Before I went into my job search my dad started his transition. He was leaving the Federal Government and was looking for an executive role. Exciting times for him!
When I started my job search he sent me his resume since I couldn’t find my old (outdated!) resume… we figured if he spent hundreds of dollars on an executive resume it might be a good idea for me to use it as a template.
In my next post I’ll tell you why that was a mistake… for now though I wanted to talk about some of the things I hear that relate to executive resumes. Realize I’m not a resume writer, though. If you are looking for an executive resume writer contact Career Resumes.
Here are some of my observations:
My first impression was that my dad’s resume was a professional marketing tool. I’m not just saying that (because that’s what a resume should be), I’m saying that because it had a significant WOW factor.
I immediately could tell that the executive behind this resume had an impressive career, and was ready to bring significant experience and wisdom his next role.
The resume was two full pages and there was a lot of information crammed into it. I’m not sure how other executive resume writers manage the immense amount of information with the supposed limits (two pages?), but this executive resume had achievement after achievement after achievement – it was amazing to read the decades of experience and accomplishments.
The formatting was fancy. I’m not sure if this is good or bad, although I have a feeling some computerized resume parsing systems might not like the formatting (I don’t know)…
There were various parts of the resume I wasn’t familiar with – remember though, I had no experience with writing resumes, or reviewing executive resumes. But when I went through his resume I thought “oh, that’s interesting, I’ll add that to mine.”
There is clearly a difference between the resume I needed and the resume my dad needed. While I was going for executive titles, I didn’t have the breadth and depth of experience as my dad.
Mistakenly, I thought I could borrow a lot of elements from his resume (see next post :))… that wasn’t a good idea.
Have you reviewed an executive resume yet? Check out the links below for executive resume samples:
