The 4 BIGGEST Executive Resume Mistakes

resume
 

The 4 BIGGEST Executive Resume Mistakes.

The resume…  

The necessity of the job market.  Love it or loath it, you have to use it AND it needs to be perfect because when applying for a job it’s the first impression of you and your skillset.

When I work with my clients I see mistakes on resumes all the time I see FOUR big resume mistakes being made actually and these are by executives and six-figure leaders. 

So I thought it was high time I addressed the issues because more often than not people don't even realise they're making them. 

A little side fact:  Your resume is most likely not even being looked at by a recruiter and instead, being deleted straight away all because of some simple mistakes.  Being deleted is not what you’re hoping to achieve. 

I see brilliant people applying for jobs all the time and they have the skills and experience that is required and yet time and time again, they get no callbacks, no feedback, no invites to an interview, nothing… Nada!.  Once again it’s those pesky errors!

The thing is if nothing changes, then nothing is what you will get and you are going to remain stuck. 

So instead, what you need to do is stand out in a sea of similarities, get invites for interviews,  for jobs that are aligned with what you’re looking for… About bl**dy time!

You don’t want to be in a position where you are judging or feeling judged for the career choices you have made you want to feel proud.

That is what you want and need to achieve. 

So I am going to break it down into the top four biggest resume mistakes … Let’s go!

 

1. Not having a Clear Narrative

You need to have a crystal clear Unique Value Proposition (UVP).  There is no room for being unclear about the pitch and serve. 

Working with clients who have over fifteen years of experience, they can find it difficult to connect all the dots between everything they can do, and have done. 

There is also an inability to communicate this clearly to that person who is going to read their resume.

The first mistake is not having a clear narrative, just like a marketing agent would get up in front of a client and deliver a first-class pitch on the latest product and how it stands up against all the competition... your resume is no different. 

You want that person to begin reading your resume and think:

“Oh, my God, this is THE  person… I can see working in my organisation… they are the ONE….  I have found the one.”

 

2. Your Resume is Lacking a Theme

It’s a list of things that they can do, skills that they have accumulated over the years, but no theme. So if you don't have a narrative and can't connect that to a theme with a consistency running through your resume there will be problems. 

So I will give you an example:  

Most people start building their resumes from scratch, fresh out of university and they add to it after every job and different role, new skills and experiences learned, they just keep layering it up like a plain ole’ butter cake. 

The thing is if you're in middle management or executive management with all these accumulated skills and experiences, you need to choose how you want people to perceive you and that's what your theme should be. 

The perception you want people to have of you is based on what they see in your resume.   Do not look at it as a dump of everything that you have done and can do since the start of time…  

Unfortunately, this document is a necessary evil so make it work for you!  

Ask any of my clients, the way I view a resume is that it needs to attract the right jobs and repel the ones that don't fit or you don’t want to do anymore. 

It certainly doesn't need to appeal to everyone or pigeonhole you but it does need to be crystal clear, the message needs to be crystal clear to the person you are wanting to appeal to.

So put your resume under the microscope and ask yourself:

Is my resume just a dump of everything that I can do? Or does it have a clear message that's underlying the whole document and pulling it all together?”

 

3. The Blah Story of Resumes

Another mistake that I see is that a resume becomes too long and too detailed (The Blah Story by the way is the longest novel in history). Having a long resume is usually because people just dump every little thing that they have ever done!  (Check out How Long Should An Executive Resume Be?)

Doing this generally leads to a loss of theme and a “Hulk” of a document. 

Take it from me I've seen many resumes that are four, five or six pages in length and I find myself thinking “Nobody's reading this and I’m sorry to say nobody wants to!” 

Remember, people are only going to pay you the salary based on what you have done in the last couple of years. So there is no point in making your resume a novel.  

Here is a great analogy I want you to ponder:

A resume needs to be like a trailer of a movie.  90 seconds, and in those seconds, they explain to the audience what the two-hour movie is all about, the nature of the movie, the genre, the quality of the story, the headline actors and the characters they’ll be playing, the whole gist. 

Based on those 90 seconds, you make a decision, whether or not you will make the effort to go to the cinema or pay to stream the movie.  

This is exactly what I want you to do with your resume. Take those years of experience, and make your movie trailer, put it down on paper and that is how I want your resume to look like.

 

4. Mind your Language

The last mistake I see regularly is the language is too tactical, and not strategic enough. This is what I do, this is what I manage but at a certain point in your career, when you want to shift from being a task manager to a leader then you have to make a shift in your resume also.

A lot of people are so capable, experts in their field and have a great reputation for getting shit done but you need to have a sceptical eye when it comes to your resume and ask yourself “is my resume communicating that strategic view”.  

Be intentional about creating your resume because the next step is going to be the interview so you have to shift your view of yourself and think about what is it from a strategic and commercial leadership point of view that I've done in all these jobs?

No, you don’t have to become the CEO of the organisation (if you don’t want to). It could be about increasing and expanding your influence.

It’s more about are you struggling with the level of influence you have because that comes back to the language you use and the shift you can make between tactical and strategic. 

If you can't make that apparent on your resume and you can't articulate that, you won't be able to demonstrate that in an interview or even later on in a performance review and that is what you want to create... a leadership brand. (Also check out 5 Strategies To Prepare For An Executive Interview.)

Everybody has a personal brand, but what you want to do is be intentional about it and shift your personal brand to a leadership brand to articulate clearly what you stand for.

This is where all the elements come together. 

So you can probably see by now, first of all, that I'm very passionate about resumes, I am not a resume writer and I won’t do it ALL for you we will co-create your resume together.

After all, you're the expert in what you do and I'm the expert in what I do bring it together and create some theatrical magic. 

There is no outsourcing model or anything like that, it’s just making sure that I bring out the best in you, that I pull out what's inside and what's covered up helping you to put it in the right perspective.

Honestly, it's so difficult to write and brand yourself authentically so please don't kick yourself if you are struggling with this.   (Kick yourself if you don’t reach out and take advantage of my help!)

I hope this inspired you to take action, whether it is to take that piece of paper, rethink and reshape it because your resume will go into your LinkedIn profile or parts of it will and it will start changing how you see yourself and that's why it's so important, you need to start changing the way you see yourself before others can see a new version of you.

 

Want more? 

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