What Makes a Great Resume?

If you’re struggling to get your resume noticed, it’s time to add some soul into it. Don’t treat it like a document with laundry list of your responsibilities and successes. Rather, work on converting it into a document that conveys what truly motivates you as a professional.

• Start by creating a back-office version of your resume. Write down an unedited list detailing your complete work history, including the jobs you took up to earn additional money or the one you were fired from. Then, reflect on your personal and professional strengths and talents.
• Use your back-office resume to discern what you want to share on your actual resume. Consider what work has left you with strong negative or positive emotions. Both feel-good emotions and difficult emotions can help you describe your accomplishments in a nuanced way and identify what you want in your next role.
• Now use the back-office resume to rework what you want to showcase. Instead of saying, “Secured a grant funding of $500,000 for youth programming,” say, “Critical thinking and exceptional writing abilities allowed me to secure $500,000 in grant funding for an innovative youth program that helped them develop their leadership skills by writing an online magazine alternative to Teen Vogue.”
• You can take your resume to the next level by adding some creative sections that reflect the uniqueness of what you bring. Consider an international work and living section or one that showcases your artistic practice.

Resumes have come a long way, from a laundry list of job responsibilities to documents that speak to the qualitative and quantitative impact you’ve had at work. But they’re still mostly devoid of emotion and don’t convey what truly motivates you as a professional.

Cathy Wasserman is a leadership coach, organization development consultant, licensed master social worker, and ‘social experimentrice’ dedicated to re-imagining what’s possible for individuals, organizations and society. She is the co-author of “The Empowered Job Search: Build a New Mindset and Get a Great Job in an Unpredictable World.” Cathy has an MSW from Smith College and a BA in Psychology from Wesleyan University. She trained in mediation with the New York Peace Institute and in Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication.

Lauren Weinstein leads career discovery and enablement for Microsoft’s global sales organization. Previously, she was the Director of Leadership Development at Degreed and has worked in executive search at Marcum, as an in-house career coach at Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies and as a management consultant at Accenture. She is the co-author of “The Empowered Job Search: Build a New Mindset and Get a Great Job in an Unpredictable World” and the author of “Coaching is Calling: A Guide to Coach Training Programs and Professional Career Paths.” She is a certified leadership coach, holds a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania and is completing her masters and EdD at Penn in organizational leadership and learning. Connect with her on LinkedIn.