February 18, 2025 • 29 mins
I’m covering résumé writing today.
More specifically, I’m covering the ins and outs and twists and turns of the professional experience section.
I’m literally blown away at the number of ways job seekers royally screw up this section of their marketing document.
It genuinely hurts me when anyone makes mistakes I’m so desperately trying to help them avoid.
That’s why I went into great detail in today’s podcast on how to get this right and powerfully sell yourself.
If you'd like to build a great career and lead a rewarding life, check out some of these other places where I share my teachings:
1. Check out the milewalk Academy, my coaching and training site, for freemiums and premiums.
2. I have hundreds of educational and inspirational videos on my YouTube Channel.
3. Grab any of my three books related to interviewing, hiring, and goal setting. All can be found on my Amazon Author Page.
4. Follow me on Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter (X), TikTok, Threads, and Facebook.
5. Stay in touch with me in your email inbox by joining my newsletter here!
--Andy
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
I want to talk today about how to think about how you list your work experience and one of the
things I want you to keep in mind as I go through this onepage slide is why do I have such a tough
time getting my illustrious 10year career down to two pages or I could get my entire 36y year
(00:21):
career down to 26 words if I can do that you can definitely fill up two pages in all its
Glory of who you are and what you're about and the successes you've had and the biggest problem
that people have is multifold they have they have an inability to actually distill down the
(00:43):
most important scenes from their life their work life that matter to the people they want to work
for so your resume is a marketing document it's not a work history document it's all about where
do I want to go and what sells me or advertises me best that I can help those people I can help
(01:04):
that company I can help that team I can help that Community I can help that industry whatever it
might be that's how you want to think about it and much of the time people spend a lot of real estate
on the resume putting stuff there that doesn't really advertise them effectively the second thing
is they have a really tough time separating what they do from what happened as a result
(01:30):
of what they did meaning if you run the accounting team that's an activity that's not a highlight
it's not an accomplishment it's a nothing you run the team you do eight things to run the team right
you got to put the infrastructure in place you got to manage the systems you got to manage the bodies
you do you coach the people you got to do a you got to develop the reports you got to right file
(01:53):
the papers stay in compliance right there's just a handful of things that you do none of which are
exciting and none of which really sell you best but when you make impact in your organization and
you help your company achieve goals that make them more money or decrease risk of penalties delays
(02:13):
citations or whatever position them effectively maybe to be acquired or merge or something like
that that helps a business do something a business wants which is serve its customers and make profit
so that they could serve more customers so that they can make more profit and a lot of what
they're doing along the way is they're working with people and hopefully creating a wonderful
(02:36):
employee based environment where you're F where you're having fun you're happy you like going to
work you enjoy your job you're developing you're growing you're contributing and you're feeling
appreciated yes that's awesome but ultimately when you're selling yourself you need to be focused on
the things that matter to the company so I want to show you a section and I really I tried to figure
(02:57):
out what was the most economical way to show you this and it's not a sample I want to talk through
how I would stage out that section of the resume cool who stoked give me I'm stoked I'm stoked you
know what I'm so stoked I'm I'm I'm sipping out of my can I help you can you see that can I help
you mug that's picture of me right there in front of my computer helping you all right let's get to
(03:24):
it all right so the professional experience portion of the resume the company name goes
on the left by itself with a city or state if you want and over on the right it's the years
but basically in general you want the company name underneath the company you want to tell me who the
(03:52):
company is and what their mission or purpose in life is give me context and if it's an incredible
large company tell me which area you work in and why do we want to do this because you are painting
a picture and telling someone a story about who you are and in order for me to assemble that
(04:17):
that picture of you the more colorful your your description the easier it is for me to visualize
you and what if you worked for a small company that was awesome but I never heard heard of it
or what if you're a technologist and one of your organizations was Pepsi and you were working in
(04:37):
the technology department but then you went to a startup that was basically building a similar type
of product that didn't look anything like a sugary beverage company and you were a technologist there
I'd want to understand that what if you work in Europe and you a few years back and now you
live in the US what you're trying to do is you're trying to create a storyboard for me that helps me
(05:01):
understand maybe you work for Cisco Systems and it's a hardware software Services large
entity high-speed networks and switches and uh major platforms okay well there's a lot of
different divisions there's engineering there's sales there's whatever there's Hardware there's
software there's Services there's all different areas and you might be able to give me more
(05:27):
specific language about who they are what they do and how you contributed to their growth and you
can do this in no more than two lines okay so what you're doing is you're creating a nice consistent
view of the organizations the first question a recruiter or a hiring official has is who did you
(05:49):
work for and when did you work there those are two of the first six questions they ask themselves if
it takes them longer to get to that information the longer it takes takes them the worst your
resume is which is why I want you to put it in reverse chronological order and I want you to
put the company name all the way to the left so that I don't have to fish around the middle of
(06:09):
