3 Ways to Review the Stories in Your Resume

Does your resume answer the question, “Why should we hire you instead of someone else?”

Your resume not only needs to be a clear statement about your qualifications for a new job, but it also needs to tell your story! There is much more to a great resume than only stating your skills, knowledge, and accomplishments. It must include stories about your experience and past work. That is what people will remember when reading it. And if you aren't making an impression with your resume, then you aren't going to be one of the folks who get an interview!

Every line and every sentence needs to be part of a story. If a sentence does that, then keep it. If it doesn’t, then think about editing or deleting it.

Your resume is a framework for storytelling. You must analyze it closely to know what you are "telling" a recruiter or interviewer. To find out what your resume is communicating, I highly recommend you try this exercise. You might be surprised what you will discover, and it should give you more confidence on why someone should hire you.

Here are three ways to do this:

• Start by looking at the paragraphs and the specific sentences. That will give a context for the individual stories.
• Then slowly review every sentence and every line in detail. Is there a story you’re telling? Go through the whole document to make sure that everything you say is in service of telling that story.
• Then look for the keywords for each line. Look primarily at the nouns (what you know) and the verbs (what can you do).

I believe that writing a resume is one form of interview coaching. You will be more prepared if you have thought about everything in detail. That way, when an interviewer asks a question about your resume, you will be set to answer it with an engaging story that will tell them more about you than just your on-paper qualifications. Be diligent about this and take it seriously.

If you aren’t quite sure how to “tell a story” with your resume, you might need some help pulling it together. If you’d like to talk about how you can better communicate your story, please feel free to schedule a free consultation to discuss it with me. Let’s go through your resume together and put together a plan to tell the story of your career thus far!