Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Getting ‘unstuck’ telling your professional story
Ioften receive messages from readers who are having trouble telling the story of their work experience and get stuck on just stating bullet points to highlight that experience. Loyal Reader wrote the following: “I am a loyal reader who is stuck! I am updating my resume; it’s been five years since I used this version. I have a Bachelor of Arts degree in marketing communications and have worked for years, my last job being the most successful in terms of income and level of responsibility, yet I can’t seem to write about it. I need to go back to work after taking two years off to be home with my children, who are almost 2 and 4 years old. Having been both a working mother and a stay-at-home mom, I’ve found “returning to work” even after only two years to be very different. This is the first time in my life when I’m looking for a job and the choice I make directly impacts everyone in the house. Although I’m looking forward to going back to work, I’ve gone from feeling unafraid of applying for jobs to being stuck when even trying to write my resume. I truly believe I can’t be the only 32-year-old woman in this position.”
Thank you for your readership. Please find my critique and suggestions for improvement below.
Aesthetics and formatting
Because your career has spanned marketing, sales, customer service and retail management, you can afford to be a little creative in your formatting. As your resume stands, the design does not engage the reader, and the brevity of content does not support the level of employment in which you are interested. Instead, how about using a two-column resume with keywords noted down the left side of the page, leaving less space for the content of your experiences — if you are struggling with writing about each role — and creating a much fuller look to your resume.
Qualifications summary
This is the major pitfall of your resume — or lack thereof. You must open your resume with a qualifications summary that showcases what you can offer an employer based on your past experiences, achievements and areas of expertise. You cannot expect the hiring manager to guess what you want to do next. With only four to seven seconds to engage the reader during the screening process, you must open your resume with a summary that answers the question “Why should I hire you?”
Develop this section after you have written the professional-experience section of your resume, treating your qualifications like the opening to an essay or an executive summary of your experience. This section should contain all details you can’t afford for the hiring manager not to know while evaluating your candidacy.
Professional experience
Include only years of employment, not months, to minimize the appearance of gaps and frequent job hops. Quantify experiences to add interest to your resume, focusing more on accomplishments than daily responsibilities. Typically, resumes will include about 10 years of experience unless prior experiences enhance your candidacy.
Therefore, I question the section at the end of your resume, which, if listed in chronological order, would appear in different places in the professional-experience section. If these items do not deserve an explanation, why have them on your resume? As these are all internships that I am assuming you completed as a part of your degree program, instead, a better approach would be to list them in the education section so it does not appear that you have held nine positions in the past 10 years.
Your resume’s next major pitfall is that it severely lacks content, with no focus on achievements. Instead, concisely present your daily responsibilities, realizing that this is not the information that gets you the interview, while presenting where you have gone above and beyond in your career — in other words, what differentiates you from your competitors?
You have had some fantastic employers, but that is buried in this paragraph-style format that isn’t engaging to the reader. You can use these points, quantified achievements and a strong experience summary to sell your career, despite potential disqualifiers such as frequent job-hops.
Education
You are no longer considered a recent graduate, so this section should be relocated to the end of your resume. You can mention your degree in the qualifications summary if you choose to do so, but placing it first on your resume places focus on the wrong information. Instead, let your career sell your candidacy, along with how you have contributed value to an organization.
I hope this critique helps get you started in making the appropriate additions and improvements to your resume.
— Samantha Nolan is an advanced personal-branding strategist and career expert and is the founder and CEO of Nolan Branding. Do you have a resume, career or job-search question for Dear Sam? Reach Samantha at dearsam@nolanbranding.com. For more information about Nolan Branding’s services, visit www.nolanbranding.com, or call 888-9-MYBRAND or 614-570-3442.