Build a compelling Tech Executive Resume

Disclaimer: This is a long read. But this guide has everything you need to build an amazing resume as a tech executive. I have provided a free template towards the end. Plus a massive FREE Gift for active Job Seekers.        

The current tech job market is crazy. The reality is, job market for senior leadership roles is always tough, regardless of the market.

With 700+ applicants on a single job posting within a week, most jobseekers wonder how they’d ever stand out in the crowd.

Doubts start to form regarding a seemingly “broken hiring process.” Many around the resume part, which is exactly what we’ll address in this bit.

• Could my resume be a problem? Is it showcasing me in the right light?
• Do I have the right keywords? How do I know what to include?
• Could it be that it’s not passing through the ATS?
• How do I condense my 15-20+ years of experience into a two-page document?
• How do I showcase my leadership skills and executive presence on the resume?
• Do I need to tailor my resume to every role?

There are also many mediocre resume writing services, with misleading claims like “We’ll get your resume past the ATS” or “Fix this ONE thing, and you’ll land more interviews.”

It’s rampant.

Side note: The myth of the ATS Bot - A common myth is that an ATS bot automatically matches keywords from your resume with the job description and rejects those that aren't at least a 70% match. This is completely false. While it might seem logical, it's a misconception often perpetuated by companies and inexpensive resume writers looking to make a quick buck from job seekers.

Very few folks who are in a business like ours would acknowledge this:

While resumes are important, they aren't the MOST important thing in your job search.

A bad resume can hurt your chances, but fixing a resume alone won't guarantee you results.

That said, let’s first understand…

What a great resume should do?

A great resume:

• Hooks the attention of the reader in the first 6 seconds.
• Controls the narrative about you in a way that fits the needs and understanding of the hiring manager and/or recruiter.
• Because you are a fit, it makes the reader curious. It gives them that aha moment in their search, making them think, “This is the person I’m looking for. I wanna learn more about them...”
• It is lucid enough that it gets read easily.

For a recruiter, it answers whether you are a “technical fit” or not.

Technical fit means:

• Do you have the number of years of experience needed?
• Whether you have the specific experience demanded by the role?
• Experience in a specific industry (e.g., Healthcare, finance, retail, etc.)
• Experience with a particular technical function (e.g., Data Engineering, IT Infrastructure, Enterprise Application, Platform Engineering, etc.)
• Specific hard skills for the role. E.g., Program Management, Building Software Engineering Teams, Mergers and Acquisitions, Due Diligence, etc. Location

Equally important to understand what a resume is not for.

A resume is NOT a tool to sell yourself. That’s what you do in an interview. The goal of the resume is to market you.

There’s a difference.

A good resume converts an interest into a first interview, but it may not be a tool for generating that interest in the first place.

This means that it only helps people who have already found you decide on the next step—> The First Interview.

A great resume will not get you a job, nor will it attract more people.

So, while designing it, we’ll keep the above principle in mind.

That way, it keeps us from going too deep and/or too broad.

If you follow this guide to the T, you are golden, resume-wise. You can be assured that if there is anything you need to fix in your job search process, it’s definitely not your resume.

And I will show you a method to validate exactly that, so you can be sure.

Quick Tangent: I want to showcase some of the most common mistakes that folks make while building their resumes:

Mistake #1: Keeping it too vague

In the example below, notice how, reading through the summary, you can't tell what this person does exactly.

Mistake #2:Missing Key Elements

It lacks crucial elements like the industry, function, specific skills, etc. The above summary can be broadly applied to a thousand other candidates in the market. Without the key elements, it doesn't make the candidate stand out.

Mistake #3: Show, don't tell!

Here, the candidate is making generic claims about how they accelerated business performance, enhanced product quality, and delivered cutting-edge technology solutions.

Without showing metrics for performance and product quality improvements and context for those "cutting-edge" solutions, these are all fluff.

