Six tips for writing a great leadership resume

Tell your story. Your resume at this level should be more than a list of experiences. Take some time to really think about who you are and what you’d like to do next. With that in mind, think about how each experience in your professional life has led you to this moment, influenced these goals, and how you can tell that story on your resume. This is your story, your brand, and your chance to show potential employers who you are as a leader.

Don’t reuse an old resume! Far too many people just add their most recent job to an old resume rather than writing a new one. Here’s why that isn’t serving you. Your resume should tell an overarching story or narrative about you and your career. A chronological list of experiences lacks personality and depth. It also likely includes a lot of details that aren’t relevant anymore. As you apply for new jobs as a senior leader, the day-to-day responsibilities of a job you had ten years ago don’t matter as much as that job’s role in your professional arc does. Forgetting to reframe each job into the narrative you’re trying to tell right now leaves your resume seeming choppy. Remember that leadership jobs are big-picture. Your resume should be too. Don’t bog anyone down with too many details. 

Get rid of old or irrelevant experiences. As you advance in your career, you no longer need to include old experiences on your resume. You don’t have to include the first job you had after college or the short stint between jobs fifteen years ago. Dedicate the space on your resume to your more impactful roles.

Make sure you include a professional summary. A professional summary is the most important part of your resume. It should stand alone and be something that a recruiter or colleague could copy and paste into an email to introduce you to someone. Aim for 3-5 sentences. Ideally, it should be the only thing on your resume that an employer or recruiter would need to read to understand you and your career goals. Because a lot of jobs at this level come from personal connections, networking, or referrals, you need a nice bio that someone can forward instead of a resume.

Ensure that your resume is cohesive with your LinkedIn profile and your brand. The first thing an interested employer will do after they look at your resume is probably go to your LinkedIn. Your resume should match your LinkedIn profile and activity in terms of messaging, experience, and brand. The story you tell in your resume should be reflected on your LinkedIn profile as well.

Don’t use company specific jargon. We can’t say this one enough: you need to use functional titles on your resume. If your company calls your job a “Level 4 Tech Leader” but you are a software engineering team lead, write the latter on your resume. No matter how well-known your company is, use industry terminology for your job title and responsibilities. This goes for other jargon as well. Don’t assume that people know what OKR, KPI, CRM, or anything else means. Be kind, write out things in full. Don’t make people open up three google searches just to read your resume.

We received a lot of questions about writing a leadership resume after this article so we've written a FAQ article. Check it out here. Feel free to reach out to us at "content at meytier.com" with any other questions!

If you need help telling your story, join us for our free webinar on September 26th, "How to use your story to stand out: show your value and be memorable." Register here.