Writing Your Resume From Scratch? Start Here.

When you haven’t touched your resume in years, you likely need to drastically rewrite it, or potentially start from scratch. Here are my four favorite tips to get started.

Look at Job Descriptions First

Before you ever put pen to paper (or fingers to keys), you need to understand what potential employers care about and expect. This seems counterintuitive at first. Why should you look externally to create your resume—a document intimately focused on your personal experience?

My reasoning is as follows: you’re too close to your own accomplishments. You likely have attached feelings and memories to specific successes in your career, and this can skew your perception of what really matters.

Looking at job descriptions for positions you want will help you frame your resume around skills, experiences and achievements that matter to potential employers. From there, you can pick and choose the career accomplishments that will make the biggest impact in your job search.

Action: Find 10-15 job postings that might be interesting to you. Copy the bullets in the job description and paste them into a duplicate word finder like this, and see what words show up the most. Look for specific software, skills, responsibilities and other items that correlate with the job titles you want to pursue.

Share Results, Not Activities

Now that you know how to frame your resume to match employer expectations, you need to begin writing bullets. You may be tempted to simply describe your daily/weekly/monthly activities and call it a day. I politely ask you to resist that temptation.

Listing activities gives no context about your attractiveness as a candidate, leaving your resume feeling empty and bland. Instead, reframe each bullet to show what resulted from your activities. Be as specific as you can, including numbers and descriptive outcomes whenever possible.

“But Steve, my job doesn’t really have accomplishments, I just [insert excuse here]”.

Almost everyone tells me this. If you were gainfully employed for any decent amount of time, its because you provided value to your employer. And if you’re providing value, there’s a result involved. Find it.

Example 1: Michael Phelps

• [Activity] Represented the United States in the Olympic Games for swimming
• [Result] Won a record 18 Gold Medals in swimming for the US across three Olympic Games

Example 2: SAT Prep Tutor

• [Activity] Helped local high school students prepare for the SATs
• [Result] Helped thousands of students score an average of 200 points higher on the SATs

Example 3: Sales Ops Manager

• [Activity] Implemented new automated calling platform for sales team that resulted in more outbound calling
• [Result] Led implementation of RingCentral for sales, improving outbound calling activity by 33%

Start With More Than You Need…

Traditional resumes suffer from a timeless restraint: they need to be printed, and thus, need to fit on a standard 8.5×11″ sheet of paper. This restraint causes many to focus too much on layout and design rather than writing meaningful, result based bullets.

Enter the master template. The master resume should be a plain document devoid of design or styling. The goal of this document is to be a holding tank for all your bullets, allowing you to list all your accomplishments from past jobs without fear of running into another page or leaving something important on the table.

Creating a master resume template gives you the creative freedom to try writing new bullets, knowing that no one will ever see this document (except for you.) This becomes critical when tailoring your resume for different job listings, allowing you to quickly customize without rewriting bullets from memory each time.

Action: Create a new document, and don’t you dare touch the font, colors, size or margins. List all your relevant jobs, and begin filling in achievement-based bullets for them. Let this document run wild – it doesn’t matter if it’s one page or three.

…But Be a Ruthless Editor

There’s always a but. That 8.5×11″ restriction didn’t disappear, and at some point you will have to consider practical restraints when making your final resume. Some experts say to dedicate one page of your resume for every 10 years of experience you have, but I tend to disagree with this. Most people tend to focus on “what have you done for me lately” and care more about your most recent positions than your first entry-level job years ago.

This is where all the advice above comes into play. Every iteration of your resume needs to be a tightly written, accomplishment driven document that aligns with the job description you’re applying for.

Being your own editor can be tough. You need to put yourselves in the shoes of the person reviewing the resume, and ask “what are the 4-5 most important things they care about?” You are competing against time, against other candidates, and against the attention span of the resume reviewer, so it’s critical you delete less relevant bullets.

Besides, there’s one other factor you need to keep in mind: the sole role of the resume is to land you an interview. It’s a first impression, a catchy hook. Landing the interview gives you an opportunity to dive deeper into your experience and share a more nuanced view of your career.

There’s a lot that goes into creating your resume, but I hope these four tips can help you get started. If I missed anything, or if I’m dead-wrong, please share your thoughts with me in the comments.