🌟 Y Tú Mama’s Résumé También

Resume advice courtesy of Ask Your Work Wife, a podcast for ambitious women who want more out of corporate America. New episodes drop Wednesdays on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

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⬆️ It’s resume UPDATING season

Listen. No one is getting hired in Q4 unless they started interviewing in Q2, especially not this year. But that doesn’t mean you can trash the resume templates just yet. It’s time for a run down on what is hip and happening for resumes in 2023.

🛑 STOP the Scroll

With so many ways to find information about you these days, you’d think we’d just get rid of the traditional one-page resume. Alas, poor Yorick! The resume lives on, in a literal stack in some dark hole of the HR office.

But! The resume has a completely different function than it did even 3 years ago. Its only job is to get you in the door. It no longer needs to chronicle your entire professional life (yes, Chad, it’s finally time to let that summer internship at Bain drop off). It no longer needs your entire academic journey (and, to be clear, your resume never needed your GPA).

Your resume does need to stop the scroll — to stand out from the rest. It’s a simple pass-fail test and if you’re not even getting recruiter screening calls… we’re calling it: your resume is boring and irrelevant 🤷‍♀️

👯‍♀️ That’s why we’re here: Your Work Wives. Listen to the full episode on resume-writing on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

But because we know you’re at work…. Here are the highlights:

📸 To photo or not to PHOTO?

It's like OG Facebook — it can be cringe if you don’t do it right. But, hear us out. A photo makes a big difference! It must be professional and it’s gotta feel like you.

And guess what? It’s the #1 way to make that disheartened person in the HR back office stop and think, “Wow! I would love to work with this person!” 

💡 Only include RELEVANT experience  

No. One. Cares. What you did 10 years ago. Where you went to school. What your GPA was. That weird volunteer thing you did that one time in high school. That you were president of the Key Club. 

They want to know you can do the job. Truth is: by the time that hiring manager gets to looking at your resume, she has needed someone in your position for at least a month… and that’s the best case scenario. So capitalize on that stress and use your headlines to your advantage.  

When we see in big, BOLD, LETTERS the words “Professional Experience” it’s an immediate NO. Unless this headline has a matching pair called “Unprofessional Experience,” swap it out for the actual category of experience you’re talking about: financial analysis, social media marketing, growth strategy, allocation and planning, electrical engineering. And then pull every job title you’ve had (in the last year) into that category, and include only the most impressive bullet points under that.  

🎲 Quantify every qualification  

That’s right. Size matters. Especially if it’s a number that stands taller than a bunch of text.  

So instead of this: Led a team of engineers to complete a project on time and under budget. 

Try this: Led a team of 52 engineers to complete a $1.2MM project in 30% less time than average.  

Which one stands out more to you? Thought so 😉 

⭐️ A word to the wise: remember you’ve likely signed an NDA regarding the specifics of your work. On your resume — which should never be publicly available — you can include more accurate numbers. On a platform like LinkedIn, you’ll need to use relative numbers.  

👩‍💻 What about LinkedIn?  

LinkedIn =/= Your Resume. (Louder for those in the back.) The information on LinkedIn may look and feel similar to your resume, but it is not. LinkedIn is more like your CV… your entire career in chronological order. It should support any resume you deliver but the two are not the same. Once you’ve caught the eye of a manager, they are 100% going to your LinkedIn to check you out further. That's what winning looks like. 

Phew! We made it! When you’ve updated your resume, let us know. We just might have a connection with the perfect job for you.

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