How to Effectively Update Your Resume

It's time to update your resume—where do you start? 

Updating your resume can feel like a daunting task, especially when you want to make a powerful impression on hiring leaders. With the right structure and attention to detail, your resume can showcase your unique skills, achievements, and professional value.

In this blog, we're covering actionable strategies for crafting a resume that gets noticed and helps you stand out in a competitive job market. Let's get to work!

Craft a Strong Career Profile

Think of your Career Profile as the cover of a book—it should grab attention immediately to encourage hiring managers to keep reading. 

A well-crafted Career Profile tells the reader who you are, who you serve, your impact, and your scope:

• Who You Are: Start with your professional identity.
• Who You Serve: Define your target audience.
• Your Impact: Describe your unique outcomes in a concise way.
• Your Scope: Scope is often more transferable among organizations than titles, so instead of focusing only on a job title, give details like the size and scale of your work, which helps recruiters understand your reach.

Example:

• Who You Are: "I am a Director of HR"
• Who You Serve: "serving corporate leaders"
• Your Impact: "by driving down attrition and increasing retention rates."
• Your Scope: "I have led organizations of up to 35, including three leaders and two leader or leaders."

A powerful Career Profile quickly communicates your strengths and relevance to a hiring leader, setting the stage for the rest of your resume and showing them your place in their organization.

Build Impactful Bullet Points

When creating the bullet points in your Professional Experience, storytelling is key!

Bullet points should be compelling and comprehensive, but they also need to be concise and specific. Use the "Situation, Action, Result" (S-A-R) formula to make your achievements resonate with employers:

"When faced with this, I did this, and it yielded these results."

• Situation: Briefly describe the challenge or task you faced.
• Action: Detail the specific action items or steps you took to address the situation.
• Result: Show the impact of your actions with measurable results.

This approach gets straight to the point and demonstrates that you deliver results.

For example, instead of saying, "Improved retention," you can try:

"Reduced associate attrition by 30% year-over-year by implementing new engagement initiatives."

Notice how numbers add credibility: including metrics makes your achievements more tangible and impactful. Aim for at least one quantified result every three bullet points to strengthen your resume.

Also keep in mind that if your bullet points feel too long by following this framework, you can streamline by removing the "Situation" and focusing on the "Action" and "Result." Experiment with variations, like starting with the result, to keep the reader engaged.

Highlight Key Achievements 

Adding Career Highlights to the Career Profile section gives you the chance to pull out and feature your three or four most significant accomplishments. These key stories exemplify your skills and achievements, reinforcing the strengths you've outlined and creating a cohesive narrative that flows from top to bottom.

Basically, the Career Highlights support your Career Profile and gives hiring managers a snapshot of your most impressive work.

Importance of Having a Strong Resume

Hiring leaders are looking for more than just a list of skills—they want to see how you'll fit into their organization and the impact you'll drive.

A clear Career Profile followed by S-A-R bullets in the Career Highlights and the Professional Experience showcase your value. This approach reduces ambiguity and helps hiring managers envision you on their team.

Moreover, by crafting your resume with these elements in mind, you're also preparing for behavioral interviews. This style of interview often requires you to provide specific examples of your past experiences, so having a well-structured resume will greatly help reinforce your narrative. Learn more about behavioral interviews in this YouTube video.

Don't leave your resume success to chance. Following these concepts will transform your resume into a powerful career storytelling tool. For even more insights on updating your resume, be sure to check out this YouTube video.

Also, don't forget our FREE template, a tool designed to guide you step-by-step through developing a flawless resume. Access it here to build a resume that truly showcases your career story!