Rebuild Your Resume for the K.O.

SUMMARY

I received some epic advice on improving my resume from a stranger on LinkedIn. It’s moments like this that redefine the word connection! As a point of reference for how I felt about the following… I’m inclined to think of that phrase “when the student is ready, the teacher appears.” I’m writing this for two reasons. ONE – writing about something helps me to better appreciate and internalize something I’ve learned, TWO – i suspect this will be as invaluable for someone else as it was for me.

BACKGROUND

On some level, I had known something was wrong with my resume. My initial resume was meant for humans and when a friend of mine at FANG (mang) fed my resume into his company’s ATS it came back with “is this a new graduate?” I attempted to overcompensate with a keyword stuffed resume made for machines not people and then did a (probably gross) rewrite to account for humans that might actually read it expecting a “story.”

Intuitively I think I knew my resume sucked, but having heard from some of the most amazing people I know that a resume is “just a formality”, I took for granted its purpose — and thus the opportunity to knock it out of park.

THE TEACHER APPEARS

In thanks to LinkedIn interactions, I was able to meet a stranger who I reached out to and included my Frankenstein-Food resume. ((at the time, I was delusional about how awful it was)). They wrote back and asked if I would be open to feedback, and I felt as if the world were opening anew.

This might sound like an overstatement, but for anyone who has watched Wheel of Time, this character Nynaeve travels to another dimension where she’s living her dream life. There comes but one opportunity to return to reality. She misses the first shot, but is ultimately able return to reality.

The following is the feedback I received. I’ve bolded for emphasis and removed stuff not relevant to general readers of this article.

THE FEEDBACK

So here’s my 2 cents from glancing at your resume: As a general principle, people are busy and have “A.D.D.” so the shorter the better. An exercise that I’ve found helpful is force yourself to cut your resume down by 1/4. It sounds daunting and it might be frustrating while you’re doing it but you’ll like the end product that much more.

Also, prioritize the most relevant roles first and only put relevant information. e.g. driving uber – while I get it, it’s not something you need to show as the 2nd bullet on your resume after your intro. People read top to bottom, so use the first sections to wow them first. Right now, when I first read your resume it’s a mish mash of things and I’m left with that as a first impression.

Use stronger action verbs – “assisting, served, demonstrated” don’t mean much and are wasted words. Authored, Drove, Led…

You’re missing results – I like to ask myself “So What?” in a snarky way after each bullet and section of a resume. “So What that you were responsible for maintaining meeting schedule and helping pace product development? How do I know if you did a good job? What did this result in? Why is it important that it was you that did this work? How did you leave your imprint on the project?

This LinkedIn post was referenced in terms of a deeper understanding “So What?”

Regarding story – I think telling a story is the right approach but I don’t think it needs to be literal per se. What you need is to show is that there was an issue that you solved aka the result.

This post is referenced re: Story:

You need to show there’s tension, which is what makes a good story.

“Served as Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) leading the go-to-market strategy for an AI-driven service SaaS-based platform initiative. This included conducting market analysis and strategic positioning, along with utilizing Figma for wireframing and strategic product design. Also instrumental in helping shape the initial offering, what an MVP would look like, and advocating concepts like Pretotyping (as defined by Alberto Savoia).”

This bullet above about being a CMO, yes it’s kind of a story but it’s not interesting. where’s the tension? where’s the “Adam is f****king batman and saved the day”

And, thus… I’m in process of reworking my resume so it reads like the trailer for Dark Knight. Coming soon, to a stellar company near you.