A sea of change is underway in the world of business, and the traditional resume will not last. What worked for leadership candidates in the past—simply listing job titles and daily responsibilities—can no longer be expected to get the attention of today’s executive recruiters. Today’s resumes must present the career history of the candidate in a new and creative way that highlights the various experiences that have helped the leader grow and develop in his or her chosen field.
What does it actually mean to lead in an era where the ground is constantly shifting?
While historic resumes focused on demonstrating an executive’s potential for stewardship, current leadership resumes focus on a candidate’s potential for transformation and leadership during uncertain times. The modern recruiter typically looks for a leadership resume that highlights an executive candidate’s leadership skills and their method of thinking during highly uncertain times. Showing a recruiter a leadership resume that portrays a candidate’s skills while highlighting their strengths to lead during uncertain situations can lead to being selected for a high-level position.
Shifting from Stewardship to Transformation
Traditionally, businesses have recruited senior management candidates with long lists of past responsibilities in the hope that their many years of tenure would demonstrate their ability to manage, lead and stabilize a company. But our corporate world is now undergoing so much change as a result of technology, that the traditional ways of representing your ability to manage in a resume are no longer relevant or sufficient. Today’s business world is always changing, and as such, senior management candidates are needed who are more than able to maintain stability within a company and lead to consistent and predictable growth.
Are you a steady hand, or are you the one who rebuilds the ship while it’s still out at sea?
Your resume needs to go from stewardship to transformation. So, instead of highlighting the aspects of your past work that show what an excellent steward you were, focus on the things that showcase your transformation abilities. What did you build? What did you change? What did you rescue from the brink of disaster? The evidence of a senior level person’s ability to lead a team through change is key to this type of resume. Additionally, they need to see how you handled market volatility and successfully integrated new technologies and systems into your legacy operations. Of course, these are high-stress situations and there will be plenty of people watching to see how you react. So, every line of your resume should project a sense of agility and forward thinking.
Framing Metrics Around Real Outcomes
Just listing the numbers on your resume will not be enough to make you stand out from the pack. For example, instead of stating that you managed a twenty-million-dollar budget, you should explain how you optimized that budget to free up capital for innovation. If you are a VP of HR with a fifty-person team, instead of just stating how many people report to you, you should highlight how you reduced turnover to build a strong team of leaders to drive future growth and develop the next generation of company leaders. The numbers on your resume should tell a story of how you operate as an efficient leader to create sustainable value for your organization.
What we mean is that instead of touting the size of your budget or the number of people reporting to you, we want to see that you have a sense of the operational side of the business. And most importantly, we want to see that you have a sense of how your work will create a lasting value at the organization. Rather than highlighting the size of your budget, for example, describe how you spent it. If you had a large team, describe how you got the best out of your team, and the ways in which you can develop the next generation of leaders at the organization. All of your numbers and accomplishments should show us your ability to create and bring about a sustainable amount of value to the organization, and we hope that they will show us your lasting legacy at the organization.
Utilizing Modern Presentation Standards and Tools
The way a resume is presented has also changed greatly. Modern resumes have a very clean and simple design and lots of white space. They also have a clear typographic hierarchy, which means that the most important bits can be read very quickly. In the day and age where many senior leaders send out their resumes to hundreds of companies, the way a resume looks is just as important as the content within it. It is for this reason that many people use online resume-building tools in order to create a very professional-looking resume using the latest resume presentation standards. This allows the person building the resume to focus on the most important aspect of a resume – the content – and leave the design to the experts.
The old rules just don’t apply anymore.
Sometimes it can be difficult to make your resume look as good as it actually is. While sitting at your computer late at night staring at a blank screen and watching your cursor blink is not a great way to spend your time, there are tools and resources available that can help you to make your resume look the best it can. By using premium online resources to help with the formatting of your resume, you can focus on the content and write your resume in a way that highlights your skills, accomplishments, and experience. When looking for resources to help with your resume, explore the plans and pricing for Zety’s resume-building tools. Zety offers professional resume templates and other tools that can help to make your resume look sophisticated and sharp. Even those without a lot of design experience can create a professional-looking resume with the right framework.
Defining Your Leadership Philosophy
A new rule of the executive resume has recently come into being: A leader’s philosophy of work must be stated and clearly defined. If a candidate can not demonstrate to a potential employer a clear, concise sense of what makes him/her different from other qualified candidates, then that candidate is unlikely to get hired. And so we ask, how can you summarize 20 or more years of your experiences into one or two pages and then clearly define your core values? How do you state a leadership philosophy on your resume, and how can you clearly state that in an Executive Summary?
How do you summarize twenty years of hard-won wisdom onto a flat piece of paper?
Leadership philosophy or core values: This is a new addition to the resume that explains your leadership style and point of view to the potential employer. This can be part of your experience and also be outlined in your executive summary. You can also explain your approach to managing, your views on talent development, and the kind of corporate culture you try to create.
Emphasizing Digital Literacy
The final area that needs attention on your resume as an executive is your demonstration of digital literacy and of innovation. No matter where you are in an organization as an executive, technology is playing a greater role in the work that is being done and in the manner in which it is being done. Therefore, it is critical that your resume demonstrate that you have a high level of comfort with technology and that you are able to embrace and lead with regard to innovation.
If you are a CFO, for example, highlight your experience using data to make financial decisions. If you are a VP of HR, highlight your experience using AI-powered recruitment tools. If you are leading a digital transformation, highlight your experience leading cross-functional teams to execute on a large-scale change initiative.
Tailoring for Context and Alignment
Finally, the old model of the “one-size-fits-all” resume is a thing of the past. Every organization faces different challenges and therefore, your resume should be written to address the challenges of the specific organization you are applying to. A start-up looking for rapid growth will require a vastly different set of experiences than an established corporation looking for restructuring. Your resume should be written to reflect your past experience in a way that allows you to highlight your ability to address the specific challenges of the organizations you are applying to.
Also, remember to tailor your resume to the company you are applying for. Every organization is different, and the challenge the company is facing will require a different solution. Research the organizations that you are interested in and, once you have found the ones you wish to apply to, make sure that your resume mirrors the organization’s goals for future growth.
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