Beyond the Basics: Crafting Resumes that Truly Stand Out

“ré•su•mé (rézumei, rezuméi) n. a summary. A curriculum vitae [F.]”

 — New Webster’s Dictionary and Thesaurus of the English Language

résumé n. a powerful, nearly magical document endowed with special powers that got someone else a job but is governed by arcane rules about which everyone has different opinions.

—The lexicon of the layman, too many job posting websites,

and an army of uninformed résumé writers

résumé n. a document offering easily grasped value…to employers, clients, professional résumé writers, career coaches, and our industry.

—The careers professional’s lexicon

The first definition seems right to the harried lexicographer who must sort 230,000 words. The second seems right to most job seekers and many potential clients. This is becoming even more true with the advent of AI. The last should be right to professional résumé writers—once they reflect on the precise, powerful roles we should demand of every résumé we write.

I’ll start by describing the stress affecting hiring decision makers. Then I’ll lay out three roles you can use to judge if your next draft résumé is good enough for the client to see. Last, I’ll show you how to use our definition to build your practice.

Context counts: why the interviewer is more nervous than our clients:

A harried executive is shorthanded; he needs another sales representative. His boss’ office is his first stop. There he must get his boss’ permission to spend company money and risk bringing on a new person. He is appealing to the person who writes his performance review. There’s only one argument our potential hiring manager can muster: the new employee must make the company more money than it costs to find, hire, and keep him. 

It’s quite a gamble. In a recent LinkedIn discussion, the “best answer” to the question “is it still hard to find good help?” included these words: “Yes.… We’re still having a problem finding highly qualified candidates that are not currently employed or who are seeking to make a career move,” wrote an IT recruiter. 

Our harried executive has seen people who aren’t good on the job. He knows someone, just like him, chose those deadbeats as the best of a field of eligibles. If others can make that mistake, so can our hiring manager.

When someone hires the wrong person, he does more than break the ROI promise he made to his boss; he lets down his entire company. 

Nevertheless, the work must be done. So he turns to his best employee. He explains how the new guy needs help and asks his top performer if she will assist. She probably will…for a little while. After all, she’s already overworked (that’s why they hired the new guy). Now her boss wants her to continue to do her work while also doing part of the new guy’s work, all without getting part of the new guy’s salary. If that keeps up, the company suffers three body blows.

The top performer, now disgruntled, goes to the competition with all the proprietary information and customer databases. (Body blow one.) Then she recruits her friends, also valued employees. (Body blow two.) Meanwhile, Mr. Incompetent has been fired, thus costing the company money they invested his training. (Body blow three.)

To put yet more hyperactive butterflies in the interviewer’s stomach, he knows he isn’t trained for the task. It’s surrounded by folklore, comical if it weren’t so corrosive. For example, precisely why did the following question turn up on a job site’s top ten list: “If you were an animal, what kind of an animal would you be?”

If the résumé you write is the first to ease the employers’ burden, your client gets job offers. Let’s make it as easy for you as you made it for the employer.

Three roles every résumé must fill:

A document that lets the hiring decision maker to deliver on the promise he made to his boss and his entire company. Each résumé must exceed hiring decision makers’ expectations, proving your client understands the target company’s key problems and has a track record of success transferable to the new organization. In short, organizations must grasp how your client plans to make them more money than it costs to bring him or her on board. The previous sentence should be read again.

“Summaries of Qualifications” rarely meet that standard. (“An Obituary for the Summary of Qualifications,” The Spotlight, August 2023, pp. 9+) They are usually a collection of buzzwords or traits that unintentionally describe mediocrity. (Would anybody hire anybody who isn’t a “top-notch problem solver?”) Responsibilities, too, have little place in the résumé. (“Where Quality Resides,” The Spotlight, May 2023, pp. 8+) If the reader recognizes the list of responsibilities, she still has no idea how well the applicant performed. If the reader doesn’t recognize the responsibilities, she may draw the wrong conclusion: our client isn’t qualified.

Why not let organizations see how our client intends to act as the best in his field? Since invitations go to individuals, why not include the company’s name in that pledge? Here’s an example:

What I offer Arista as your newest HR Manager

• A proven leader whose teams get cost-saving results that last,
• An expert at turning compliance requirements into opportunities that build production and save money,
• A respected professional who designs and administers affirmative action and diversity programs that contribute to corporate success, and
• A capable project manager who delivers results on time and on, or under, cost estimates.

Yes, I know all about the fixation of “key words” and ATS. We all also know that the success rate for posting a résumé on line is small. So let’s cover both bases.

Write your ATS résumé just as you always do. Then offer the advanced résumé described below. It and the cover letter go directly to the actual hiring decision maker (who will rarely be HR). In the cover letter, tell the reader your client has already applied on line. But your client is writing because he knows the reader has the biggest stake in the outcome. Thanks to mail merge, you don’t have to “tailor” each copy of the advanced résumé or cover letter.  Of course, you charge for both versions. 

In the end, it’s transferable performance that counts. The Challenge-Action-Response-Transferability model is very well known. But why not make the value stand out? Here’s a typical example:

  Transforming Compliance into Productivity   

Payoffs: When the leader of a $20B organization asked me to streamline the complex ISO 9001 audit program, I improved the policy so all 16 offices would respond to SMEs’ suggestions. Got every player training and certifications they needed. Delivered two months early and $100K under budget. My approach now the corporate standard. Saved $600K in manpower costs.

As templates for outstanding interviews, our résumés must “sound” like our clients, so they look as good on paper as they do in person. And we have to entice the interviewer to ask questions our clients want them to ask. Therefore, our documents should pass these tests:

• Did we, inadvertently, give our client too much or too little credit for what they’ve done? You and the client must stand behind the integrity of what you write.
• Did we capture all the client’s relevant success stories? Our client deserves credit for all she does. Showing what the client did isn’t good enough. We must also tell how the client performed in ways the target company values. 
• Does the philosophy and word choice sound like our client? The words we use must show our client’s passion and thought process clearly. If we used jargon, did we do so correctly?

As levers to negotiate salary, benefits, perks, bonuses, and severance, what we write should protect our client from a lowball salary offer. When we quantify results, particularly revenue made or dollars saved, the interviewer stops thinking of our client as a cost and sees him as a good investment. 

If the applicant saves the company a single turnover, if he can rescue one $25K contract, no well-run company will quibble over a $5K gap between what they planned to offer and what your client needs to reflect the return on investment he delivers.

Now you have three solid criteria to judge a résumé before you start to write. Use them in your initial consultation with potential clients. Do they understand what it takes to be the best? Does their track record reflect that understanding? Are they thinking like the next employer? If you sense the answer is “no” to any of these questions, you may not want to take on this job seeker. No one can—and no professional should—try to portray a lack of performance as a benefit.

Use the same criteria to help build your brand. Once you demystify the process, you’ll attract better clients and find it easier to work with them. Also, your in-depth knowledge will reflect well on our industry. It also will make this key point: AI can only go so far in helping people win great jobs. 

When your documents meet their required roles, clients win the jobs, companies win great employees, you win more money, and our industry wins the stature it has always deserved.