Executive Resumes
Informed Careers has reviewed thousands of resumes from Executives and continues to be surprised by many of them. A resume is a marketing tool for an Executive to profile their background in relation to a specific target position. Many resumes are written to be too broad and a history of an executive’s career. The resume must be accurate regarding companies, titles/roles, dates, and education as well as for one’s responsibilities and accomplishments. However, titles should reflect industry standards to be better understood by readers and accomplishments should be limited to those that are relevant to the desired and targeted roles.
Summaries on resumes are also controversial and usually are too general to be valuable. Informed Careers prefers a brief positioning statement to define an Executive’s career and differentiate that Executive from others.
Dates on resumes seem to be a concern for many Executives. To the degree possible, seek to highlight and demonstrate longevity with a firm vs. dates for each position. Leaving out dates for college and/or graduate school graduation is recommended by many career coaches, but Informed Careers thinks that the reader of a resume assumes that you have left off the date because you are hiding something and becomes more suspicious and concerned about a background. Starting a resume with experience as a VP is also highly unlikely so recruiters find that to be suspicious as well. The resume should not raise issues from our pe