PROVE IT. An important part of your resume detail is the outcome of your efforts. The size of the budget you managed, the frequency of publications, the number of events you planned, the number of people who attended events, the number of articles you wrote weekly on which complex topics, etc. Who you reported to and who reported to you.
#SHORT SUMMARY THE JOURNEY BACK PROFESSIONAL#
SHOW THE SIZE AND SCOPE OF YOUR RESPONSIBILITIES. For both volunteer and professional roles Jane needs to provide all the facts and figures that show that she had significant responsibilities. You didn’t just “chair the book fair”, you managed 50 volunteers, 10 committees, a budget of X, etc. In the job descriptions she can indicate that the roles were volunteer, but the non-profit heading gives the work a lift in importance.ĭESCRIBE YOUR VOLUNTEER WORK IN BUSINESS TERMS. Any volunteer role worthy of listing on your resume should be described in the same way you would describe professional paid work. Under this heading she will include her major volunteer posts (not the small things like room mother) which all were, in fact, at non-profit organizations. She also does not zero in on the fact that she is a Baby Boomer with significant online publication experience or that the focus of her writing has been many CEOs and other household names.ĮLEVATE YOUR VOLUNTEER EXPERIENCE. Rather than relegating very significant, high-level volunteer work to “second cousin” status, I advised Jane to create a “Non-Profit Experience” heading. She mentions, for example, that she has worked for “a diverse range of publications”-not revealing at least one very high profile name. Jane’s resume does have a summary statement, but it is blah and bland. Instead, talk about your major skills, experience and accomplishments in about four sentences. Don’t pigeonhole yourself by saying you’re looking for a specific kind of job. Now what you need is a summary statement: who you are and what you have to offer written in the third person. KNOCK ‘EM OVER THE HEAD WITH A COMPELLING SUMMARY STATEMENT. The tops of resumes no longer have “Objectives”. If you write succinct paragraphs, you don’t need the bullet point emphasis. One of the ways to shorten a resume is to get rid of bullet points. The idea that a resume must be only one page is so 1982. KEEP IT SHORT AND SWEET. Currently Jane’s resume is three pages, and the maximum is two pages in a clean 10-point font. Here are some action steps I gave Jane that may apply to your resume as well… To make sure that potential employers also think Jane is an attractive candidate, her resume needs to be in top-notch condition. Jane is just like all the others-she has a master’s degree from a top-tier school and a resume filled with interesting work-including a pretty cool job at a major magazine and many years as a mega-volunteer. So many returning professional women have SO MUCH to offer, and as I’ve told Jane, it’s just a matter of packaging a lifetime of interesting skills and experience. Hmmmmm….I would think as I stared at attractive, totally put together, well educated women who told me, in the next sentence, some variation of “I went to Princeton, got an MBA and used to be a VP at a major Wall Street bank”. Back in 2002 when I was fishing around for a new entrepreneurial idea, I thought about the number of women I met who told me, with great chagrin, “I’d love to work again but I don’t know who would want me now after so many years out of the workforce”.
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