Writing a resume when you are joining the workforce for the first time is challenging, but when you are an executive looking for new job opportunities, there is even more at stake. When you have spent the past few years or even decades comfortably in an executive position, while running your business on the side, you may lose track of the job market trends. As a result, your resume and the things recruiters are looking for may be two completely different things. Here is how to make sure your senior-level resume hits every mark from an executive resume writing service writer.
1. Maintain Your Online Presence
Since over 90% of recruiters will research you on the internet in addition to studying your resume, it makes perfect sense to polish your online presence to make it the perfect finishing touch in your already impressive professional portrait. The LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter accounts associated with your name should be clean, informative, and carefully maintained. Remember to update them regularly with your latest career achievements.
If you don’t want to alter your internet image, simply change the name on the accounts or change the privacy settings so that your profiles are nearly impossible to discover.
2. Get to the Point
When you are an executive with an enviable list of past positions and career achievements, it can be very tempting to describe them all to the smallest detail in your resume. However, people responsible for making hiring decisions usually don’t have that much time to study your resume. They want to be able to open your application, quickly scan a couple of previous job titles and achievements, and decide whether you are a good fit for the company.
For a senior-level resume, the optimal length is two pages, although if you can fit yours into a single page, it is definitely going to score you some additional points. There is no need to retell your whole career — two or three latest positions that are close to the job you want to get are more than enough for an executive resume.
3. Pay Attention to the Top of Your Resume
When you only have a couple of pages of text to impress the recruiter, the top of your resume becomes particularly valuable. In many cases, the hiring manager will scan the top part of the resume and already decide whether they want to continue reading. Those few lines can have a crucial impact on your chances of landing that dream job.
Typically, the top part of your resume contains the list of your core skills or areas of expertise. If you are applying to a particular position and not just sending out your resume to a handful of companies, you should also check the job description before writing down your core skills. Ideally, your core competencies should at least partially match the requirements of the job description.
4. Turn Your Achievements into Metrics
Your resume may be the only chance to impress the hiring manager with your accomplishments, and the most effective way to do that is to quantify them. The bullet point format works best here. For example, this section of your resume can have the following look:
- Grew the customer base by 40% in 6 months;
- Cut down the administrative overheads by 38% by reducing the amount of bottled water purchases;
- Helped the department achieve a 50% revenue growth in Q1 2018.
5. Add Company Descriptions
The primary goal of your executive resume is to impress the reader enough to invite you to an interview or come up with an offer on the spot. However, listing and highlighting your own achievements is not the only way to do that. In fact, a description of a company you worked for can be equally impressive for the hiring manager.
If you have worked for a Fortune 500 company or another equally big enterprise with a big staff and an even bigger revenue, you should definitely mention it in your resume. It should only be a brief 1 or 2-sentence description, but mentioning this information in your resume gives the recruiter an idea that you are not afraid of big challenges.
6. Consider Applicant Tracking Systems
Applicant Tracking Systems, or ATS, are a type of software that is employed by most major companies to manage the applications from job seekers. Each incoming resume is scanned by the ATS, and if the system does not deem the resume suited for the position, it will automatically throw it out. It means that your carefully crafted resume will possibly not even make it to the recruiter.
To get your resume past the ATS, make sure to include as many keywords from the job posting as possible and keep it to a clear and concise format.
7. Work on Your Cover Letter
On an executive level, a cover letter is not a question of your personal preference — it is an essential component of the job application process. However, your cover letter does not need to simply repeat everything that has been said in your resume. Plus, no recruiter is going to read a page-long cover letter.
The ‘less is more’ approach works great for a cover letter. Using the few sentences of your cover letter, you need to make the recruiter interested enough in you as a candidate to continue reading your application. Make sure to identify your strengths and reasons why you are perfect for the job, but don’t go overboard with your positive description of yourself.
Conclusion
Let us review the tips for writing a winning executive resume once again:
- Make your online presence reflect who you are as a professional.
- Keep your resume brief and informative.
- Put the most valuable information on top of the resume.
- Quantify your achievements.
- Describe your past workplaces as well as your accomplishments.
- Tailor your resume for the ATS.
- Don’t skip writing the cover letter.
