How to Redo a Resume and Land that Interview

Perry Maddox explains how to redo a resume by making one powerful change that will help you to land that interview.

One week I lost my job.

The next week, a friend destroyed my resume.

After being downsized during the 2008 economic downturn, I asked a colleague to review my resume. He returned it covered in red ink. Almost every line in what I thought was a good resume came back with red marks on it. It all needed to change. My resume might as well have been dripping red.

I’d received a painful, but important, lesson in how to redo a resume.

The Big Resume Mistake that People Make All the Time.

As I hit the job market recently, I’ve been networking with colleagues and job seekers. So when a friend shared her resume with me recently, I was happy to give it a review.

Bear in mind, this friend is a senior executive of a global organization.  A real pro, she knows how to build a career and how to communicate. Yet, when I opened her resume, I immediately saw my mistake from 2008.

It’s a mistake that I’ve seen hundreds of people make over the years. It’s also the core step when I advise someone on how to redo their resume.  So I pulled out my red pen and started marking every instance of what I call:

The Job Description Mistake

Nothing squeezes the life of out a resume or CV like this mistake. Sadly, it’s a mistake that almost everyone makes at some point.  It goes like this:

• In the experience section of a resume or CV,
• The person lists bullets under each job that mirror the tasks listed in their old job description, and
• Sometimes they even paste in the actual job description bullets.

It’s a understandable mistake, listing the tasks you did in previous roles.

Unfortunately, it will kill your resume.

How to Redo A Resume: From Tasks to Results

A hiring manager doesn’t want to know what you did in your last role.  They can guess that from your title. Instead, hiring managers want to know:

• How well you did your work
• What impact you created
• What changed as a result of your work
• What you achieved in the role.

In short:

Less tasks, more results.

They want you to tell a story. If you simply paste in an old job description, or list the tasks you performed, don’t expect a phone call.  But when you know how to redo a resume to tell a story about results, that’s when the magic happens.

Here’s how:

Use Numbers to Quantify. Numbers are your friend. Use them generously to demonstrate:

• Scope, scale and size of your previous roles, responsibilities and accomplishments (e.g. # of staff managed, $ size of budgets, # people impacted, # sales made).
• Quality results, often as a percentage (e.g. % targets met, % staff satisfaction, % team retention, % good performance ratings).
• Change (e.g. % financial growth) and speed (e.g. % change over a time period).

Tell a Story with each and every bullet.

• Before & After. Referring to a previous situation or a starting point, show what you did and then demonstrate the result.
• Challenges overcome.  Same as above
• STAR. Take inspiration from the STAR interview method, demonstrating your impact in a situation.
• Use action verbs like “improved”, “transformed”, “grew”, and “reduced” with numbers to show the change you created.

Superlatives.  Make your resume a trophy case.

• Awards you’ve won (individual or team) are great evidence of your quality.
• Quotes. Perhaps you got a great performance review?  Use part of it.  I include a quote from a past review in my resume and cover letter. It catches the eye.
• Stand out. Were you a top performer, a sector leader, published in an important outlet?  Did your work receive a good rating from an auditor, a donor or an independent reviewer?  Use it

Now that You Know How to Redo a Resume.

Don’t wait.

I won’t sugar coat it:

Doing this probably means reworking EVERY bullet in your experience section.

If that sounds like a painstaking job that requires time and effort, it is.  It is also worth the effort. Done correctly, a resume that pops will transform your chances of getting an interview.

Just don’t wait.

You never know when that great job lead will come. When I took this advice way back in 2008, I wrote the resume that landed me a role with Restless Development.

I went from a resume dripping with red ink to one that changed my life.

Not bad for a bit of editing.

(A special thank you to Jason Cochran for taking the time to review a young professional’s resume in 2008 and helping to set my career on its way, like you have with so many others)