Episode 42: How to prep your resume in 2024

If you’re expecting to find some in-depth prompts you can plug into an AI tool to create the perfect resume, then you’ve come to the wrong place.

Despite the advancement of AI tools, I still believe the best way to create the best resume is to write it yourself. The creativity and clarity needed can only come from you.

The key is how often you iterate on it. If you only update your resume when you need to apply for jobs, you are only making it harder on yourself. You should consistently update your resume as you have new accomplishments. Then, the resume creation process is more about choosing the right experiences to highlight rather than figuring out what to say.

Here are the tips I recommend by stage of career:

Early Career: (0-2 years experience)

You are in an associate or analyst level role, working to a ‘Senior’ title or above.

Your resume is a trailer for your movie, which will come later. You want to entice people with enough information to know they would be interested in learning more, but not so little that it’s unclear whether or not they would like it. The actual movie here is the interview with you.

Early career folks should use the resume to show how you spend your days - working, volunteering, learning, teaching, etc. For example, how are you learning more if you’re interested in drones? Do you join a club, attend competitions, research online, write down your reflections/learnings in a blog, or even attempt to build your own? Your resume is the place you go to share interests beyond going to school.

It’s unlikely you’ll get a new role because of your resume, but you can certainly miss out on an opportunity for not having a great one.

If you’re having trouble choosing a format, most business schools in the US post their resume templates online. For example - McCombs (University of Texas), Rice, Mays (Texas A&M).

Note: I find business schools have the best resources and applicable to business, sciences, engineering, etc rather than creative industries.

Early in my career, I also experimented with different formats. For example, here is a resume I made in Canva in 2015.

Mid-career (3-5 years experience)

You are currently in a ‘senior’ level role working your way to a ‘Director’ or above.

Once you have your first few jobs, you’ve identified a path you want to go down. No career path is linear, but now the goal is to tailor the entire resume to the industry standard for where you want to be.

Graduating also means where you went to school/what you did in college is no longer relevant. I recommend moving the education section to the bottom of your resume / trimming down info to 1-2 lines only.

When you start a role, it’s okay if your bullets sound similar to a job description. For example, my resume below was Oct. 2019 (~1 year into the role). I hadn’t been promoted, so my bullets focused more on my job with some accomplishments sprinkled in.

I also replaced all college experiences (minus internships) with current initiatives/projects. My volunteer work was a big part of my development, so I highlighted my achievements both in the workplace and outside.

Instead of deleting those prior experiences from college, I started a ‘master resume’ that had everything I had ever done. Each experience has a 1 line summary of the organization and ~5 potential bullets highlighting various accomplishments.

Post-grad resume example:

Senior-career (6+ years experience)

You are currently in a ‘Director’ level role working your way to a ‘VP' or above.

Your resume should be part of your quarterly reflections and promotion prep process. As you achieve more in your role, add 1 line summaries as part of your ‘master’ resume.

Whenever you apply for a new role, you should be able to create a new resume from scratch by picking / choosing the relevant accomplishments from your previous roles. Every resume then becomes tailored to the job and you aren’t managing dozens of different formats.

Creating these tailored resumes for each job also allows you to stick to ~1 page since you aren’t trying to jam additional info that might not be relevant specifically for the role.

Your accomplishments should also evolve with your level in the organization. For example - at a senior-level you should be able to tie back every one of your accomplishments to revenue for the organization. Saving $, Creating new $, or mitigating risk. Fundamentally, every executive is responsible for one of these three buckets, and your accomplishments should directly tie back to these.

Here’s my latest resume as an example:

Remember your bullets will start as job descriptions and evolve to be a summary of the measurable impact you have on the organization. As you do more, you need to go back and update your resume to always have the latest instead of scrambling when you want to apply to a new role.

If you need help editing your resume / if it’s been awhile feel free to reach out. I’ve done hundreds of resume reviews and am happy to help you update yours.

As always, feedback is a gift and I welcome any/all feedback on this episode. See ya next week 👋 !

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