The Best Executive Resume Recipe

As an executive resume writer for over three decades, I’ve learned that the recipe for the perfect executive resume is fairly consistent across numerous professions and industries. Whether you plan to write your resume yourself or engage a professional executive resume writing service, your winning recipe will have these ingredients, and be prepared as follows:

Executive Resume Recipe

Ingredients:

1.      Contact Info: Complete contact information that makes it easy to reach you, but doesn’t confuse the employer with multiple email addresses and/or phone numbers. Pick one of each.

2.      Headline: A few words that tell the employer what professional category/niche area and job titles fit you. For example: CFO: High-Growth and Startup Companies

3.      Tagline: Your brand – what distinguishes you from the competition, in a nutshell. This is perhaps one of the most difficult ingredients to prepare. It requires some introspection and can especially benefit from the input of an objective observer.

4.      Summary/Profile: A quick synopsis of the cumulative experience, skill set, and breadth of expertise you bring to the table.

5.      Accomplishment highlights: Carefully selected handful of one-liners that serve as appetizers to draw your reader in and make them eager to learn more in context when they get to your employment history.

6.      Professional Experience: Your employment history. Each entry will have these ingredients:

a.      Company Name

b.      Description (revenues, products, geographic scope, etc.)

c.      Job Title

d.      Dates of Employment (in most cases, year-to-year will suffice)

e.      Position Description: Briefly outlines the scope of your role and responsibilities in terms of people, functions, budgets, your charter (why they hired you), and the context (What challenges or opportunities were there to be faced/exploited?)

f.       Accomplishments: Structured as action statements that convey the issue/opportunity/task, how you handled it/the solution you came up with, and the results (quantified if at all possible)

7.      Education

8.      Professional Development

9.      Certifications

10.  Professional Affiliations

Garnishes (optional additions, where applicable or desired):

11.  Honors and Awards

12.  Publications

13.  Board Service

14.  Community Involvement

15.  Particularly Notable Avocations and Interests

 Instructions:

• Measure each ingredient carefully—unnecessary verbiage dilutes the flavor.

• Season to taste with spicy keywords and action words throughout, but as with a gourmet dish, don’t be too heavy-handed. Recruiters, employers, and ATS systems will spot keyword cramming a mile away, and spit your resume out.

• To enrich the visual appeal of your dish, include an illustrative image, chart, graph, or pull quote.

• As you would in reducing the sauce for a gourmet recipe, edit and then edit again to say what needs to be said with fewer words—less is more.

• Let it simmer—Set it aside for a while, revisit it, and then edit it again.

• Present it artfully: As a delicious recipe benefits from sprigs of parsley, a splash of color, and careful arrangement on the plate or serving dish, your resume needs a format that is pleasing to the eye with lots of white space, easy-to-read font(s), and judicious use of color.

• As a chef would do with taste testers, ask at least one person you trust to sample it and rate their experience. Solicit specific recommendations for improvement and alter the recipe as indicated.

• Once you’ve served it to the public, modify it based on feedback from employers and recruiters. The very best gourmet recipes were developed and continuously refined this way. 

Additional Tips to Increase the Appeal of Your Executive Resume

Remember that the recipes that get noticed offer a new take on the old. Just as a fresh approach to that pasta dish will earn a place on foodie blogs, your fresh look or approach to your resume content will bring your resume to the top of a recruiter or employer’s stack.

Think about food dishes that evoke exotic, faraway locations or the warmth of your grandmother’s kitchen. Like these dishes, a resume should evoke emotion in your reader—for example, excitement at what you might be able to do for their organization, a desire to get to know you, fear of the competition hiring you and leveraging your skills against them.

Your perfect executive resume starts with the right ingredients, in the right quantities, blended well, and tastefully presented. Prepared properly as a master chef would prepare a signature dish, it will earn you an interview and ultimately a seat at the table with the company of your dreams.