Write a Resume That Stands Out by Amy Gallo

Author: Amy Gallo

The résumé: There are so many conflicting recommendations out there. Should you keep it to one page? Do you put a summary on top? Do you include personal interests and volunteer gigs? And how do you make it catch the hiring manager’s eye among tons of other ones? A résumé may be your best chance to make a good first impression, so you’ve got to get it right.

What the Experts Say

“There’s nothing quick or easy about crafting an effective résumé,” says Jane Heifetz, a résumé expert and the founder of Right Résumés. Don’t think you’re going to sit down and hammer it out in an hour. “You have to think carefully about what to say and how to say it so the hiring manager thinks, ‘This person can do what I need done,’” she says. After all, it’s more than a résumé. “It’s a marketing document,” says John Lees, a U.K.-based career strategist and the author of Knockout CV. It’s not just hiring managers who are your ideal audience. You might also send out a résumé to people in your network who can help make introductions. “In a tough market, your CV has to get you remembered and recommended,” he says. (A CV is a complete history of your work and experience, whereas a résumé is a shorter, more focused picture of your background.) Here’s how to write a résumé that will be sure to win attention.

Customize it

First things first: Don’t send the same résumé to every job. “You can have a foundational résumé that compellingly articulates the most important information,” says Heifetz, but you have to alter it for each opportunity. You’ll usually need to write the first version in a vacuum, but for each subsequent one, you need context. Heifetz recommends that, as a first step, you carefully read the job description and highlight the five or six most important responsibilities, as well as a few keywords that you can use in your résumé. This exercise should then inform what you write in your summary and which experiences and accomplishments you include. Each version doesn’t need to be radically different, but you should “tweak it for the position, the industry, et cetera,” says Lees. He suggests that you might change the sequence of the bullet points, for example, or switch up the language in your summary.

Yes, you do need a summary on top

The first 15 to 20 words of your résumé are critically important “because that’s how long you usually have a hiring manager’s attention,” says Lees. Start with a brief summary of your expertise. You’ll have the opportunity to expand on your experience further down in your résumé and in your cover letter. For now, keep it short. “It’s a very rich, very brief elevator pitch that says who you are, why you’re qualified for the job, and why you’re the right person to hire,” says Heifetz. “You need to make it exquisitely clear in the summary that you have what it takes to get the job done.” It should consist of a descriptor or job title like “Information security specialist who . . .” Lees explains, “It doesn’t matter if this is the exact job title you’ve held before or not.” It should match what they’re looking for. Here are two examples:

• Health care executive with over 25 years of experience leading providers of superior patient care

• Strategy and business development executive with substantial experience designing, leading, and implementing a broad range of corporate growth and realignment initiatives

And be sure to avoid clichés like “highly motivated professional.” Using platitudes in your summary or anywhere else in the document is “basically like saying, ‘I’m not more valuable than anyone else,’” explains Lees. They are meaningless, obvious, and boring to read.

You may be tempted to skip this part of the résumé, but don’t, advises Heifetz. If you’re struggling to write it, ask a friend, a former colleague, or a mentor what they would say if they were going to recommend you for a job, suggests Lees. And then use those words. Or you can ask yourself what you’d want someone to say about you if they were making an introduction to the hiring manager.

Get the order right

If you’re switching industries, don’t launch into job experience that the hiring manager may not think is relevant. Heifetz suggests adding an accomplishments section right after your summary that makes the bridge between your experience and the job requirements. “These are main points you want to get across, the powerful stories you want to tell,” she says. “It makes the reader sit up straight and say, ‘Holy cow, I want to talk to her. Not because of who she is but because of what she’s done.’”

After the accomplishments section, list your employment history and related experience. Then add any relevant education. Some people want to put their education toward the top. Doing so might be appropriate in academia, but for a business résumé, you should highlight your work experience first and save your degrees and certifications for the end.

And that ever-popular skills section? Heifetz recommends skipping it altogether. “If you haven’t convinced me that you have those skills by the end of the résumé, I’m not going to believe it now,” she explains. If you have expertise with a specific type of software, for example, include it in the experience section. And if it’s a drop-dead requirement for the job, also include it in the summary at the very top.

Don’t worry too much about gaps

One of the questions that Lees and Heifetz get asked regularly is how to account for gaps in a résumé, perhaps when you weren’t working or took time off to care for a family member. If you were doing something that might be relevant to the job during that time, you can include it. Or you might consider explaining the gap in your cover letter, as long as you have a brief, positive explanation. However, the good news is that in today’s job market, hiring professionals are much more forgiving of gaps. In a recent survey, 87% of hiring managers said that they no longer see candidates’ periods of unemployment as a red flag.

Be selective

It’s tempting to list every job, accomplishment, volunteer assignment, skill, and degree you’ve ever had, but don’t. “A résumé is a very selective body of content,” says Heifetz. “It’s not meant to be comprehensive. If it doesn’t contribute to convincing the hiring manager to talk to you, then take it out.” This advice applies to volunteer work as well. Only include it as part of your experience—right along with your paid jobs—if it’s relevant.

