s what happens when you send your resume to a recruiter, or in response to a job posting:

1. The document is put into a database or ATS, along with possibly thousands of other resumes, for various kinds of jobs they’re trying to fill.
2. The ATS attempts to match candidates to jobs. The database sifts through the resumes and parses their content for matches to particular jobs.
3. Resumes are selected if the candidate meets the requisite qualifications.
4. Resumes may not be selected if they are incorrectly formatted, don’t contain enough of the right keywords, or don’t fit the bill in some other way.

10. Isn’t in sync with your LinkedIn profile

Your LinkedIn profile and resume need to be in sync and complement each other.

The first thing people assessing you will see is either your LinkedIn profile – if they’ve found you through search when they were sourcing candidates – or the resume you’ve sent them.

Either way, they will most likely review both your LinkedIn profile and resume before considering you as a candidate.

People will rely on what you’ve put in your LinkedIn profile as social proof of the claims you’ve made on your resume. If you’re going to exaggerate or outright lie, you’re more likely to do it on your resume instead of on LinkedIn, where it’s online for the world to see.

So there’d better not be conflicting information from one to the other.

Because you can only have one LinkedIn profile, it tends to be slightly more generic than your resume, although it shouldn’t be so generic that it doesn’t hit home with anyone.

You can have as many resumes as you need, each one as customized as possible for particular roles and/or companies.

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