4 Resume Tips For Career Pivots
Summary:
Many resumes lack contextualization, making them less relevant to the job. This is especially important when switching industries or roles. Boost your chances of an interview by using four underutilized resume tips:
Summarize each job in one line
Generalize titles
Add an elevator pitch summary
Explain career anomalies
The Problem:
Recruiters spend an average of 7 seconds on a resume. Most resumes only focus on accomplishments, expecting recruiters to connect the dots for themselves. For example, they try to say they have 10 years of product management experience, without once saying product manager in the resume. This article provides 4 ways to add contextualization and highlight why you're the ideal candidate for the job.
1) The One Liner
Since your resumes should focus more on your accomplishments, it loses important context about your role and relevant meta-experience. The one-line job summary addresses this by clarifying each role and highlighting the breadth of your experience. It's like answering the icebreaker question "what do you do?" but in typical resume fashion -- highly succinct, richly worded, and specifically curated.
Clarity
Clarity comes in two main forms -- your scope and your job description. Scope can include things like the size of the team or portfolio you managed, the breadth of the project you covered, etc. For example, a Director at a small company will have a different scope than a Director of a Fortune 500 company.
The other type of clarity needed is your job description. This is especially important if your role has an obscure title and when switching industries or business units (as recruiters and hiring managers will be less familiar with other industries and organizations). Your job description is most succinctly summarized by the outcome your role is responsible for. Once you clarify this in your one-liner, your bullet points explaining 'how' and ‘what’ you accomplished will make more sense.
Experience
Your 'meta' experience is your leadership experience, as well as your technical, functional, and industry experience. Your meta experience is just as valuable as your accomplishments and often keywords that recruiters look for. Use the one-liner to highlight your various experiences.
Tips:
For both of the above, consider your audience. What keywords and descriptions are important to the hiring manager and recruiter? Will they be familiar with the specific acronyms, terminology, or performance indicators you mention? How do titles, roles, etc, differ in your industry, and is this important context to highlight?
Your one-liner can be more than 1 sentence but it should fit to one line.
Here are a few examples:
Principal Design Engineer
Owned end-to-end design and validation of cellular Wifi module. Delivered 2 within a 2-year timeframe.
Security Lieutenant
Led a 12-man security team protecting the physical safety of a govt building (day & night).
Senior Product Manager
Technical PM prioritizing features for a B2B Fintech SaaS solution. Worked with 20 person team; $1M revenue generated.
Current Business Manager
Responsible for global lifecycle mgmt (intros, end-of-life, & sales goals) of a $500 M hardware product category.
2) Generalize Titles
When you have company or industry-specific job titles, it's wise to generalize them. This is especially recommended when switching industries, companies, or organizations. How do you know if your title is too specific? The first test is to look at the job you're applying to. How general is the title they use compared to yours? Also, look at the job description. If the job description is something that you've done before but the title it's listed under is different from yours, then you probably need to generalize your title.
In the examples above, the Security Lieutenant and Current Business Manager are two industry and company-specific terms.
Tips:
Don't generalize 'levels' (i.e. director, principal, senior, etc.). You'll explain the scope of your level in your one-liner.
The goal is NOT to lie. Don't just copy the title you're applying to. The goal is to make your title understandable across industries, companies, or internal business units.
Examples:
Security Lieutenant might become --> "Security Team Manager" or "Manager - Building Security"
Current Business Manager might become --> "Lifecycle Product Manager", "Downstream Product Manager", "Product Marketing Manager", "Business Manager" or even simpler "Product Manager"
3) Elevator Pitch Summary
The elevator pitch summary is more common but still underutilized or misused on resumes. The purpose is to make your sales pitch.
It answers the common interview question, "so tell me about yourself" and "why are you the best fit". Some applicants lean on the cover letter for this, but those aren't always read. Plus, conciseness is a virtue. Hence, the recommended elevator pitch. Toward the top of your resume, in two to three lines, summarize your career while highlighting how it will help the hiring manager achieve their goals.
Consider these questions:
What is their goal?
What is this job responsible for delivering?
What is the hiring manager trying to accomplish through this role?
How you can help them achieve their goal?
How are your past accomplishments going to help the hiring manager?
How do your skills and experience match with what they're looking for?
Why are you the best person for this role?
The key is to focus on their needs and how your experience will help them. But have caution. If done poorly it can sound self-centered, inauthentic, or like a bland, self-aggrandizing list of your achievements, titles, or career objective. While this isn't ideal, it is better than nothing.
When done right, the elevator pitch can be powerful. First, it shows that you understand their challenges. Second, it positions your skills and achievements in a selfless way as it's positioned to show how you'd help them further their objective. And third, it allows you to describe yourself as you want them to see you. This is especially important when switching industries or business units. See the example below of the Security Manager who's applying to an HR Learning and Development role.
Examples:
[The Engineer]
An electrical engineer with a PhD and 5 years of experience. A proven track record of designing and delivering cellular, WIFI, and Bluetooth chips for Fortune 500 companies. Demonstrated leadership through an increasing level of both technical scope and people responsibility.