So what about the fact that you raise angora rabbits and are an avid Civil War reenactor? “Readers are quite tolerant of non-job-related stuff, but you have to watch your tone,” says Lees. If you’re applying for a job at a more informal company that emphasizes the importance of work-life balance, you might include a line about your hobbies and interests. For a more formal, buttoned-up place, you’ll probably want to take out anything personal.

Share accomplishments, not responsibilities

“My rule of thumb is that 95% of what you talk about should be framed as accomplishments,” says Heifetz. “I managed a team of 10” doesn’t say much. You need to dig a level deeper. Did everyone on your team earn promotions? Did they exceed their targets? Lees agrees: “Give tangible, concrete examples. If you’re able to attach percentages or dollar signs, people will pay even more attention.” But you can’t and shouldn’t quantify everything; you don’t want your résumé to read like an accounting report.

Make it readable

Lees says the days of needing a one-page résumé are over: “It used to be that you used a tiny font size, fiddled with the margins, and crammed in the information to make it fit.” Nowadays, two or three pages is fine, but that’s the limit: “Any more than three, and it shows that you can’t edit.” Heifetz agrees: “If you’re going to tell a compelling story, you’ll need more space.” You can supplement what’s on the page with links to your work, but you have to “motivate the hiring manager to take the extra step required. Don’t just include the URL. Tell them in a brief one-line phrase what’s so important about the work you’re providing,” she says.

And stick to the most common fonts and avoid fancy layouts that may not be recognized by online application systems. “It’s not how fancy it is [that matters]. It’s how clear, clean, and elegant it is in its simplicity,” says Heifetz. Vary the line length and avoid crammed text or paragraphs that look identical. The goal is to include enough white space so that a hiring manager wants to keep reading. For example, the opening summary could be three or four lines of text or two or three bullet points. “It just needs to be easy to read,” says Heifetz.

Ask for help

It can be hard to be objective about your own experience and accomplishments. Many people overstate—or understate—their achievements or struggle to find the right words. Consider working with a résumé writer, a mentor, or a friend who can help you steer away from questions like “Am I good enough for this position?” and focus on “Am I the right person for the job?” If you do ask a friend for feedback, be specific about what you want them to look out for. Asking a generic question like “Does this look OK to you?” is most likely going to get you a generic response (“Looks fine to me!”). At a minimum, have someone else check for logic, grammar, spelling, and punctuation.

Align your LinkedIn profile

Your LinkedIn profile is just as important as your résumé. You want to make sure you’re presenting yourself in the same way. But don’t just cut and paste from your résumé. LinkedIn is a different beast altogether, so you want to make the best use of the platform’s features. “You don’t have to use bullet points; you can be more narrative, and even more casual,” says Heifetz. You also want to tweak the tone. “There’s a greater expectation that you’ll demonstrate personality,” she adds. “For example, the summary section should be written in the first person. It gives you the opportunity to present yourself as a living, breathing human being.”

Case study: Get an outside perspective

Several months into her previous job, Claire realized that she needed a change. “The job, the industry, and the institution were not the right fit for me. It just wasn’t where I wanted to be in my career,” she explains. She started to look at job descriptions, homed in on positions or organizations that were interesting to her, and then decided to work with a professional résumé writer. “I tried to do a little changing and reshaping on my own at first, but it didn’t feel all that different from where I began,” she says. Working with someone else helped her see that the résumé was not about explaining what she’d done in her career but why she was the best person for a particular job.

Claire started with one résumé and then tailored it to each position. “You have the same raw materials—the accomplishments, the skills, the results you achieved over time—but you have to pick and choose to shape those things into a different narrative,” Claire says. The summary, which on her résumé consisted of three bullet points, was the element she tweaked the most. For example, when she applied to be an editor, the first bullet point read:

Versatile writer and editor committed to speaking directly to readers’ needs

But when she applied for a marketing position, she tweaked it to emphasize her ability to recruit customers and be a brand champion:

Innovative brand champion and customer recruiter in marketing, product development, and communications

Then, before launching into a chronological list of her jobs, she highlighted “selected accomplishments” related to each point in her summary. For example, under “writer and editor,” she included three achievements, including this one:

Using customer data and email performance metrics, wrote new email series to provide prospective students with more targeted information about Simmons and to convert more of them to applicants. Improved performance over past emails producing average open rates of more than 20%.

Claire equates collaborating with a résumé professional to working with a personal trainer. She felt challenged to keep rewriting and improving. And the hard work paid off. She recently landed a full-time job.

Amy Gallo is a contributing editor at Harvard Business Review, a cohost of the Women at Work podcast, and the author of two books: Getting Along and the HBR Guide to Dealing with Conflict (both Harvard Business Review Press, 2022 and 2017, respectively). She writes and speaks about workplace dynamics. Watch her TEDx talk on conflict, and follow her on LinkedIn.