your middle meaning the center piece the bsection of your resume where I have to look to try to find
who you're working for it matters more to me than what you're doing it does I would rather
have people that come from really great companies and I said really great companies I didn't say
really big companies although big companies can be great and small companies can be great so that's
(06:35):
that's the first thing that you want to do and a lot of people mistake or make assumptions that
whoever's looking at the resume is going to know who that large organization is and or who or or
or hey there's only 10 companies in that space you should know who that is maybe maybe not but this
also gives you a chance to do what put colorful words in your res that actually matter can you
(07:02):
say I focused on Cisco x000 switches okay well that gives get puts keyword into the resume in
the appropriate context that gives me color okay that's the first thing second thing is
below that and on the left put the title if you want to put a little indentation that's fine I
(07:24):
just tried to make this easy for you to see now now here I don't really i' I had until I put my
base resume together I had never seen anybody do what I'm about to tell you and I don't see really
any other career coaches recommending this but I put your title then what I then what I would do
(07:48):
is I would tell me a story about what it is your responsible for why do I want to do it this way
well number one I do want to know that you man the customer service team I do want to know that you
run the marketing team but that in and of itself isn't an accomplishment and so I want to just
(08:09):
understand I want to understand the parameters of what you do so I'm an account manager managing
the central region of this division 58 clients a book of business of $32 million these kind of
(08:32):
clients these kind of industries that tells me an awesome story it just tells me who you are
that's that may not even be an accomplishment you could say account management account manager blah
blah blah started central region practice from scratch now 32 million zero clients to 50 clients
(08:57):
or whatever it is that tells me something that tells me you grew it right as opposed to shrink
it but what happens if you're the account manager of the central region you own all the accounts and
when it started you had 60 million in revenue and you now have 52 million in Revenue do you
want to tell future employers that you dropped it 8 million bucks no What markets you best it's 52
(09:20):
million I just said two completely true statements and they both Market you best
one had a Delta that show you grew it another one didn't didn't say that but gave me a context that
you're managing a 52 million doll book of business or whatever it is so this is where you get to put
(09:41):
the housekeeping so manage all customer service functions including team of 12 customer service
reps who manage 58,000 clients globally across five continents including whatever you know I
(10:03):
mean in X countries 58 product lines that tells me something it creates complexity but it creates
a Clear Vision that you are the person who's managing everything related to the customer
service department but a lot of you what you do is you make bullets out of this and you say manage
(10:24):
customer service team period next line bullet built customer service systems bullet period
next bullet right and this is why you can't get your resume down to two pages is because you're
spending a lot of time making up bullets that shouldn't even be bullets So speaking of bullets
what should the bullets entail okay have a bullet I love three bullets and the first thing you want
(10:54):
to think of is what is bullet worthy so what is bullet worthy well if I'm going to create
a bullet I have a rule that the bullet has to be an accomplishment accomplishment related to what
I call the great eight if you don't know Andy's definition of the great eight there it is right
(11:15):
there Revenue you generate Revenue you increase Market awareness or lift the brand recognition you
have customer attraction so in some way shape or form you've helped your team or a customer
join you or attract you or discover you uh or maybe you've you've had a maybe you went and
gave a spe it could be a million different ways that you do that you you service the
(11:38):
customer so that they're happier you position your organization for corporate growth that could be
I'm on the executive team and I did everything to bring the organization to market for an IPO
initial public offering or I work in mergers and Acquisitions or I work on the accounting team to
(11:59):
sure we are compliant in all of the filings and all of the rules and all of the whatever that
could be comp a company growth so it could be growth um events Acquisitions divestitures it
could be compliance any of that stuff and then employee happiness but maybe your job is to make
sure that all the employees are happy contributing growing feeling appreciated awesome maybe you're
(12:25):
the HR person or maybe you're just a line manager who has a team or you reduce costs from an expense
management perspective or you reduce costs through a process efficiency perspective where you're
building processes or improving them to make sure that they are more efficient so if you're going to
go into the bulleting area if your bullet does not cover one of these eight it's not a bullet
(12:51):
so manage the customer service team is just I manage the team you didn't say anything about
did the employees get happier or not you're just telling me I manag the team that's not a bullet
raised employee happiness from a satisfacation score of 3.5 to 4.8 within 6 months by doing
(13:15):
something that's a bullet makes sense that's that's a bullet but every bullet all three of
your bullets give or take should address these things the next thing is how do you format the
bullet most of you most of the resumés that I review they format the bullet backwards
(13:42):
actually most of them don't they do it backwards and they don't even put the front part in so if
you say manage the customer service team manage the accounting team um I consulted on projects
I gave I gave presentations I pulled reports I built a system none of that is a bullet so the
(14:04):
effect is what I'm looking for and the effect is the benefit well what happened as a result of you
generating those reports that's what I'm looking for and I want to find it first so I call that
the effect which is the benefit the cause is I built an executive dashboard so that the the
management team could make better decisions well that's the activity the reason you you did it is
(14:29):
so they could make better decisions but now what you really need to tell me is how did it improve
decision making improving decision making can come in a variety of formats maybe you accelerated
their ability to see data that enabled them to predict Trends three months in faster than they
(14:52):
otherwise would have okay that's something right so in increased or accelerated visib ability is
going to help me but the more granular you could get get that even better so what was it so that um
you know did you increase your your uh Financial uh interest or yield because the management team
(15:13):
was able able to more effectively predict uh where they should be allocating their their investment
funds so what you want to ultimately do is get what the benefit was so if you're managing the
customer service team you want to get what the benefit was in the front to the bullet increased
customer satisfaction by what percentage increased uh something turnaround time buy so raised Revenue
(15:40):
decreased cost whatever it is we want to see what the official benefit is first that's what
people want to know what's the Delta so you need to tell me the Delta because if you just say well
I increased it well I don't know how much did you increase it one day one minute one hour or
one year so so so so so it's really important that you're answering questions that I might
(16:04):
have to show how awesome you are makes sense so you want you want the effect first and you want
the how second what most of you do is you just talk about the how or you just talk about the
how first or or you don't even put the put put the actual benefit in if you have a bullet that
(16:24):
just has the how or the how I manage the team okay that's how how how you raised customer uh
or employee Happiness by managing a team but you didn't really tell me what the benefit is just
throw that in the housekeeping area up right underneath the title if you're not absolutely
sure what the Deltas are if you know what the Deltas are from a benefits perspective you want
(16:46):
those to go in the bullet and the Delta should cover one of those eight things then the last
thing I want you to think about is the number of bullets that you have most of you have in entirely
too many bullets and nobody and I mean nobody is reading all the bullets that you have for each
(17:07):
of your different positions so when I see somebody who's been in a position for five years and has 10
bullets I'm only going to look at the top couple and then I'm going to move down and some of you
are going to say well Andy I've been in the same position for 10 years if you've been in the same
position for 10 years what I would likely do is either break up and and use a more advanced
(17:31):
tactic where you're talking about the different functions you handle and then put a couple of
bullets in each of those just so from the eye test standpoint I'm only seeing a few bullets
related to a particular topic or title there is absolutely no law that says you have to put your
title over here if I needed to so I worked with a woman a few weeks back and she said Andy well they
(17:56):
they call me a data analyst but I'm not really a a data analyst I don't want to be a data analyst
I do a lot of other things I do client relations or client service I do process efficiency and I
do do some uh uh process restructuring or process redesign uh Based on data that I analyze and draw
(18:17):
conclusions we gave her three sections of a position that she had been at for a few years
to show her client services accomplishments her process re-engineering accomplishments and her
data engineering so to speak accomplishments so we were able to show how she evolved into higher
level responsibilities even though she had the same title so there are a million ways to write
(18:43):
a resume and there are tons and tons of tricks that are really really effective but for most
of you what I'm showing you on this slide will be sufficient and and just because you've been
in a job uh 10 years let's say you're a project manager and you've been a project manager for 10
years let's just say you ran one project a year every year for 10 years so every January 1st you
(19:13):
got a new assignment you ran a new project you were an IT project manager and you helped your
company Implement a new system awesome but you don't have to take me through all 10 projects but
in your housekeeping area you could say um project manager covering handling enterprise-wide large
(19:36):
scale it systems ranging in budget from 500,000 to 2 million period during tenure managed 10 project
large scale projects manage 10 full scale software development life cycles or something like that
that shows me you had repetitions but I don't need to see a bullet for every one of those were there
(19:59):
do you want to show me the different Technologies you you you you implemented then show me the
benefits of what those individual projects who had those individual Technologies what they did
or do you want to flex your muscles as far as the solution type maybe you're going uh maybe you're
working with the engineering team implementing uh something for them maybe you uh implemented
(20:25):
a customer relationship management system for the call center team or for somebody like that
or maybe you implemented a Salesforce automation system for the sales team and you did one of those
each year for three years well are what kind of positions are you going for in the future you want
to put those bullets on your resume but you don't need to put every single one that you've ever done
(20:48):
again highlights what sells you best so there's a million ways to skin it but most people that whose
resume I look at most of them do most of this in correctly so I haven't talked as much about this
portion of the resume in my live office hour shows and in my weekly shows so I just I really wanted
(21:08):
to bring this to the Forefront to get you thinking about how to section each of these and then again
if you have multiple titles you would put another title below it you would follow the same format
with a short paragraph and then a couple of bullets and so on and so forth okay and then
(21:28):
and then you're gonna say well how far back should I go how whatever sells you best so you don't need
to list everything you ever did at a position you you held for eight years and you don't need
to list every company you've ever had for your entire life but what I want you to do is I want
you to figure out how far back should my resume go and what is it that highlights me best as far or
(21:52):
sells me best as far as how far back I should go but once I decide how far back I want to go I want
you to make sure that once you decide what what I call your cut line so your cut line could be
10 years your cut line could be 15 years your cut line could be 20 years or 30 years I don't really
care but which companies do you want to make sure that a reviewer recruiter hiring official sees
(22:14):
and once you start your chronology make sure you stay intact meaning don't omit any organizations
or companies that you worked for that were later than your cut line so if your cut line is 2004
and we're in 2024 you want to show every company you worked with for the last 20 years be before
(22:36):
2004 there are a million ways to skin that you can show just companies that you feel are gerain
you could completely omit it if you feel that sells you best you might pull forward or cherry
pick some of the companies you want to mention you could do that as well okay so this is really
what I wanted to cover here and I I want you to give me your resume questions and I'm going to
(22:58):
hit you up uh or we're going to hit those right now but one of the other things I want y'all to
know is I have a uh 70 minute of teaching resumé writing webinar it's free I'm going to have Cara
put that in the chat and she'll link that in the chat and also in the chat I see she's posted our
(23:24):
mile walk Academy website page because if you are interested in any of our programs there are
steep discounts on everything this week through Friday night but but the resume writing webinar
is completely free so you're welcome to you're welcome to to check that out Cara can drop that in
the um in the chat uh when she gets a second and let me see I know you've got some resume questions
(23:50):
maybe I need to back up and just pull this back up just in case and let me see what's what okay Shane
can you can you explain the bullet 2 and bullet 3 I thought all be sorry um what you're looking
at here is me just showing you a format and me just giving you points every sorry this is a
great question every single bullet should be about the great eight that's number one point number one
(24:18):
every single bullet should be in the format of the benefit first and how you did it second and
I'm just telling you I would probably wrap the bullets up up in three bullets per job title yes
there are exceptions some of you might have two some of you might have four just be economical
(24:39):
all every single bullet you write should be about the great eight so bullet one bullet two bullet
three all should be great eight related I'm not saying I'm not saying your first bullet
is just a big eight and the second one is not I'm saying my point number one about your bullet
is make them all the great eight point number two about bullets is make sure you cite the benefit
(25:03):
first and the the how you did it second and my third point about bullets is have three bullets
cool yeah I I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm sorry that that that is a little confusing um but that's I was
just I was trying to to have my cake eat it to put it all into one spot for you just so you could
get get get the points out and understand it was company name with a paragraph company or c current
(25:28):
title with a paragraph bullet bullet bullet they all follow all three of those Concepts and then
you go on to your next title or your next company great great question and I'm I'm I'm glad you you
asked that because I'm guessing Shane that there were I probably confused the heck out of a lot
of people all right Eric Anderson how about the adage no more than two pages I love that adage so
(25:52):
what's the question there's no reason absolutely none that any of you even if you've been working
50 years can't get your resume down to two pages and if you tell me oh Andy I just can't you give
me your resume and I will get that down to a page I will and without you losing any power
(26:14):
it's because you're stuffing in things that don't sell you best or need to be in there to sell you
best and that's what a lot of people do there are exceptions if you are working if you're targeting
the federal government you could have a 10-page resume I don't care and it could be as detailed
as you want put everything in it if you are a doctor a lawyer a researcher a Dean a professor
(26:38):
or whatever and you use more of a CV style it's okay to I once coached a woman who was a medical
doctor in an MBA and I was coaching her for a Dean position at one at three like major universities
she had multi- inters panels the whole nine yards and she had a 34-page CV and that was okay and
(27:01):
I looked at all of it Vivian how many pages for a good resume recruiters said they only want to
see two and take 30 seconds to scan Yes actually I I didn't I didn't let me see if I could do this
let me introduce you to Andy AI so for those of you that don't know this I have a digital
(27:25):
clone that's been trained on everything I ever done okay so two I don't know a couple weeks ago
I was testing it and it says how far back should your resume go I asked myself how far back should
the resume go and I want you to read this when it comes to deciding how far back your resume should
(27:46):
go the golden rule is to focus on what markets you best does that sound like me this isn't about
sticking to some arbitrary number like 10 15 or 20 didn't I just say that it's about showcasing
the experiences that highlighting your strengths and make you the most attractive candidate for the
job and it went out and figured out that I talked about this somewhere on YouTube uh and somewhere
(28:09):
in my LinkedIn workshop and somewhere in a job Min and in my resume writing workshop and so on so
Andy aai said that if you got experience from 20 to 30 years ago that are relevant don't hesitate
to include it that's true however once you decide a starting point didn't I say A cutline you need
to maintain a continuous Chron ology that means listing every job in your timeline didn't I just
(28:31):
say that avoid the gaps for those earlier roles you might not directly might not be directly
relevant but still at Value you can create a section like additional professional experience
because this is exactly what I would have told you to do this way you can highlight key achievements
that what sell you best remember your resumes a marketing document not just a work history I mean
(28:53):
I laughed so hard when I did this because this is exactly what I would say and it damn well better
be it damn well better be because I trained it so anybody who's in the job search coaching program
has access to Andy aai and if you want you can play it and it'll it talks like I do meaning it's
(29:13):
