The day I realized my resume was a waste of space

Spent 6 years thinking a good resume meant listing every job duty I ever had. Then a recruiter in Austin told me to cut it down to one page and only show results, not tasks. She said nobody cares if I "managed inventory" they want to know I cut shrinkage by 12% in one quarter. Anyone else get hit with that wake up call?

2 comments

2 Comments

angelapalmer20d ago

Oh man, that hits close to home. Did it take you forever to unlearn all that fluff too? I remember rewriting my resume like three times and still feeling like I was hiding behind buzzwords instead of actually saying what I did. That recruiter was right though, once I started leading with numbers and real outcomes it was like the whole thing actually worked for me instead of just taking up space.

the_beth20d ago

My friend Sarah went through that exact thing. She had a resume full of "results-driven professional" and "synergistic team player" nonsense, and she couldn't figure out why nobody called her back. She finally sat down with a buddy who was a hiring manager and he just crossed out half her bullet points with a red pen. After she rewrote everything to say stuff like "cut shipping costs by 18% in six months" instead of "improved operational efficiency," she got three interviews in the first two weeks. The part that got me was she said it felt almost wrong at first, like she was bragging, but the numbers were just true. Now she swears by it and does the same thing for everyone she knows.

-1