Executive Resumes
"My current resume has become a millstone around my neck – numerous iterations from the original have turned it into an unwieldy monster that sits on the page, luring back at me, daring me to challenge it to do something!"
Are you laughing? Can you relate? Then I invite you to read on to drastically improve your resume by revealing what has helped clients raise 2 management levels and gain up to 100+% salary bumps.
Real Executive Resumes
If you are a Sr. SME or executive not seeing the results you want, or your experience deserves, you may have found yourself changing your resume a hundred times, and that’s only because you stopped counting.
Let me ask you…
Do you have difficulty wrapping your words around the myriad of experiences you’ve had? And an even harder time getting others to see them?
Or have you done the end-to-end ‘thesaurus dive’, looking for good brand adjectives? And once you’ve found them – words like astute, proactive, visionary, passionate, etc. –
But here’s the question; have these really enabled you to rise from the deep sea of applications?
So many high-quality executives are at a loss on how to differentiate themselves, and how to communicate the true impact of their career.
But, there is hope! Scientific hope. Social science findings can set you free. Hint: It’s not you, it’s your perspective. Or better to say, the way you are presenting yourself.
Real executive records speak for themselves if we let them. Real executives speak of their units, teams, and markets and the battles they've faced and bested, not about all the intricacies of what they did (trade secrets after all).
I help my clients see that an interview is like a courtroom. High-level hiring managers, incl. C-Suite and Boards, are looking for objective evidence and context, not ungrounded, vague claims (adjectives) about your “awesomeness” (I suspect that you, like me, have seen this!)
Truth is, if you are still telling your story from your own first-person perspective, you are not presenting your best candidacy.
Fact: Up to 90% of the 400 exec resumes I’ve "made over” in just the last 4 years - 80% of their resume information was irrelevant!
"People-savvy” “Polymath” “Visionary” “Successful” - how credible or engaging is that to you?
How about claims that you've enjoyed "significant success across multiple industries"? There’s a saying in the story world, “If it’s not specific, it’s not a story.” And we know from the social science world, it also likely won’t be believed - not by a stranger.
Career story-lines and how to use them
Leadership gurus from Howard Gardner to John Kotter and even Bill Gates, have used the idea of speaking in specific stories for leadership influence for decades.
Now organizations from Nike to Microsoft to NASA are institutionalizing it. Read about the story’s power and spread in Forbes or Fast Company or even out of MIT.
“Story-telling is a bit like electro-magnetism, we know it works even if we don’t know everything about why”.
It’s our brain’s operating system, some scholars say; it’s how we associate, recognize, and analyze symbolic patterns.
The classic study I share with my clients comes from Martin and Powers in 1982 when they tried to convince a group of MBAs of a hard-to-accept hypothesis, that a company really practiced a policy of avoiding layoffs.
They offered 4 arguments for evidence. Data alone, data and a story, a story alone, and a written statement by a senior executive.
Can you guess which one was the most convincing?
Of the 4, the single story alone was the winner.
But, even the term Executive Story-Telling, sends chills up and down the spine of ethical executives and career changers. But “I don’t want to brag or spin or worse yet, lie".
What if I told you, you shouldn't ever need to do any of these?
A Real story is full of the real metric data about the markets, customers, products, events you've found yourself facing. These are the stories that most matter and inspire. To tell them, my clients become “business journalists”.
You can know and should know what impacts your career. I call it honing your battle "SCARs". Google calls these stories SCARs as well.
So what are the characteristics of a successful “SCAR” story?
It should consist of 3 levels: i. Overall career, ii. Top projects/clients/accounts/ iii. Transformations and your overall role.
It should never be generic, always specific and customized to your audience.
No longer than 60-90 seconds; can be told in 15-20 seconds / 6 sec hook in resume.
They answer all behavioral or background questions, including "Tell me about a weakness or failure?" or "Tell me what kind of leadership style you have".
It is not canned, but is structured so that you always “Begin with the End in Mind” (thank you, Steven Covey!).
Context and results-rich. (see me for a systematic and fun way to gather yours).
Only 25% about you (e.g. they do not start with the word “I” or the phrase “Responsible for”).
75% about the market and organizational battles that drove the particular initiative, client account, transformation, etc., ending with market results.
Revealing of a deep knowledge of your customers and the struggles/aspirations they have.
Full of critical scope and trend numbers that draw pictures in listeners’ minds - without overwhelming their short-term memory. Balance and customization is everything.
Ultimately structuring them becomes, like driving a stick shift, the automatic way you do and see things. Then you have embedded inside you the leadership perspective, presence and impact... you are ready to live at your career’s Real Edge.
