Be Strategic With Your Resume
Kent R.
When developing a new resume for a client, I always take time to learn about any ideas they might have for the general approach. Are they entering into the process with a desire for a creative resume (something I encourage clients to reconsider)? Have they seen a resume that really resonated with them? It is important that I am aware of each client’s expectations and desires (or lack thereof) so that I can not only deliver the most effective possible, but also educate them when their expectations don’t align with accepted best practices (I’ll point you to that above link regarding creative resumes).
Recently, during the consultation process, a client mentioned “the rule of threes” – a recommendation that each position on a resume have exactly three accomplishments. I shared that while I think this is good advice in general – any guideline that recommends speaking to accomplishments on a resume is on the right track – I thought the approach was not strategic enough. My concern with a rule like “the rule of threes” is that it tends to give the same “weight” to every position on the resume, which is just not smart. Instead, I recommended that we lean more into recent roles and minimize the focus on older positions and less relevant experience, which is best accomplished by providing more accomplishments for recent positions and reducing the amount of information associated with earlier positions.
Regardless of your situation, make sure that you are being as strategic as possible when it comes to creating your new resume.