Resume Refresh: First step in your career search
Refining your resume is an art. The right skills can make or break your job search.
Today, I am going to share lessons learned and templates for your next job search and interview prep, starting with resume.
Having reviewed over 100+ resumes and helped mentees with resume updates, these are my go to steps. Hope this helps you in your resume refresh to be ready to position your best self for the next role.
About Me
How do you tell your story?
This may seem trivial, but it's the most important piece. Outside of resume and linkedin, what's your story? Why you?
I crafted my story with a picture perfect introduction which helped to boost confidence in the hiring manager interviewing me and we had a nice icebreaker from the usual interview formats. This also helped me assess if I wanted to work with this manager.
Remember : Just as the team is assessing you and your skills, you must assess if you want to be part of this team. It's beyond the job - it's about the culture and how employees are valued and make sure we are not just a line item.
Job Description
Start with the job description and pay attention to what is the most important need for the role. For product marketing and product management — here are 2 examples for your reference.
Here are some keywords to focus on as you prepare your resume for Product Marketing. Make sure your keywords match the ones in the job description. This helps to stand out in the applicant pool.
1. Include content, positioning and messaging as skills.
2. Share accomplishments and understanding of the buyer persona.
3. Create a sample portfolio with relevant work - blogs, webinars, demos, presentations etc.
Resume best practices
Keep resume 1-2 pages and focus on the accomplishments. Not the list of things or responsibilities, but what did you achieve?
Style and layout needs to be simple and clean - 11-12 point with 1" margin spacing. White space matters.
Include interests and summary to showcase your personality.
For each job experience, include 3 bullet points on the key accomplishments. Any more than 3-5 and then you are expecting the hiring manager to sift through and that isn't helpful.
Focus
Your resume is not a list of everything you have done. It's supposed to tell a few things and why they should hire. Tailor your resume to specific industries or functional technology expertise - Tech, B2B SaaS, etc.
To get started, write everything you know, and then be diligent at editing and cleaning it to be relevant for the role.
The reality is your hiring manager has just looked at your resume 5 minutes before the call. So, we can help them scan through the right keywords. Make the right keywords bold.
Always review and edit your resume with a friend/family/mentor. Just because you have spent so much time on it, you might miss out on a few things.
With jobscan.com, this is beneficial for my teams and for my mentees. It compares a resume to the job description through ATS (Applicant tracking system), which is where a Resume goes before it gets picked up by a recruiter or hiring manager if it matches the right keywords.
Worst Resume Mistakes
So, what are those Worst resume mistakes you could make?
Typos and grammatical errors - There's nothing more putting off than finding a resume where someone's not taking the time to make sure the resume is representing you well.
If there are too many examples and they are generic - they might not necessarily show what you achieved.
If there is no clear summary, it’s hard to know what you're looking for and your vision for the future.
All the very best in your resume refresh!