Mistake #4: Job Duties instead of Accomplishments

Mistake #5: Misleading/Vague Metrics

Mistake #6: Adding Infographics that only you can understand

Having provided some of the bad examples (Things you should avoid...)

Let's look into the architecture of a great resume:

Key Sections on your resume:

A good leadership resume should contain the following elements. Nothing more, Nothing less.

• Header: Key Contact Information
• Career Summary: Profile + Achievement
• Professional Experience: Overall Story + Key achievements
• Previous Professional Experience: For experience > 10 years ago
• Education
• Certification

Header

Must contain

• Your Name
• Phone Number: So recruiters can call you
• Location: No full addresses. Only City and State suffice
• Email
• Clickable LinkedIn Profile Link: So recruiters and Hiring Managers can quickly look you up, and you can see "who's viewed your profile"

Important Considerations for Headers

• If you are open to relocating, add "(Open to Relocate)" right next to the location in the header. This tells the recruiter not to discard your resume based on location alone, which they commonly do.
• If you have an MBA or a relevant certification(PMP, CISSP, CISM, etc.) that is hyper-relevant to the role, consider putting it right next to your name.

Career Summary

Probably the most important section of your resume- it’s the first thing that someone reads right after your name.

It’s a quick snapshot, something that can be skimmed in 6-8 seconds, and it tells the reader, “This resume is relevant…”

It should almost have a polarizing effect - if the role is a strong fit, the reader becomes instantly curious about you. If the role is not a fit, it’s just white noise.

But it must be black and white.

No lukewarm attempt to make a catch-all summary to make it fit all sorts of roles.

With the summary, you hold the power to control the narrative about yourself right off the bat. And the best narrative is —> Focus on what they’d like to see, not what you’d like to show.

That’s how you stand out.

The key to making an irresistible career summary lies in keeping it:

• Precise and hyper-relevant to the target role.
• Factual
• Concise

Here’s our best format for a career summary that we came up with after thorough testing and feedback from recruiters:

A short paragraph that tells an overall story + 4-5 bullets that validate that story with tangible accomplishments

The story paragraph should convey the following:

• What kind of a tech leader are you? Examples: Software Engineering, Product Management, Data and Analytics, IT Infrastructure and Operations, etc.
• How many years of Experience do you have? This may include Total years of experience (for example, 15+ Years), leadership experience, and specific experience if needed.
• What kind of space do you come from? Specific Industry expertise, e.g., Healthcare, Financial Services, Manufacturing, eCommerce, etc. Company size, if that’s important/relevant. E.g., Midsize, fast-growing, large companies, etc.
• Highlight your capabilities. Examples include:

-What did you build? e.g., a SaaS product, messaging platform, IT infrastructure for a new location, A digital transformation framework product, etc.

-Who did you serve? Your customers: internal departments (eg: Sales, Finance, Supply Chain) or external customers(for example, B2B - catering to IT departments in F500 companies, B2C-building an eCommerce website)

-What did you change/transform in terms of People, Processes, or Technology?

-People: Grew the team by 2x, Established an IT PMO discipline, Built an SRE practice and hired experts for the same, etc.

-Process: Implemented DevOps methodology, Automated QA, streamlined RFP process, etc.

-Technology: Migrated to a different ERP, drove cloud transformation, rearchitected applications, implemented AI, etc. Major implementations: For example, SAP S/4 HANA rollout, implementing a chatbot for customer service, incorporating a Customer Data Platform etc.

• Leadership Experience: The size and nature(global, near shore, multi-geo, cross-functional, etc.) of the team you handled. Specific Skills and experience that are in line with the role: for example, M&A due diligence experience, Project Management Working with Executive Leadership, PnL or budgetary responsibilities, if any

Note: If the above has given you way too many ideas and you are feeling overwhelmed, thinking, “I’ve done so many things; how do I keep it short?” Then don’t worry. List all of those things first and then trim the fat. You want to look for two things:

1. Choose the recurring skills, capabilities, and experience you keep seeing after reading through several(~8-10) closely aligning job descriptions.
2. Use your best judgment in terms of: What facts would I like to know about the person in a 60-second pitch if I am hiring someone for the position I am applying to?