my my sound so you don't even have to read it you could let and by the way I don't know if you know
it but when you when you interact with Andy aai It'll ask you a question because it wants to get
to learn you better um what what's your current situation do you have some older experience that
you think could really make your resume pop so now it wants you to ask it a tell it more so that when
(29:37):
you log in next time it knows more about you Isn't that cool who's using Andy aai I know my boot
campers are because I can see what you're asking Andy AI all right that's that's pretty funny
I want to talk today about how to think about how you list your work experience and one of the
things I want you to keep in mind as I go through this onepage slide is why do I have such a tough
time getting my illustrious 10year career down to two pages or I could get my entire 36y year
(00:21):
career down to 26 words if I can do that you can definitely fill up two pages in all its
Glory of who you are and what you're about and the successes you've had and the biggest problem
that people have is multifold they have they have an inability to actually distill down the
(00:43):
most important scenes from their life their work life that matter to the people they want to work
for so your resume is a marketing document it's not a work history document it's all about where
do I want to go and what sells me or advertises me best that I can help those people I can help
(01:04):
that company I can help that team I can help that Community I can help that industry whatever it
might be that's how you want to think about it and much of the time people spend a lot of real estate
on the resume putting stuff there that doesn't really advertise them effectively the second thing
is they have a really tough time separating what they do from what happened as a result
(01:30):
of what they did meaning if you run the accounting team that's an activity that's not a highlight
it's not an accomplishment it's a nothing you run the team you do eight things to run the team right
you got to put the infrastructure in place you got to manage the systems you got to manage the bodies
you do you coach the people you got to do a you got to develop the reports you got to right file
(01:53):
the papers stay in compliance right there's just a handful of things that you do none of which are
exciting and none of which really sell you best but when you make impact in your organization and
you help your company achieve goals that make them more money or decrease risk of penalties delays
(02:13):
citations or whatever position them effectively maybe to be acquired or merge or something like
that that helps a business do something a business wants which is serve its customers and make profit
so that they could serve more customers so that they can make more profit and a lot of what
they're doing along the way is they're working with people and hopefully creating a wonderful
(02:36):
employee based environment where you're F where you're having fun you're happy you like going to
work you enjoy your job you're developing you're growing you're contributing and you're feeling
appreciated yes that's awesome but ultimately when you're selling yourself you need to be focused on
the things that matter to the company so I want to show you a section and I really I tried to figure
(02:57):
out what was the most economical way to show you this and it's not a sample I want to talk through
how I would stage out that section of the resume cool who stoked give me I'm stoked I'm stoked you
know what I'm so stoked I'm I'm I'm sipping out of my can I help you can you see that can I help
you mug that's picture of me right there in front of my computer helping you all right let's get to
(03:24):
it all right so the professional experience portion of the resume the company name goes
on the left by itself with a city or state if you want and over on the right it's the years
but basically in general you want the company name underneath the company you want to tell me who the
(03:52):
company is and what their mission or purpose in life is give me context and if it's an incredible
large company tell me which area you work in and why do we want to do this because you are painting
a picture and telling someone a story about who you are and in order for me to assemble that
(04:17):
that picture of you the more colorful your your description the easier it is for me to visualize
you and what if you worked for a small company that was awesome but I never heard heard of it
or what if you're a technologist and one of your organizations was Pepsi and you were working in
(04:37):
the technology department but then you went to a startup that was basically building a similar type
of product that didn't look anything like a sugary beverage company and you were a technologist there
I'd want to understand that what if you work in Europe and you a few years back and now you
live in the US what you're trying to do is you're trying to create a storyboard for me that helps me
(05:01):
understand maybe you work for Cisco Systems and it's a hardware software Services large
entity high-speed networks and switches and uh major platforms okay well there's a lot of
different divisions there's engineering there's sales there's whatever there's Hardware there's
software there's Services there's all different areas and you might be able to give me more
(05:27):
specific language about who they are what they do and how you contributed to their growth and you
can do this in no more than two lines okay so what you're doing is you're creating a nice consistent
view of the organizations the first question a recruiter or a hiring official has is who did you
(05:49):
work for and when did you work there those are two of the first six questions they ask themselves if
it takes them longer to get to that information the longer it takes takes them the worst your
resume is which is why I want you to put it in reverse chronological order and I want you to
put the company name all the way to the left so that I don't have to fish around the middle of
(06:09):
your middle meaning the center piece the bsection of your resume where I have to look to try to find
who you're working for it matters more to me than what you're doing it does I would rather
have people that come from really great companies and I said really great companies I didn't say
really big companies although big companies can be great and small companies can be great so that's
(06:35):
that's the first thing that you want to do and a lot of people mistake or make assumptions that
whoever's looking at the resume is going to know who that large organization is and or who or or
