How to Confuse Others with Your Rsum?!

One of the first items in many prospects list of things to get done when they engage with me is their rsum. This is especially true for those who are looking to make a transition in their job and who want to move to another company. When they complete my Client Intake Questionnaire and send it along with their current rsum I often marvel at what they were thinking when they put together their message and what their expectations were in sending it out to those who may be faced to read it and to take action in moving forward in their selection process.

Every time I see such rsumsand it is oftenI am reminded of how the famed film director Steven Spielberg works on his films. He is meticulous about the story he is going to tell in each film and has a clear vision of that story, how it is going to be scripted, put together, and how it is going to be viewed by its audience. He goes through every detail of that plan and message with excruciatingly detailed vision of every step and unless he is fully satisfied with it, does not even take the next step of planning the production. This is why his message in each of his films is so powerful and his movies are such blockbustersevery time!

The same can be said about how a rsum can be put together. If it does not tell a coherent and compelling story of your leadershipI call it your leadership narrativethen you are not selling yourself as a leader; you are merely providing its reader a somewhat ordered list of your chronological tasks that someone asked you to do for them, instead.

Why such rsums upset me? Here is a list of items from a typical rsum that I think makes it unmarketable:

1. A broad Summary statement: This is how most people start their rsum from the top. They think that listing all the things that they have done in the past will impress the reader how talented they are in a variety of areas and how they were able to navigate through these different challenges throughout their career span. Nothing could be further from the truth. The reader is not interested in the laundry list of all your past assignments and projects; they want to know with laser-focused precision exactly how you would create value for them that shows excellence in the specific area that they want to hire you. If you cannot articulate that in your Summary without flowery adjectives and adverbs, but with simple nouns and verbs, then you have wasted an opportunity to be a Steven Spielberg in presenting your rsum.Instead: Either have a bold title at the top center with the job you want, or have a forward-looking Career Objective statement in one or two lines at the top.
2. Inability to differentiate your Experience from other elements: Most are unable to separate Roles, Responsibilities, Tasks, Assignments, Outcomes, and Accomplishments: They list their chronology in the Experience section of the rsum and fail to understand the difference between these elements that can create the right impact if they understand how to present them properly. Although responsibilities must be showcased (size of the team you managed, budget, span of control, etc.), but one must not make a bulleted statement out of these responsibilities. They can be listed at the top of the cluster of bullets for a given stint as an umbrella statement.Instead: Have a few lines that tell a story of your leadership that shows how you overcame adversity and deliver the outcome or created an accomplishment. It is these stories collectively that create your leadership narrative.
3. List of items from a JD: Many rsum bullets in the Experience section read as if they are copied from the job description of their role written in the past tense. So, if their job requires managing multiple projects and deliver them on time, their corresponding bullet would read: Managed multiple projects and delivered them on time. These are not accomplishments, but are merely statements of what was assigned to you. Instead, if you tell a story of how you managed multiple projects under difficult conditions of changing requirements, upset customers, and shifting resources and still delivered them on time, it is story worth telling.Instead: Identify what the reader may be interested in learning about your work and learn how to narrate it. See # 2 above.
4. Lack of clear vision: Your vision for your rsum must flow from the job youre after and not from what you have done in the past. No one cares about what youve done, unless that directly plugs into the need the reader has from your rsum.Instead: So, instead of merely compiling a list of your past stints in some disconnected way, plan a story-telling narrative that brings together your leadership focus to make an impact.
5. Lack of coherence: Coherence to your message must come from bringing together disparate elements of your experience in a package that flows as if those experiences were designed for a seamless narrative. This is one of the hardest things to do if you have had a varied career and jobs in a variety of fields. So, do not merely list all these varied experiences in your rsum in a chronological order to fill the space and confuse its reader.Instead: Find common themes across these different stints and stich together a story (across different bullets in each stint), so that the reader can thread through these stories and extract some leadership themes that jump out of these bullets.
6. Avoid gobbledygook: Many professionals, especially those engaged in highly technical fields such as technology, law, medicine, biology, and other such areas write their rsum in a language even experts find it difficult to understand. Use everyday language in explaining your story and then insert a section of Technical Specialties where you describe your specialties in your own language that suits your profession. Also, avoid acronyms no matter how familiar they are to you. Either spell them out, describe them in their first use, or find some other way to communicate your message.Instead: Write in simple English and give your rsum draft to a fifth grader to read. If they can explain to you what they read then you have a reader-friendly rsum.
7. Beyond just the key words: To get screened in with the Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) used by employers to screen rsums many are tempted to use key words in isolation throughout their rsum to score high in such screenings. This no longer works because the newer systems use AI and semantic context to screen out rsums. So, if someone is applying for a Director position, the system will check for your current and past titles and the size of your teams. So, do not try to populate your rsum with empty key words to increase your odds.Instead: Target realistic jobs that allow you to develop a message that is semantically logical for screening in.