[The Product Manager]
A product manager with 5 years of experience, achieving customer satisfaction and quarterly sales targets through innovative marketing tactics. First, by leveraging data to intimately understand the customer. Next, by ideating strategic marketing tactics personalized to each persona/region, and then executing through cross-functional collaboration.
[The Lifecycle Manager]
I help companies successfully bring new products to market, supporting the end-to-end product lifecycle -- from pre-launch to production, to in-market sales, and end-of-life rollovers. Leveraging 5 years as a hardware product marketing manager & 2 years in supply chain, I can help maximize profits through portfolio rationalization and cost reductions.
[The Security Lieutenant - applying to a Learning & Development position]
A people leader passionate about developing others to maximize their potential. I have 10 years of experience improving employee retention, individual performance ratings, and designing training curriculums for various formats.
Common mistakes:
Treating it like an objective section (i.e. "I'm seeking to …"). Don't make it about what you want... make it about what they want.
Not being relevant or tailored to the job.
Too lengthy. (It's not a cover letter)
Being too buzzwordy or general that it carries no meaning or feels inauthentic.
It includes the company name or role you're applying to. Don't say "I help companies like [company name]"…as you may forget to change that with the next company you apply to.
You forget or don't update it when you apply to a new role
Tip:
Start your first sentence with what you'll help them achieve.
Consider an overall theme that connects your career. For example, "Helping companies identify cost savings through data."
Be concise. Stick to 2 or 3 lines.
Do the math for them. State how many years of experience you have.
Connect the dots for them. Explain the nuances in your resume. (see Lifecycle Manager summary and how they weave in the supply chain experience).
Lastly, always tailor it to the needs of the job you're applying to.
4) Explain career anomalies
Anomalies can make us seem irrelevant because they're misconstrued as red flags or they raise too many questions. So this last piece of advice provides the clarity needed to show that you are still relevant and worthy of consideration.
It's to address things like career gaps and unusual time frames that are often caused by external or personal factors.
Common reasons for anomalies are:
Taking time off to raise your family
Taking time off to care for a sick family member.
Changing jobs too quickly.
Getting laid off.
Taking a year off to travel the world.
Going back to school.
Taking longer than usual to finish school.
Switching schools.
Taking a lower level position.
Working two jobs.
You should only address the anomaly if it's a glaring issue or you have received questions about it in previous interviews. You'd address the anomalies differently depending on what the anomaly was.
Give Your Life Event A Job Title
For job gaps, add the reason for your gap like you would add a job on your resume. Only add it if you took more than a year off AND if there's a clear career "gap" on your resume. Common titles used: Maternity Gap (year - year), Career Break (year - year), Family Leave (year -year)
Add An Asterisk
For anomalies that require a longer explanation, consider adding an asterisk next to the anomaly and then putting a short explanation in the footer. Keep it to one sentence and put it in smaller, footnote-sized font (i.e. font size 6 or 8).
Remove or Consolidate
Lastly, consider simply removing the anomaly or consolidating it. This is particularly advised if:
explaining it would create more confusion or make you sound irrelevant,
it's too complex to explain, or
it's too complex visually
This may be best when you've held several roles in such a short time span. Let's say there were a number of reasons why you had four jobs in four years. Visually, listing all four roles may look overwhelming on your resume and/or it may look like a red flag. So one option, if the jobs were similar, is to consolidate them into a generalized role. I'd only recommend this if the jobs immediately followed one another, were with the same company, and had similar enough responsibilities. For example, maybe you went from a Product Marketing role to a Product Manager role…or you went from Product Marketing for the software team and then moved over to the hardware organization. In either case, you could consolidate them under one job title -- Product Manager -- and do a generic one-liner that summarizes the scope of both roles.
Another option is to leave it off your resume. I'd only advise this if the role isn't relevant to the job you're applying to and if removing the job would not create a gap on your resume. For example, if you held a job for six months, then it might not be worth putting on your resume.
Connect The Dots In Your Elevator Pitch Summary
If your experience is all over the place, then use your elevator pitch summary to highlight how the experience ties together to meet your future employer's needs. For example: jumping from supply chain, to finance, to marketing might give you a "holistic picture of how businesses operate and deliver products at scale".
Tips:
Keep it sequential
Keep it to a few general words:
"family leave"...
"personal sabbatical"...
"continuing education"...
"Explored career options"...
Avoid negative phrases like "downsized" or "fired". Save those terms for your interview where you can explain, in detail, what happened. For your resume keep it neutral and high level like "explored career options".
Summary:
You can add create a more relevant resume by adding context (through a one-liner), making it transcendent of industry (by generalizing titles and adding an elevator pitch summary), and premtively addressing red flags (by explaining career anomalies). These are 4 ways you can boost your chances of an interview.
What did we miss? What techniques do you use?
(Reminder, never lie on your resume. These tips are not suggesting that you be untruthful. Do not lie on your resume, to utilize one of these tips.)