or hey there's only 10 companies in that space you should know who that is maybe maybe not but this
also gives you a chance to do what put colorful words in your res that actually matter can you
(07:02):
say I focused on Cisco x000 switches okay well that gives get puts keyword into the resume in
the appropriate context that gives me color okay that's the first thing second thing is
below that and on the left put the title if you want to put a little indentation that's fine I
(07:24):
just tried to make this easy for you to see now now here I don't really i' I had until I put my
base resume together I had never seen anybody do what I'm about to tell you and I don't see really
any other career coaches recommending this but I put your title then what I then what I would do
(07:48):
is I would tell me a story about what it is your responsible for why do I want to do it this way
well number one I do want to know that you man the customer service team I do want to know that you
run the marketing team but that in and of itself isn't an accomplishment and so I want to just
(08:09):
understand I want to understand the parameters of what you do so I'm an account manager managing
the central region of this division 58 clients a book of business of $32 million these kind of
(08:32):
clients these kind of industries that tells me an awesome story it just tells me who you are
that's that may not even be an accomplishment you could say account management account manager blah
blah blah started central region practice from scratch now 32 million zero clients to 50 clients
(08:57):
or whatever it is that tells me something that tells me you grew it right as opposed to shrink
it but what happens if you're the account manager of the central region you own all the accounts and
when it started you had 60 million in revenue and you now have 52 million in Revenue do you
want to tell future employers that you dropped it 8 million bucks no What markets you best it's 52
(09:20):
million I just said two completely true statements and they both Market you best
one had a Delta that show you grew it another one didn't didn't say that but gave me a context that
you're managing a 52 million doll book of business or whatever it is so this is where you get to put
(09:41):
the housekeeping so manage all customer service functions including team of 12 customer service
reps who manage 58,000 clients globally across five continents including whatever you know I
(10:03):
mean in X countries 58 product lines that tells me something it creates complexity but it creates
a Clear Vision that you are the person who's managing everything related to the customer
service department but a lot of you what you do is you make bullets out of this and you say manage
(10:24):
customer service team period next line bullet built customer service systems bullet period
next bullet right and this is why you can't get your resume down to two pages is because you're
spending a lot of time making up bullets that shouldn't even be bullets So speaking of bullets
what should the bullets entail okay have a bullet I love three bullets and the first thing you want
(10:54):
to think of is what is bullet worthy so what is bullet worthy well if I'm going to create
a bullet I have a rule that the bullet has to be an accomplishment accomplishment related to what
I call the great eight if you don't know Andy's definition of the great eight there it is right
(11:15):
there Revenue you generate Revenue you increase Market awareness or lift the brand recognition you
have customer attraction so in some way shape or form you've helped your team or a customer
join you or attract you or discover you uh or maybe you've you've had a maybe you went and
gave a spe it could be a million different ways that you do that you you service the
(11:38):
customer so that they're happier you position your organization for corporate growth that could be
I'm on the executive team and I did everything to bring the organization to market for an IPO
initial public offering or I work in mergers and Acquisitions or I work on the accounting team to
(11:59):
sure we are compliant in all of the filings and all of the rules and all of the whatever that
could be comp a company growth so it could be growth um events Acquisitions divestitures it
could be compliance any of that stuff and then employee happiness but maybe your job is to make
sure that all the employees are happy contributing growing feeling appreciated awesome maybe you're
(12:25):
the HR person or maybe you're just a line manager who has a team or you reduce costs from an expense
management perspective or you reduce costs through a process efficiency perspective where you're
building processes or improving them to make sure that they are more efficient so if you're going to
go into the bulleting area if your bullet does not cover one of these eight it's not a bullet
(12:51):
so manage the customer service team is just I manage the team you didn't say anything about
did the employees get happier or not you're just telling me I manag the team that's not a bullet
raised employee happiness from a satisfacation score of 3.5 to 4.8 within 6 months by doing
(13:15):
something that's a bullet makes sense that's that's a bullet but every bullet all three of
your bullets give or take should address these things the next thing is how do you format the
bullet most of you most of the resumés that I review they format the bullet backwards
(13:42):
actually most of them don't they do it backwards and they don't even put the front part in so if
you say manage the customer service team manage the accounting team um I consulted on projects
I gave I gave presentations I pulled reports I built a system none of that is a bullet so the
(14:04):
effect is what I'm looking for and the effect is the benefit well what happened as a result of you
generating those reports that's what I'm looking for and I want to find it first so I call that
the effect which is the benefit the cause is I built an executive dashboard so that the the
management team could make better decisions well that's the activity the reason you you did it is
(14:29):
so they could make better decisions but now what you really need to tell me is how did it improve
decision making improving decision making can come in a variety of formats maybe you accelerated
their ability to see data that enabled them to predict Trends three months in faster than they
(14:52):
otherwise would have okay that's something right so in increased or accelerated visib ability is
going to help me but the more granular you could get get that even better so what was it so that um
you know did you increase your your uh Financial uh interest or yield because the management team
(15:13):
