Our Ultimate Resume Writing Guide

So, you are ready to apply for a new job. Amazing!

Before you just slap your most recent experience at the top of a tired old resume template you’ve been using for a decade, check out these tips from the Accelerate Transformation team of HR experts.

Make sure your resume reflects where you are going, rather than being an outdated historical record of where you’ve been 

We’ve seen lots of resumes in our experience, and in our current practice, that are basically a junk drawer of someone’s experience. They’ve opened the document every few years when they decide to change jobs, and added in their new experience. Rather than making your resume the encyclopedia of everything you’ve ever done, you need it to actually tell the story of what you’ve learned and where you are going NEXT.

To demonstrate the forward focus, be ruthless about reviewing your descriptions of past jobs and experience. Is it really relevant now? Is it transferable to this new job? If not, it’s time to remove it from your resume.

Ensure your achievements stand out and are quantified 

Rather than listing a bunch of tasks (or copy/pasting the HR version of the job description from when you got hired), use the precious few pages of your resume to highlight projects that made an impact, and quantifiable results that you achieved. Here are some prompts to get you thinking: 

• Did you generate revenue? By how much? This could be in the form of a percentage or dollar figure, and include a time scale (eg. in 2022, or year over year). 

• Did you reduce costs? How, and what was the cost savings? 

• Did you save time? What efficiencies did you find, and what was the impact when you calculate that on a team, company, national or global scale for your organization? 

• Did you deliver a project ahead of schedule? How early? How did you manage that? 

• Do you have a project where adding volume might demonstrate impact - like the number of people hired or trained, or the number of guest interactions per day that were managed? If you were managing a high volume, add in those facts to show just how much you were juggling!

• Did you increase employee or customer satisfaction? Add in the percentage increase! 

This offers proof that you are a pro at what you do, and will help you stand out from the crowd. Hard facts also make for great discussion in your interview, as you’ll have already thought through the tangible impacts you’ve had in your past roles!

Format the document so it captures your audience's  attention in the 7 seconds

You have about 7.4 seconds to make an impression on recruiters with your resume. This study suggests that resumes that perform better:

• Kept the layout simple with lots of white space.

• Marked each section clearly with headings.

• Included a bulleted list of accomplishments.

Once you’ve done that - how long should it be? 

There are many articles debating the topic of resume length online! Folks in one camp shouting that it needs to be one page, others saying two, some saying three is the magic number. 

Our answer? While it’s nice to have universal rules, every situation is different, it depends on your experience level and industry! What is universal? Really challenge yourself on what’s relevant, and make sure every word counts. Keep your resume succinct and direct, and share your relevant experience in as few pages as possible. If you have 10-30+ years of relevant experience and education, there is a strong chance that it will run into 2 pages. 

Balance the length of your resume with the amount of text and white space on each page. Resumes that performed poorly in studies were too cluttered, have keywords obviously stuffed in, or used formats that spoke louder than the content. 

Customize your resume to the jobs you are applying for, so your resume always reads as the “perfect candidate” for the job

There are some basic first principles of resume writing that are always worth mentioning.

1) Never Lie. Don’t make up stuff that you’ve never done, or exaggerate your skills, because you’ll get caught, and it will be awful. Trust us. After decades in HR and recruitment, we’ve seen some wild exaggerations, falsehoods, and gilding of lilies on resumes. It always comes out, and it never ends well for the person who lied.

2) Don’t keyword stuff. Keyword stuffing is when folks jam in as many of the job description words into their resume in hopes that the Applicant Tracking System (ATS) will rank their resume higher, even when they are not relevant to their background. In our experience, this doesn’t work, or will backfire - neither are the results you want.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, a common mistake we see is that folks who ARE perfect candidates don’t demonstrate that in their resume. This usually happens for one of two reasons - either it’s too time consuming to customize your resume for every job posting, or they are trying to be humble. We’d argue that you need to set up your resume so it’s easy to make a few tweaks and send it off for each application, and be sure you are judicious with your time - only applying to roles that really make sense and that you’d really want to interview for. And, it’s really not the time to be humble. Sell yourself!  As uncomfortable as that may feel, now is not the time to undersell yourself or be “humble” - if you’ve won awards, get it on the page! 

Review the job description, and highlight the bullets that you’ve done in the past. Do a side by side comparison of your resume. Is it obvious that you’ve done these things? Are the results you achieved quantified? If not, ensure that your relevant experience is captured in the resume, so your application is optimized for the job you are applying for.

Mirror the language on the job posting (without copy pasting their whole job posting into your resume - that’s keyword stuffing!) - different companies have different internal language and shorthand. For example - say you’ve worked in adult education - at your company, that’s the terminology you use. The job you are applying to uses terms like “Learning & Development”. It is the same work, but different language or words to describe it.

Making sure your work is described through the lens of the job posting you are applying for can often instantly boost your results when applying online.

Know when to hire a resume writer, and when you shouldn’t!

Having someone write your resume (and potentially also your cover letter or LinkedIn profile)  is an investment.  You should be confident that it’s actually resume writing that you need to move your career or job search forward. 

When is resume writing worth the investment? Resume writing can be a huge benefit to those who have some experience and are looking for better ways to sell that experience to advance in their careers in a specific new role or sector, or folks who are changing careers and want to demonstrate the transferable skills they’ve gained from other career or life experiences. We also consistently hear that we help boost our clients' confidence by providing them with feedback on what makes them stand out as candidates, and articulating their unique stories clearly through their new resumes, cover letters, and LinkedIn Profiles. 

For some folks, we’d actually suggest that hiring us (or, any resume writer) isn’t the right decision. If you are writing your very first resume, or don’t have a lot of career experience, we’d actually argue that you’d be better served by using the free resources (like this one!) that are available online to write your resume. There are reasonably good resume templates available for free on MS Word, Pages, and Google Docs that you can use as a starting point! 

If you don’t have any idea what you’d like to do with the rest of your life, resume writing can’t provide that clarity! And whew, we’ve been there too! You’d likely benefit from some personal exploration, career coaching or assessments. We guarantee that the book Design Your Work Life is available for free at your local library, and will give you lots of ways to experiment and find more happiness at work. 

If you aren’t quite sure if you need a resume writer, we are always happy to schedule a 30 minute Career Strategy Consult. We want to work with folks who’ll love their resume and get amazing value from our services - so rest assured if we aren’t the right folks to support you, we’ll point you to the right resources or other practitioners who can support you on your career journey.