Job Search - Crafting Your Narrative

As part of running a focused job search, you will need to write an engaging resume in order to help get yourself pulled off the resume stack by a recruiter.?This is such a hot topic that there are over 449,000,000 articles that can be found by searching “resume writing” on Google. In this new addition to the series, I’ll offer up a new outlook on how to go about writing your resume and keeping it interesting in the process.

Shakespeare wasn’t likely thinking about resume writing when he wrote in As You Like It, “All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts.”?However, he wasn’t too far off when it comes down to it.?A resume by definition is a document created and used by a person to present their background, skills, and accomplishments.?At its very essence, a resume is an individual’s opportunity to tell their career story and define their career narrative.?So come along as we discuss several ways to change resume writing from an aggravating process to an exercise in storytelling.?

Step 1: Read the Job Description?

To start a story you need to have a beginning so let’s take this back to school for a quick second.?Do you remember long answer questions in English or word problems in math where you had to read everything to find out what the question was??Reading a job description is a lot like a company saying, “Hey, here is a problem we are hoping to have you’ll help us solve.”?Like school, sometimes the problem they are asking you to solve is complex so you’ll need a few more years to learn more before you revisit the role and there is nothing wrong with that.?But if you think you can solve the problem now, you should start to craft your narrative in your resume around how to solve it.?The best thing you can do in this step is to pull the issues out of the job description and put them to the side for the next step.??

Step 2: Write from the Heart

Like you might remember from any humanities class, a first draft can go a long way to helping you be one step closer to be done and your resume is no different.?Take the list of problems that the company wants to be solved and start writing bullet points under each issue along with the job where you solved that issue. Write the first draft of your resume from your heart. Don’t think too strongly about whether or not your words are perfect, because you’ll fix that later, the point here is put everything in front of you.?More than likely, after you have crafted this list, you will see a common thread or the transferable skills amongst all your roles or the projects you completed and this will help you craft your narrative of the career story you will tell.??

Step 3:?Write the Rant Version

This is one way to spice up resume writing and get creative juices going.?The point of the rant version is not to be sent but rather to vent any frustrations and surface anything you hadn’t thought about in a while.?See a painfully obvious job requirement and feel like writing, “duh, I could do this in my sleep”??Write that.?Had a project at work that was supposed to be a team effort and you ended up running the show all by yourself??Write that too.?This is where you write how it was and tell humility to take the passenger’s seat because pride is taking the wheel.?This will also help surface some of the soft skills you should weave throughout your resume. For a great article on the importance of incorporating your soft skills into your resume, I highly suggest checking out the article written by one of my friends and mentors, Christmas Hutchinson, called Are your soft skills holding you back?.

Step 4: Craft Your Narrative

Between the Heart and the Rant versions of your resume, you should be sitting on a veritable goldmine of information for each role from your past.?This is where you take that information and you begin to craft your story about why you are the next X at Company XYZ.?This is also where people get the most nervous because now you are opening yourself up to judgment and self-doubt and it can be confusing on what information to use.

However, this is not as scary as it needs to be since you’ve already written your bullet points and now just need to pick and choose which to use.?This is where you go back to the job description and use words that the company already uses to help you tell your story in a way they would like to hear it.?This is the fun part!

This step is especially important if you have a career background that has been more of a winding path instead of a straight line as it allows you to control your narrative and demonstrate all the transferable skills.??

2023 Update:

Because of generative AI, like ChatGPT, you can now take the Heart and Rant versions and, without too much effort, have professional-sounding bullet points. I recommend using prompts like:

• "Combine the following two resumes and make them one cohesive resume"
• "Take these two resumes and make them more professional"

Step 5: Dress It Up

One thing I learned from my time in standup is that you never open with a joke that takes a while to get to the punchline.?The audience is there to laugh and they are looking for the punchline.?In a similar vein, a recruiter is the exact same.?You might have the cleverest or best resume in the world below a certain point but if the recruiter is struggling to get there (basically waiting for the punchline) they aren’t going to stick around too long.?If the widely documented research is to be believed, that recruiters spend as little as 6 - 7.4 seconds, you need to make an impression quickly and not lose their attention.

This doesn’t mean you should resort to using crazy graphics or your photo but you want to make sure that your resume is clean, formatted correctly, and relevant to the role.?When I’m looking through resumes in my current role, the two fastest disqualifiers are improper formatting or a narrative that I can put together.?If you are struggling for ideas on the look of your resume, I suggest checking out this Business Insider video or Heather Austin’s video on resume-writing (here).

2023 Update:

While proofreading, if you feel any bullet point could be stronger or are too verbose, copy them into ChatGPT and use the prompts:

• "Can you make this point more concise?"
• "Rewrite this point using Google's XYZ format leaving space for me to add metrics"

Conclusion

By the end of this, you should have a resume that you are proud of and that tells your career story how you would want it told.?If done right as well, this will also give you a solid base template that, after a few tweaks, you could tailor for other roles with different companies as well.?If you choose to also write a cover letter, you can address other specific points as well, however, that is an article for another day.

I hope this has been helpful and insightful.?Feel free to like, comment, and share.

Disclaimer:?The views expressed and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and they do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer, or company.?Assumptions made in the analysis are not reflective of the position of any entity other than the author.?Since we are critically-thinking human beings, these views are always subject to change, revision, and rethinking at any time.?Please do not hold them in perpetuity.

#resume #career #jobseeker #jobsearch