One of my favorite rappers has a line that says, “...[I] sketch lyrics so visual // They rent my rhyme books at your nearest home video.” In this vein, I strongly encourage my clients to be as vivid as possible when it comes to telling their achievement stories in their resumes. Writing a resume can certainly feel much more like an art than a science, but to achieve success in telling your story, you’ll need a bit of both. From the scientific discipline, we can draw upon certain laws that can help govern how we paint our career pictures, to ensure maximum impact on our target audience. Underselling often occurs in resumes when these laws aren’t followed.
In the previous post, we explored some reasons why people undersell themselves in resumes. Below we will explore 6 specific ways in which underselling manifests itself when writing your resume and how to fix them.
6 Ways You Might be Underselling Yourself in Your Resume
1. Listing responsibilities
This is the most common trap that job seekers fall into when crafting a resume. Writing responsibilities is equivalent to writing your job description. By simply reporting the details of your job function you render yourself functionally indistinguishable from anyone else in a similar role.
FIX-IT: It’s not a product’s features (read, responsibilities) but what they do for us that makes us buy it. Show your readers what you can do for them by describing the unique flavor you bring to your responsibilities as evidenced by the impact and results you have achieved.
2. Vague Language and Descriptors
If you have words such as “large,” “multiple,” “in record time,” etc. in your resume, you are using descriptions that are inaccessible to your audience because they are not in your head and don’t know your context. Using, “multiple” as a descriptor could mean 3 or 33, but your audience can’t possibly know that. A ‘large’ program in a $5M vs. $50M company looks completely different.
FIX-IT: Find and replace all such vague descriptors in your resume with precise numbers or additional context such as, comparison to previous year’s performance, the market average or even a qualitative descriptor that allows your reader the ability to see through your eyes.
3. Lack of context surrounding your achievements
Following from above, providing context is critical to creating understanding and connection with your audience. There is a world of difference between a resume bullet point which states that you “helped to expand a product portfolio” vs. you “created the company’s first ever product portfolio in vertical X.” This is a true story from a client that I worked with who, through simple omission of context, was radically changing the impact of his achievement. Context is critical!
FIX-IT: Your target audience does not have foreknowledge of the circumstances surrounding your achievements, it’s up to you to paint that picture. If they don’t know what things looked like before or during your intervention, they cannot fully appreciate the magnitude of your impact. A simple framework is to tell a “before/after” story, where you play the solution hero.
4. “Stats but no story”
If you are in sales, operations, supply chain, or some other heavily stats-driven role, it’s a necessity that you provide metrics and quantify your achievements. However, you can’t just end there. Any accomplished professional is going to meet or exceed their targets. Your challenge as a job seeker is to stand out in a group of overachievers. It’s not enough to simply report your numbers, you need to take your audience behind the scenes to give them the story that sets your numbers in context and sets you apart.
FIX-IT: Tell your reader “the how story” behind your stats. What did you do that was different, better, or more innovative than those around you that enabled you to achieve those great numbers? Everyone at your level is going to have numbers in a similar ballpark to you, the magic happens in the story of the unique way that you arrived at yours.
5. Making yourself sound junior
I’ve seen clients with 15+ years of experience have language such as, “as directed,” “as assigned,” or “according to company procedure,” in their resumes. Regardless of your career level, language like this does two things: 1) it exudes an entry-level mindset and 2) robs you of agency.
FIX-IT: I’m quite sure you don’t simply receive orders and execute like a drone. Look for opportunities to show how you took initiative with your prescribed responsibilities, met or exceeded pre-set targets, or even improved existing processes. Instead of sounding junior, go to the opposite extreme and position yourself for promotion by demonstrating how you proactively get things done and already perform at the next level.
6. Passive vs. proactive language
Passive language in a resume might look like this: “Annual production targets were exceeded by 27%.” It’s written in the third person and makes you sound like a reporter, summarizing someone else’s achievements. It’s also a rather dull way to tell what should be an exciting accomplishment story.
FIX-IT: Place yourself at the center of the action as the key protagonist and use strong action verbs that launch the reader into your story and demonstrate how you move and act. Some of my favorites include, “Pioneered,” “Spearheaded,” and “Initiated.” This is your exciting story, don’t be passive in telling it or external to the action.
Writing a resume is about demonstrating to an audience who knows nothing about you, that you are the best candidate for the job. The most effective way for you to have them draw that conclusion is by helping them see through your eyes how you are the solution to their current business challenges. This can only happen through effective, and memorable storytelling that invites the audience into your world. Avoiding the traps discussed here will help you a good way on that journey.
If you would like to discuss how you can improve the storytelling in your resume, I’d love to support you! BOOK NOW for a free resume consultation.
niiato@avenircareers.com | Call/text 917-740-3048