When I first started writing résumés for people, I started with an architect. He gave me the most bizarre — I mean, idiosyncratic — résumé that I’d ever seen in my entire life, and so I applied my editorial skills for hours until it was a polished turd. He decided he didn’t like it, and he refused to pay. (I hadn’t yet learned to collect at least part of the fee in advance.)

It’s now some 20 years later, I’ve now written documents for some executives and high-level managers at the highest echelons of Big Tech, Little Tech, Fortune 1000, Government, and Nonprofits throughout the Puget Sound. I’m well-paid. I’ve also worked as a technical writer for companies like Microsoft and Google. And no, I’m not intimidated by my clients. Executives are people, too.

Why do smart people work with an executive résumé writer?

Executives and successful independent business owners come to my resume writing service because they want a new résumé and LinkedIn profile. Many are very good writers, but they don’t want to make their résumé into a DIY project.

They come for a variety of reasons:

• They’re too busy to give them the time and attention they deserve.
• They know they’re not the best writers.
• They know they’re not the best marketers of their own career.
• They know the value of working with specialists who are great at what they do, or maybe even the best in their fields.
• They’re not cheap when it comes to something this important.

Here are a few of the questions they’ve asked me about what Writing Wolf does.

How can I help you help me?

I love this question because it shows me that my client is serious about participating in a process that will require a significant investment of their time and effort.

It all starts when they turn over source documents that will give us what we need to re-write the résumé. An old resume or two. An existing LinkedIn profile. Job advertisements for positions that interest them. Career or “strength finder” assessments. We’ve even seen letters of recommendation, military medals, and college transcripts, though that’s probably getting into information overload.

And we ask our executive clients to make themselves available for an interview up to 60 minutes in length. We ask them to speak clearly and concisely in direct reply to our questions, just like they would in a job interview.

The client interview is our best opportunity to put our heads together to define the personal branding statement and strategic direction for the career marketing portfolio. We also spend a few minutes filling in “information gaps”, answer any “red flags”, and talk about design preferences.

What differentiates an executive résumé from any other?

Well-written, well-structured résumés share many common elements from the college student seeking an internship to the CEO of a Fortune 100 company. There are also many commonalities when it comes to smart information design and strategic considerations.

That said, let’s focus on some of the key differentiators. Here are some of the ways that an executive résumé often stands apart from others.

• The top of the first page has a Title and an Executive Summary immediately below the contact information. The Title (never an objective statement) is not necessarily your job title; it refers not only to what you do but how you do it. The Summary is a succinct overview of the value you bring and how you are distinguished from other potential applicants. It should have no more than three cliché words or phrases; after that, try to avoid overused phrases.
• The format is almost always a hybrid of reverse-chronological and functional resume categories. These resumes give hiring managers the easy-to-scan chronicle that they want to see, but they also group information logically into buckets according to the functions that you want to highlight. We will often write a functional section at the top-half of the first page or group job achievements by functional category under each item in the work history.
• Optional sections are present that are rarely seen on other types of resumes. For example, “Additional Work History” summarizes older work history without listing unnecessary dates; “Awards and Accolades” figures into the resumes of many salespeople and other professionals; “Publications”, for prestigious published works; and “Community Involvement” for board positions and other volunteering.
• Work histories are focused on achievements, not job duties. And the story of those achievements is told in a memorable, concrete, action-oriented way. Sometimes these stories are told in the form of “Major Projects”, where the action is told one project at a time; sometimes they are told as “Challenge/Response” stories; sometimes they are told visually, with one or two carefully chosen charts or an infographic.
• You don’t write about low-level tasks, skills, and responsibilities. You don’t write about mundane achievements. No one cares about your word processing skills or bookkeeping abilities, leave them off. No one cares about the conferences or worships you attended unless you were a speaker or helped to organize the conference, leave them off. If you’re in I.T. management, you have to be careful about listing your coding or network management skills because you don’t want to create the impression that you expect to be hands-on if you don’t want to be.

What makes an executive résumé go to the head of the pack?

Everyone wants their resume to earn them a coveted interview slot that could as easily have gone to 10 or 20 or even 100 other applicants. But to consistently win callbacks and recruiter responses, it’s probably not enough for a resume to do only a few things well.

The successful resume needs to score highly across the board in the eyes of recruiters and hiring managers: career branding, work history storytelling, personal likeability, and yes, even resume workmanship (including structure, style, grammar, spelling, and design). If enough of these “X” factors are in play, then employers may be more willing to overlook an unconventional background or a fly in the ointment.

Here are our five favorite rules for delivering best-in-class executive resumes:

• The first rule for a successful résumé is that it ought to be the main object in a suite of career marketing documents (LinkedIn profile, cover letter, and other correspondence). These documents should complement one another, not duplicate each other. They should convey the same personal brand messaging with slightly different flavors to create a cohesive portrait. Your interviewers may not even realize why they have a stronger impression of you than other candidates, but it is surely connected to the fact that you have put extra thought into how each piece of your career marketing jigsaw puzzle fits together.
• The second rule for a successful résumé is that it can’t be a cookie cut from the same “cookie cutter” that everyone else used. In other words, you have to go the extra mile to make sure that what makes you more qualified than the other candidates gets communicated in a memorable way using your authentic voice. So, don’t use Microsoft Word resume templates. Don’t hire the same Big Resume corporation that everyone else is using. Don’t work with a resume writer who doesn’t really listen to you (you want to work with someone who notices not only what you say but how you express it, so that your new resume sounds authentic).
• The third rule for a successful résumé is that it needs to be just the right length, and every content inclusion choice should be considered very carefully. These decisions about what to include and what to let go ought to be made in full view to the suite of career documents, so that material cut from the resume can be put into the LinkedIn profile or cover letter, and vice versa. Everything useful should be used, and nothing more. Once you grasp this principle, you’ll no longer stress over whether your resume should be two or three pages long (the right length will simply present itself to you based on the material).
• The fourth rule for a successful résumé is that it needs to present you as a human being. Grammar, spelling, structure, strategy, and even personal branding are important, but not sufficient to produce an outstanding resume. The secret sauce on the burger is to strike a personal connection, exude an air of warmth, or engender likeability. Admittedly, this is easier to do in LinkedIn (which ought to be written with first-person pronouns) and the cover letter (which is traditionally the place where job candidates explain any oddities in their background). But don’t forget to put yourself in the resume, or it will be dry, dull, and robotic.
• The fifth rule for a successful résumé is that less is more. Don’t show points of contact for you that you don’t want them to use. Don’t include irrelevant experience or skills. Don’t have more than 5 or 6 consecutive bullet points in a row, no matter how amazing they are. Obsess over eliminating every unneeded word. (And, be aware that one of the rules for a successful LinkedIn profile is that more is more.)

Writing Wolf would love to speak with you — call us at (206) 641–1071 today — to show you how a wise investment in your career marketing portfolio can save you time and get superior results in your job search or advancement.