What’s Wrong with Your Resume?

By Soozy G. Miller, CPRW, CDCC, CDP

“What’s wrong with your resume?” was the first topic of my Fueling Your Job Search blog in April 2022. Due to a continuing tough job market, and due to the repeated resume issues I see with clients, the ideas and suggestions in that first blog still hold true.

Job seekers, high school seniors to CEOs all around the world, continue to send me what they think is their best stuff and complain that they’re not getting anywhere in their job search.

Since the first day I ever started writing resumes and recruiting, back in 2014, I noticed that most resumes miss the mark.

What does that mean? Let’s re-review what’s wrong with your resume and why you’re feeling stuck in your job search.

First of all, let’s acknowledge that you don’t know what you don’t know about what companies want. Rejection emails and interview feedback from one application do not provide the insight that you need to satisfy the next hiring team or the next company.

Resumes miss the mark because they are too general and they are task-based. Let me explain.

General resumes provide general, descriptive information about you at the top of the resume: How experienced you are, how hard you have worked, maybe your specific skills, and the hirable qualities that you bring to the workplace. While this tactic enables you to use one resume to apply to multiple positions, it leaves the hiring team asking, "Do you understand what we’re looking for?"

In your resume experience section, tasks tell the hiring team what you've done and what you can do. If you're an event planner, then you describe how you planned events. If you’re a doctor, you describe how you see patients and maybe contribute to medical journals.

And that’s perfectly fine. You have described how you do your job. And you probably do it well. But… 

What if the other hundreds or thousands of candidates in your field, your competition for the job, have done similar tasks? They probably have. And they’ve probably also done well. So how do you prove that you’re the better candidate? And if the company uses software to manage and track you, how do you make sure that you noticed, so the hiring team actually sees your application?

When you present general, descriptive information about yourself, and you merely describe your tasks, you miss the mark. That’s what’s wrong with your resume.

To hit the mark, I recommend changing your resume from general and personal to focused and results-based. If you’re using AI to write your resume, I recommend that you re-read what AI suggested so that you don’t sound robotic (i.e. improved efficiencies) and you don’t sound like everyone else (i.e. improved efficiencies).

Hitting the mark means reading the entire job description and then adjusting the title, summary, and skills section of your resume to address the company’s needs. Their needs are in the job description.

Then, in the experience section, state the results of your actions and the impact of your skills in addition to your tasks. Tasks are important, yes. They show that you can do the job. But you will stand out from your competition by showing the impact those tasks had on the company. Did you improve a process? Did you increase revenue? Did you improve teamwork? Did you develop or grow the business? How did your unique skillset benefit the company? That proves why you deserve the job and hits the mark.

So, what’s wrong with your resume? It’s general and full of tasks. Let’s fix that.

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Better job. More pay. More control.

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