Putting the summary together…

{Type of Tech leader} with {Years of Experience} doing/delivering {Kinds of solutions: A collective word for what you built, transformed, or implemented} in {The Space/Industry/Company you were in}.

Oversaw/Drove/Led {Insert the value you brought throughout your career}. Adept at {insert the skills and experience in line with the role}

Now, having presented a paragraph or two of concise and hyper-relevant information, you also need to validate your claims with the results that you achieved. Because without that, it will just be fluff.

The results/accomplishments we put in bullets, by extension, are also aligned with your niche.

Here's a structure that will help you make impactful bullets- by definition, bullets should be impactful, no shooting blanks here.

Key Problem Solved + Action taken to solve it + Result it achieved.

It can be sequenced in any format, and sometimes one of the 3 elements can be omitted too to make more sense if they are mutually inclusive.

The structure could look like this:

• Delivered/achieved {Measured End result} by doing {action} to {solve problem}
• Solved {problem} to achieve {Measured End Result} by doing {action}

When thinking of what bullets to choose, think of the biggest key results you helped deliver to your organization that took them from point A to point B.

Then, keep it relevant to the target role by thinking, “Which of these similar results can I replicate for the next company? What would be relevant to them?”

Below is, to the best of my belief, an almost exhaustive list of the typical results and accomplishments you can highlight as a tech leader:

1. Anything you built, transformed, or implemented
2. If your actions directly or indirectly led to revenue growth or cost savings for the company, Quantify the $$$. Ballparks are fine. And, of course, how exactly did it affect the bottom line?
3. Operational excellence/ efficiency improvement/ productivity enhancement that you drove
4. Improving the company’s image/posture in the industry. First-of-kind items, winning deals.
5. People Leadership experience

Note: You may have similar experiences across multiple roles. In such cases, you can aggregate the results wherever needed, e.g., revenue generation, cost savings, multiple cloud transformations, etc.

A few examples of consolidating multiple similar experiences throughout the career either to:

Adding together: eg: if you worked in e-commerce enhancements in 2 different roles and added $25 M+ in one using recommender systems and $50M+ in another using customer segmentation, you can say → delivered multiple e-commerce enhancement solutions like recommender engines and customer segmentation to achieve over revenue $75M+ growth in revenue overall.

Mentioning both: For example, if you have experience leading technology integrations for multiple acquisitions ranging from acquiring 500 people company to 5900 people companies operating in different environments, both on-prem and clouds, you can mention both and be like → Led technology integration strategy multiple acquisitions of companies ranging from 500 employees to 5900. Integrated different environments, including cloud-based, hybrid, and on-prem.

Mentioning “multiple” but highlighting a more important one: Let’s say you have had several ERP transformations throughout your career. One of them is pretty significant and relevant; for example, let’s say it is a Finance system transformation on SAP S/4 HANA, then you can write it like this → Delivered multiple SAP-based transformations, including a recent entire financial system transformation and migration to SAP S/4 HANA.

People Leadership and Industry Specific Experiences.

• People Leadership Bullet: Structure types Built and led multiple {insert specific kind of teams cross-functional/global/domain specific} teams to drive {Most important Strategic effort} and {Achievement #1} Built a team from scratch and grew it to an X member org. Lead X+ highly skilled IT Professionals to deliver on Y+ projects per year focusing on {Area of Expertise 1}, {Area of Expertise 2}, and {Area of Expertise 3}. {insert a line about coaching and hiring}

Example: A people-first leader, built and led global high-performing diverse engineering teams of 40+ and launched DEI programs. Achieved >40% representation from URGs at Unity.

