“What you just told me sounds amazing! Why isn’t that in your resume?” 

There is a major chasm between how job seekers relate their accomplishment stories verbally and what gets recorded in their resumes. I can't tell you how many times I've exclaimed the quote above after uncovering the bigger story behind an achievement while interviewing my clients. Something in their recounting routinely gets lost in translation from verbal to written storytelling, leading to resumes that undersell their accomplishments. Experience has taught me that the bridge between these radically different narratives often boils down to one key element -- context.

Let’s define our terms -- Context [noun]: the circumstances that form the setting for an event, statement, or idea, and in terms of which it can be fully understood and assessed.

WHY CONTEXT IS CRITICAL

The underlined portion of this definition forms the "why" behind my major emphasis on context in resume writing. If your target audience doesn't fully understand your results and impact, how then can you successfully convince them that you are the best fit? The goal for my clients is to have their career stories as fully understood as possible. Being understood means being seen. When your resume can engender a full(er) understanding of your candidacy, you are more likely to receive a fair(er) assessment of your ability to add value to a company. When job seekers are not getting good results from their resumes, it’s not necessarily because they are not qualified for the job, it’s more likely that their resume does not allow readers to fully appreciate why their achievements matter. A recent example comes to mind.

I was working with a client who was appointed as head of a struggling subsidiary of a major, multinational bank in West Africa and charged with leading turnaround efforts. Each role in his resume's experience section comprised of a laundry list of 10+ responsibilities, followed by a short list of 3-5 accomplishments whose descriptions left a lot to the imagination. One, in particular, stands out:

• Turned around the bank in 6 months to profitability.

While this bullet might win points for very concisely summarizing a major achievement, it's rather unsatisfying in its impact. It makes you ask, "ok...and?" While the basic components of the story are delivered, the severe lack of context disembodies what appears to be a very significant achievement from the bigger picture. This amazing achievement sounds dull and lifeless and it robs the target audience of the ability to fully understand the magnitude of my client’s impact. I asked my client to describe the scope of the challenge he inherited, the steps he took, and the results he achieved. I was able to transform the above bullet into this:

• Returned bank to profitability 2-years ahead of target, following 9-years running losses, and achieved 100% revenue improvement within first year.

This was the "headline" bullet I created, in addition to a few sub-bullet points detailing his actions. Note that there are two new details and a reframing of the 6-month timeframe from the original bullet. Looking at the two underlined portions, these small pieces of context make a radical difference in understanding because not all turnaround efforts are created equal. It's one thing to reverse a few quarters of negative performance, but it's a difference in orders of magnitude to reverse nearly a decade of losses + under a strict timeline + which he beat not by a few months, but by years! By conveying the depth of the challenge and the speed of delivery, his target audience can fully appreciate the significance of his impact. Who wouldn't want this guy to run their bank?

We all hate having our words or actions taken out of context -- so why do we often, as job seekers, fail to put our achievements in context?

When I ask clients for more information surrounding their achievements, there is often some initial hesitation. The common worry is that their resume will be "too long." We are certainly not trying to write an essay, but we are trying to paint a picture through stories, which is what context helps achieve. They say that a picture is worth a thousand words. Our job is to select about 1-2% of that 1K (10-20-ish words) to allow your audience to see your picture. 

Facts without context make for poor stories because they are boring and limit the mind's ability to see --> imagination. The rewritten bullet point above is exactly 20 words and it offers enough to spark the target audience’s imagination to build their own narratives about what my client did to pull off this amazing turnaround. This is what good storytelling is all about. The aim is to help your reader visualize and therefore understand and connect to your achievement by setting it in a context the lends meaning and allows them to draw from their own experience to fill in the gaps. The original bullet provides no answers. It simply generates a plethora of questions for the reader that the job seeker should have answered. 

How do we close the resume context gap? By adopting the mindset and lens of our best concise storytellers, journalists.

HOW A JOURNALISTIC APPROACH AUTOMATICALLY BUILDS CONTEXT

Journalists build their stories by relying on a simple set of questions known as the “Five Ws,” -- Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How. These questions guide how they report facts and place them in context to create understanding on a given issue. You can write better resumes by answering the 5W's in the best sub-combination for a given achievement. Not all 5 can or should be answered, that's where the art of storytelling comes in. Resumes automatically answer the 'what' question by reporting responsibilities. The problem is that too many job seekers don't go beyond the basics of what you did by setting it in the broader context. Essentially, you are leaving the remaining 4Ws+H unanswered, making for a far less impactful resume. Think like a journalist -- what are the natural follow-up questions you would ask for each of your achievement stories to get more information?

Who did your achievement impact? | When did your achievement happen (e.g. timeframe) | Where did your results occur? | Why was your intervention needed? | How did you make your amazing results happen?

The fundamental question employers are asking you is, “why should I hire you?” Providing helpful context in your resume and interview stories is what allows your readers to believe your answer. As I discussed in a previous post about professional branding, your response to this question cannot simply be “what” you did.

Imagine if history books summed up our present reality like this:

In 2020 the entire world went into a mandatory quarantine and the United States experienced unprecedented upheaval. It was really hard.

WHAT?!?! That's it? There's gotta be more to the story! I have so many questions...

That's what many job seekers are doing with their resumes. As we go through this global pandemic, we know the full story because we are living through it. Those who will read this history and were not alive to experience it, cannot and will not fully understand what this time was like unless we can provide proper context. In the same way that a prospective employer was not there to witness your great work achievements, they can and will never fully appreciate your lived experience unless you clearly show them why it's significant.

Context. Matters.

If you would like help getting more context into your resume, I’d love to support you!
BOOK NOW for a free resume consultation.

niiato@avenircareers.com | Call/text 917-740-3048