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And now, on to this month’s before and after…

Our client introduced her old resume with a soft summary that provided no clear selling points. Her biggest problem began right at the top. Her tagline started with “Businesswoman” followed by a litany of subjective descriptor phrases such as “creative” and “passionate”. The summary is the place where her strong industry experience and professional strengths should shine. In the original resume, her professional image is unclear.

Additionally, she continued her summary with common descriptors like “decisive”, “results–oriented”, and “lead by example”. Using weak words like this results in a lackluster summary. Your summary needs to grab the reader’s attention and engage him or her immediately.

Get Aggressive
So, I jumped aggressively into her new resume and immediately strengthened her summary section with a powerful, more specific positioning slug at the top. This approach gives the reader an immediate idea of what the client has to offer.

Following the tagline, I called out the functional areas with which she has the strongest experience: Operations Management, Client Services, and Program Management. I then built a deeper, more specific core competencies section to follow. This section is packed with mainly noun–based keywords that will give more richness to the resume and will assist in reaching higher recruiter search rankings.

Sell Your Achievements
Most people have an inability to truly see the differences they’ve made in an organization and the accomplishments they’ve achieved. This client was no different. In her original resume, she covered the basics of her career development, but in our development process I discovered that she had many, many more achievements that were not included in her resume. This lack of listed achievements resulted in a content–thin resume that did not communicate that she is top–tier executive material.

The first step I made in her Professional Experience section was creating a context for her work and achievements, so I included short descriptions of each of her companies listed. These strong, keyword–rich job descriptions conveyed the scope of her positions in a more thorough manner and better positioned her for the high–level role she was seeking.

Showcase Your Abilities
Because of the type of work our client does, quantitative achievements aren’t applicable, though her work produced results. Unfortunately, she had barely highlighted her achievements in the old resume but instead focused on low–level, task–based information such as “Managed corporate web site development.”

I bulleted these facts and figures as accomplishments in the new resume, demonstrating her achievements to the reader. I concentrated not only on the actions she took, but also on the results she achieved. This tactic creates a more outcome–based resume that showcases her abilities.

Include Distinctive Career Notes
Her experience at Motorola was extensive and showed strong career progression, but because it was not her most recent or most relevant experience, it’s better to place all of her positions at the company in a summarized section toward the end of the document. This approach allows it to stand out, but not detract from more current, relevant positions as was the case when each position was delineated in her old resume.

Positions prior to her experience at Motorola are simply noted in the Career Note at the end of the experience section.

Design a Clear Document
Visually, her old resume was a bit busy and distracting. It had competing styles of bullets, underlining, italics, etc. So overall, I cleaned up the format to create a more streamlined appearance with consistent design from start to finish. A logical, easy–to–follow format makes the reader happy and the document more professional and executive in appearance.

The final result is a resume that positions our client as an executive who can lead operations and deliver results – not just fill a job.