• Compliance, industry, or regulation-specific bullets: If compliances are important and highlighted multiple times on the JDs you use for research, we need this as a specific bullet. This is especially true for regulated industries like finance or healthcare. In such cases, highlight the most important ones as needed.

Example: Represented Cummins' IT Infrastructure organization in obtaining TISAX, Cybersecurity Essentials Plus, and ISO 27001 certifications.

A representative example:

Professional Experience Section

The professional experience section follows a simple, clean structure, very similar to how we built the career summary.

Components include:

1. Company Description (If the company is not a household brand, it helps to provide context)
2. A clear title that includes the seniority level(Director/VP, etc.) and the function(IT Applications, Data Services, Software Engineering, etc.), as well as a clear date of employment(include months, not just years.)
3. A 2-3 line paragraph that tells a story of your journey in the respective role. This story, at a very high level, provides context to the role.
4. Bullet points that talk about the key problems solved and results achieved in the role.

What to include in a company description?

• What product or service does the company provide?
• Who does it serve?
• How many customers? In what regions?
• How many employees?
• What is the revenue?

Typical Structure: Acme AG is a {insert kind of company} catering to x customers across {insert region} with a revenue of $Y

Example: LTK is a global technology platform serving premium lifestyle Creators become brands' power partner, driving $4.1B in annual brand sales by uniting Brands, Creators, and Shoppers through distributed original content.

Role Overview

It's a summary of your role, conveying the broad strokes of your work. Without this role overview, your professional experience looks like a collection of bullet points that may or may not fit together.

Adding these short overviews instantly adds so much more depth and context to the bullet that one can see all of the bullets really come together.

You should talk about:

• Who brought you in/Who did you report to?
• How big of a team did you lead/ Did you coach someone or grow a team?
• What functions did you serve?
• What did you build?
• How did this role progress for you?
• Budgets managed etc.

Example:

Senior Director, Engineering (Aug 2020 – Jun 2023)

Promoted by CTO to fill in the gap after senior leadership left. Handled $8M investment from SoftBank to scale the engineering team from 22 to 50, demonstrating clear ROI. Launched the ad marketplace SaaS product, migrated the CRM, and improved the overall QA process.

A typical structure example:

Structure

Example

Key Bullets

The bullets for the professional experience section should be built in the same way as the bullets discussed in the Summary Section (Problem-Action-Result Format).

A representative example (Professional Experience)

Previous Professional Experience

Shorten any experience beyond 10-12+ years ago in your career simply into the role title and company. This one is pretty straightforward.

Left-Align the Title and Company, and Right-Align the dates of employment.

Important, however, is to:

• Actually, shorten it. Don't be tempted to elaborate on anything beyond 15+ years, no matter how relevant you find it.
• But still mention it. Avoid putting sentences like: "Additional experience available upon request."

Education

Again, keep it short and sweet and mention the name of the institute/university and the degree. For senior leadership roles, the year of graduation is not relevant.

Typical Example

Important notes about resume design:

• Formatting and design-wise, Boring Resumes are best, as reported by 100+ recruiters we spoke to. They have a ton of them to read each day. The design we presented is the most recruiter-friendly, as it provides all the info in one place, in a format that their eyes expect.
• Font choice: Calibri or Times New Roman. Don't go below font size 10.
• Avoid using too many colors, columns, or fancy infographics to describe your values and mission. The more straightforward and factual your resume, the better.

Now, as promised, here's the Resume Template

I hope the above guide helps you build your resume. If you liked it, it would mean the world to me if you shared it with someone who could benefit from it, too.

Our mission at Wolf Mentoring is to make job change easy for tech professionals.

And for that, we offer a fully done-for-you managed job search service.

You can find more details about us on our website

- Varun Kirti

P.S. As part of our promotion, we are currently offering an absolutely FREE Resume Review and a Sample Job Search for Active Job Seekers in IT/Tech. If you are interested, please pick a time with us directly with us from our website