To get selected a rsum needs a vision, careful planning, and flawless execution. Without that your rsum will become mere statistic where 74% of the submitted rsums are rejected because of some of the factors listed above.

Good luck!

About Author

Dilip has distinguished himself as LinkedIn’s #1 career coach from among a global pool of over 1,000 peers ever since LinkedIn started ranking them professionally (LinkedIn selected 23 categories of professionals for this ranking and published this ranking from 2006 until 2012). Having worked with over 6,000 clients from all walks of professions and having worked with nearly the entire spectrum of age groups—from high-school graduates about to enter college to those in their 70s, not knowing what to do with their retirement—Dilip has developed a unique approach to bringing meaning to their professional and personal lives. Dilip’s professional success lies in his ability to codify what he has learned in his own varied life (he has changed careers four times and is currently in his fifth) and from those of his clients, and to apply the essence of that learning to each coaching situation. After getting his B.Tech. (Honors) from IIT-Bombay and Master’s in electrical engineering(MSEE) from Stanford University, Dilip worked at various organizations, starting as an individual contributor and then progressing to head an engineering organization of a division of a high-tech company, with $2B in sales, in California’s Silicon Valley. His current interest in coaching resulted from his career experiences spanning nearly four decades, at four very diverse organizations–and industries, including a major conglomerate in India, and from what it takes to re-invent oneself time and again, especially after a lay-off and with constraints that are beyond your control. During the 45-plus years since his graduation, Dilip has reinvented himself time and again to explore new career horizons. When he left the corporate world, as head of engineering of a technology company, he started his own technology consulting business, helping high-tech and biotech companies streamline their product development processes. Dilip’s third career was working as a marketing consultant helping Fortune-500 companies dramatically improve their sales, based on a novel concept. It is during this work that Dilip realized that the greatest challenge most corporations face is available leadership resources and effectiveness; too many followers looking up to rudderless leadership. Dilip then decided to work with corporations helping them understand the leadership process and how to increase leadership effectiveness at every level. Soon afterwards, when the job-market tanked in Silicon Valley in 2001, Dilip changed his career track yet again and decided to work initially with many high-tech refugees, who wanted expert guidance in their reinvention and reemployment. Quickly, Dilip expanded his practice to help professionals from all walks of life. Now in his fifth career, Dilip works with professionals in the Silicon Valley and around the world helping with reinvention to get their dream jobs or vocations. As a career counselor and life coach, Dilip’s focus has been career transitions for professionals at all levels and engaging them in a purposeful pursuit. Working with them, he has developed many groundbreaking approaches to career transition that are now published in five books, his weekly blogs, and hundreds of articles. He has worked with those looking for a change in their careers–re-invention–and jobs at levels ranging from CEOs to hospital orderlies. He has developed numerous seminars and workshops to complement his individual coaching for helping others with making career and life transitions. Dilip’s central theme in his practice is to help clients discover their latent genius and then build a value proposition around it to articulate a strong verbal brand. Throughout this journey, Dilip has come up with many groundbreaking practices such as an Inductive Résumé and the Genius Extraction Tool. Dilip owns two patents, has two publications in the Harvard Business Review and has led a CEO roundtable for Chief Executive on Customer Loyalty. Both Amazon and B&N list numerous reviews on his five books. Dilip is also listed in Who’s Who, has appeared several times on CNN Headline News/Comcast Local Edition, as well as in the San Francisco Chronicle in its career columns. Dilip is a contributing writer to several publications. Dilip is a sought-after speaker at public and private forums on jobs, careers, leadership challenges, and how to be an effective leader.

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