Last week, we discussed several tips on how to help you secure an executive position. While all these tips are important in your success, your resume serves as the most effective tool in your professional portfolio. You can work hard, surpass your goals, and be a top contender for an executive position. However, if your resume isn’t ready to impress, you may be setting yourself up for failure. Therefore, let’s talk about four things you should be considering in your executive resume.
Present quantifiable results
When seeking an executive position, you need to show the business or organization exactly what you have accomplished. Simply telling them that you are a successful marketer, for example, isn’t enough. You want to be a storyteller, and detail why you are making this statement. For example, include numbers or statistics and explain how you used your expertise to reach the desired outcome. Be specific, and don’t generalize. Any employer, especially when hiring for an executive position, is looking for quantifiable results. Give them all the details so that they can imagine you doing the same when working in the position you are applying for.
Showcase your skills
We call our resumes skills-based resumes for good reason! However, there is a method in which we do this, and our skilled writers will finesse your list of skills (some that you may not even recognize yourself) and use them to market you to potential employers.
Both your soft skills and hard skills should be combined to give you a well-rounded and well-crafted resume that displays your abilities. Your soft skills are those that cannot be defined or measured, whereas your hard skills are ones that you have been trained for, and that can be assessed and supported with tangible evidence.
Use keywords with purpose
Executive positions are competitive, and you want to ensure your resume gets through the many hoops needed to land an interview. Therefore, it is equally important to write for a human as it is for the Applicant Tracking System (ATS). Companies who use ATS are looking for specific keywords within your resume. While some keywords may be obvious, through reading the posting carefully, others are not.
Our team has decades of experience, and we have worked in a plethora of industries. This often gives us the advantage as we can predict certain keywords, which helps ensure your resume has a fighting chance against the ATS. It is also important to use keywords appropriately, as overusing them can make your resume sound unprofessional when it reaches the desk of the hiring manager.
Avoid templates
When crafting your executive resume, don’t use a template. In fact, templated resumes are never a good idea (we never use them!). When sorting through hundreds, or sometimes thousands of resumes, you want your resume to stand out. Therefore, don’t be generic when it comes to your resume.
While it can be tempting to include graphics, tables, or images, this may look unprofessional and often are incompatible with ATS. When you work with Resumes with Results, each resume is specifically crafted for the client, and the position they are seeking. You want to ensure your resume speaks to each job posting, and that you aren’t simply cutting and pasting information across the board.
Are you looking to climb the corporate ladder? Are you unsure where to start with your executive resume? Give us a call, and let’s discuss how we can help!