was able able to more effectively predict uh where they should be allocating their their investment
funds so what you want to ultimately do is get what the benefit was so if you're managing the
customer service team you want to get what the benefit was in the front to the bullet increased
customer satisfaction by what percentage increased uh something turnaround time buy so raised Revenue
(15:40):
decreased cost whatever it is we want to see what the official benefit is first that's what
people want to know what's the Delta so you need to tell me the Delta because if you just say well
I increased it well I don't know how much did you increase it one day one minute one hour or
one year so so so so so it's really important that you're answering questions that I might
(16:04):
have to show how awesome you are makes sense so you want you want the effect first and you want
the how second what most of you do is you just talk about the how or you just talk about the
how first or or you don't even put the put put the actual benefit in if you have a bullet that
(16:24):
just has the how or the how I manage the team okay that's how how how you raised customer uh
or employee Happiness by managing a team but you didn't really tell me what the benefit is just
throw that in the housekeeping area up right underneath the title if you're not absolutely
sure what the Deltas are if you know what the Deltas are from a benefits perspective you want
(16:46):
those to go in the bullet and the Delta should cover one of those eight things then the last
thing I want you to think about is the number of bullets that you have most of you have in entirely
too many bullets and nobody and I mean nobody is reading all the bullets that you have for each
(17:07):
of your different positions so when I see somebody who's been in a position for five years and has 10
bullets I'm only going to look at the top couple and then I'm going to move down and some of you
are going to say well Andy I've been in the same position for 10 years if you've been in the same
position for 10 years what I would likely do is either break up and and use a more advanced
(17:31):
tactic where you're talking about the different functions you handle and then put a couple of
bullets in each of those just so from the eye test standpoint I'm only seeing a few bullets
related to a particular topic or title there is absolutely no law that says you have to put your
title over here if I needed to so I worked with a woman a few weeks back and she said Andy well they
(17:56):
they call me a data analyst but I'm not really a a data analyst I don't want to be a data analyst
I do a lot of other things I do client relations or client service I do process efficiency and I
do do some uh uh process restructuring or process redesign uh Based on data that I analyze and draw
(18:17):
conclusions we gave her three sections of a position that she had been at for a few years
to show her client services accomplishments her process re-engineering accomplishments and her
data engineering so to speak accomplishments so we were able to show how she evolved into higher
level responsibilities even though she had the same title so there are a million ways to write
(18:43):
a resume and there are tons and tons of tricks that are really really effective but for most
of you what I'm showing you on this slide will be sufficient and and just because you've been
in a job uh 10 years let's say you're a project manager and you've been a project manager for 10
years let's just say you ran one project a year every year for 10 years so every January 1st you
(19:13):
got a new assignment you ran a new project you were an IT project manager and you helped your
company Implement a new system awesome but you don't have to take me through all 10 projects but
in your housekeeping area you could say um project manager covering handling enterprise-wide large
(19:36):
scale it systems ranging in budget from 500,000 to 2 million period during tenure managed 10 project
large scale projects manage 10 full scale software development life cycles or something like that
that shows me you had repetitions but I don't need to see a bullet for every one of those were there
(19:59):
do you want to show me the different Technologies you you you you implemented then show me the
benefits of what those individual projects who had those individual Technologies what they did
or do you want to flex your muscles as far as the solution type maybe you're going uh maybe you're
working with the engineering team implementing uh something for them maybe you uh implemented
(20:25):
a customer relationship management system for the call center team or for somebody like that
or maybe you implemented a Salesforce automation system for the sales team and you did one of those
each year for three years well are what kind of positions are you going for in the future you want
to put those bullets on your resume but you don't need to put every single one that you've ever done
(20:48):
again highlights what sells you best so there's a million ways to skin it but most people that whose
resume I look at most of them do most of this in correctly so I haven't talked as much about this
portion of the resume in my live office hour shows and in my weekly shows so I just I really wanted
(21:08):
to bring this to the Forefront to get you thinking about how to section each of these and then again
if you have multiple titles you would put another title below it you would follow the same format
with a short paragraph and then a couple of bullets and so on and so forth okay and then
(21:28):
and then you're gonna say well how far back should I go how whatever sells you best so you don't need
to list everything you ever did at a position you you held for eight years and you don't need
to list every company you've ever had for your entire life but what I want you to do is I want
you to figure out how far back should my resume go and what is it that highlights me best as far or
(21:52):
sells me best as far as how far back I should go but once I decide how far back I want to go I want
you to make sure that once you decide what what I call your cut line so your cut line could be
10 years your cut line could be 15 years your cut line could be 20 years or 30 years I don't really
care but which companies do you want to make sure that a reviewer recruiter hiring official sees
(22:14):
and once you start your chronology make sure you stay intact meaning don't omit any organizations
or companies that you worked for that were later than your cut line so if your cut line is 2004
and we're in 2024 you want to show every company you worked with for the last 20 years be before
(22:36):
