All day, every day, we get asked to perform resume makeovers.
Since this is logistically impossible for us as a boutique search firm, we give quick advice instead.
That advice: open up your current resume, and delete most of it.
This advice scares people, because writing is hard, and editing is even harder.
People worry that if they start shortening, they might cut out something highly relevant (and it all seems highly relevant).
SOLUTION:
If you’re afraid to delete 80% of your resume, just make a second one.
You can have two resumes: a big boi (your current long-winded one) and a shorty.
Once you have both, you’ll realize you only need the shorty…. But saving an unscathed copy of your big boi will give you peace of mind.
On your shorty, link to the long version. “Go deeper here.”
On your long version, link to the short version. “Quick version here.”
There are 3 key things to remember as you ruthlessly chop up your big boi to create your shorty:
1. Remember your resume’s job.
Its job is to pique interest. That’s it. It’s not the movie, it’s the trailer.
Imagine that 5 minutes from now, you’re going to have a 15-second brush with a powerful person who could change your life. Imagine that person is going to ask you what you do for a living and what sets you apart.
Think of a 2-sentence response that will make them want to stay and learn more about you.
Your shorty resume should be a commercialized version of that response.
2. Picture the person who is looking at your resume.
They’re a TA person, an HR person, or a hiring manager. They’re busy, stretched thin, in a hurry, and maybe not an expert in your specific function.
They wish they had a small stack of resumes, but they have a big stack.
In the 9 seconds they're going to spend reading your resume, they’re looking for any possible reason to eliminate it and make their stack smaller. And boredom is a pretty good reason.
Each of the resumes in their giant stack was written by someone who was afraid to leave something out. You don’t have to be the best resume writer in the world — you just have to not be like everyone else.
3. Don’t be afraid of being disqualified; be afraid of not being memorable.
Rambling in an interview is a sign of nervousness and insecurity. The same is true of resumes.
There’s a place for elaborate sentences… actually no, there’s not. In almost every aspect of life, elaborate sentences are self indulgent and not at all helpful to the reader.
Adopt a shorthand style. If there’s more than one adjective (two tops) in a sentence, chop.
If you see overused words like “multidisciplinary” and “authentically” and “dynamic”, chop.
A great shorty will disqualify you from the jobs you don’t want.
GUIDELINES FOR RUTHLESS EDITING:
One page
White space
Short sentences
Two bullets per job
Bold statements about how you changed each team / company you worked for
(Cheat code for bold statements: the longer the bold statement, the less believable it is. Brevity now, elaborate later.)
WHAT ABOUT THE BOTS?
I know what many of you are thinking: Don’t I need a dense resume full of keywords to get me through the AI filters?
4 notes on that:
As a recruiting firm filling roles across all creative functions in lifestyle businesses, we are aware of very few who use AI for their screening processes.
The more senior and important the role is, the less likely that AI is being used (and the less likely the role is being posted publicly anyway).
You are not going to land epic opportunities by tricking AI. You’re going to do it by performing outlandishly high and making the right impressions on the right people.
You can always default to your big boi resume whenever you suspect that an automated system is involved.
EXTRAPOLATE:
If you can distill the meaning of your professional existence to less than one page, you can do anything.
Use your new superpower however you please. Meetings, emails, presentations. Your LinkedIn bio.
The world is yours.