2004 there are a million ways to skin that you can show just companies that you feel are gerain
you could completely omit it if you feel that sells you best you might pull forward or cherry
pick some of the companies you want to mention you could do that as well okay so this is really
what I wanted to cover here and I I want you to give me your resume questions and I'm going to
(22:58):
hit you up uh or we're going to hit those right now but one of the other things I want y'all to
know is I have a uh 70 minute of teaching resumé writing webinar it's free I'm going to have Cara
put that in the chat and she'll link that in the chat and also in the chat I see she's posted our
(23:24):
mile walk Academy website page because if you are interested in any of our programs there are
steep discounts on everything this week through Friday night but but the resume writing webinar
is completely free so you're welcome to you're welcome to to check that out Cara can drop that in
the um in the chat uh when she gets a second and let me see I know you've got some resume questions
(23:50):
maybe I need to back up and just pull this back up just in case and let me see what's what okay Shane
can you can you explain the bullet 2 and bullet 3 I thought all be sorry um what you're looking
at here is me just showing you a format and me just giving you points every sorry this is a
great question every single bullet should be about the great eight that's number one point number one
(24:18):
every single bullet should be in the format of the benefit first and how you did it second and
I'm just telling you I would probably wrap the bullets up up in three bullets per job title yes
there are exceptions some of you might have two some of you might have four just be economical
(24:39):
all every single bullet you write should be about the great eight so bullet one bullet two bullet
three all should be great eight related I'm not saying I'm not saying your first bullet
is just a big eight and the second one is not I'm saying my point number one about your bullet
is make them all the great eight point number two about bullets is make sure you cite the benefit
(25:03):
first and the the how you did it second and my third point about bullets is have three bullets
cool yeah I I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm sorry that that that is a little confusing um but that's I was
just I was trying to to have my cake eat it to put it all into one spot for you just so you could
get get get the points out and understand it was company name with a paragraph company or c current
(25:28):
title with a paragraph bullet bullet bullet they all follow all three of those Concepts and then
you go on to your next title or your next company great great question and I'm I'm I'm glad you you
asked that because I'm guessing Shane that there were I probably confused the heck out of a lot
of people all right Eric Anderson how about the adage no more than two pages I love that adage so
(25:52):
what's the question there's no reason absolutely none that any of you even if you've been working
50 years can't get your resume down to two pages and if you tell me oh Andy I just can't you give
me your resume and I will get that down to a page I will and without you losing any power
(26:14):
it's because you're stuffing in things that don't sell you best or need to be in there to sell you
best and that's what a lot of people do there are exceptions if you are working if you're targeting
the federal government you could have a 10-page resume I don't care and it could be as detailed
as you want put everything in it if you are a doctor a lawyer a researcher a Dean a professor
(26:38):
or whatever and you use more of a CV style it's okay to I once coached a woman who was a medical
doctor in an MBA and I was coaching her for a Dean position at one at three like major universities
she had multi- inters panels the whole nine yards and she had a 34-page CV and that was okay and
(27:01):
I looked at all of it Vivian how many pages for a good resume recruiters said they only want to
see two and take 30 seconds to scan Yes actually I I didn't I didn't let me see if I could do this
let me introduce you to Andy AI so for those of you that don't know this I have a digital
(27:25):
clone that's been trained on everything I ever done okay so two I don't know a couple weeks ago
I was testing it and it says how far back should your resume go I asked myself how far back should
the resume go and I want you to read this when it comes to deciding how far back your resume should
(27:46):
go the golden rule is to focus on what markets you best does that sound like me this isn't about
sticking to some arbitrary number like 10 15 or 20 didn't I just say that it's about showcasing
the experiences that highlighting your strengths and make you the most attractive candidate for the
job and it went out and figured out that I talked about this somewhere on YouTube uh and somewhere
(28:09):
in my LinkedIn workshop and somewhere in a job Min and in my resume writing workshop and so on so
Andy aai said that if you got experience from 20 to 30 years ago that are relevant don't hesitate
to include it that's true however once you decide a starting point didn't I say A cutline you need
to maintain a continuous Chron ology that means listing every job in your timeline didn't I just
(28:31):
say that avoid the gaps for those earlier roles you might not directly might not be directly
relevant but still at Value you can create a section like additional professional experience
because this is exactly what I would have told you to do this way you can highlight key achievements
that what sell you best remember your resumes a marketing document not just a work history I mean
(28:53):
I laughed so hard when I did this because this is exactly what I would say and it damn well better
be it damn well better be because I trained it so anybody who's in the job search coaching program
has access to Andy aai and if you want you can play it and it'll it talks like I do meaning it's
(29:13):
my my sound so you don't even have to read it you could let and by the way I don't know if you know
it but when you when you interact with Andy aai It'll ask you a question because it wants to get
to learn you better um what what's your current situation do you have some older experience that
you think could really make your resume pop so now it wants you to ask it a tell it more so that when
(29:37):
you log in next time it knows more about you Isn't that cool who's using Andy aai I know my boot
campers are because I can see what you're asking Andy AI all right that's that's pretty funny
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