If we look at an example of what Peggy's resume might look like, here are the first three points: #1, we have “a graduate of Miss Deaver's Secretary School”, then we have “contributed to copy for women's products including Belle Jolie Lipstick and Playtex” and “Responsible for printing sample ad campaigns for client meetings.” What do we assume about Peggy from the resume? and does she seem like management material?

It seems like the consensus is not great, this isn't presenting Peggy's skills as well as she could.
Let's see what we can do to fix it up. On the “don't” side of things, you don't want to position yourself as someone who just does tasks. Instead, you do want to position yourself as someone who “defines” tasks. What I mean by this, is someone that comes up with the ideas, lays out the strategy, and takes the initiative to get things started. You don't want to just talk about the duties you had, but the results you created and quantify them.

In Peggy's example, you could clearly see we have someone that does specific tasks—contributes to copy and prints off ad campaigns—but for a manager role, this isn't really what hiring professionals are looking for. They want to see more involvement in defining strategy and the tasks involved. Even if part of your current role is doing these kinds of tasks, a resume that focuses on these tasks won't stand out to someone who wants to hire a manager. Instead, you want to focus your resume on the things you’ve done that are related to the manager role.

When writing a management resume, the words you use matter. We can see that from Peggy's resume. You want to use action words that emphasize your leadership skills and the value you created, not words that just emphasize your ability to perform tasks. You don't want to use words like “printed, entered, provided, performed.” You want to use words like “created, initiated, directed, and spearheaded.” You also want to try to avoid corporate buzzwords, company specific, or industry specific terms. You don't want to use these highly specific terms unless, of course, they're relevant to the posting you're actually applying to.

The stats kind of back this up too, to show that the words you use matter. There's a 51% increased response rate when you use leadership-oriented words, so it can definitely make a difference. Another don't is you don't want to tell your entire detailed career story. You do want to create your resume to provide the information that recruiter's looking for.

We don't need to include everything you ever did in a position on your resume. So, let's say your role is 50% task-based and 50% leadership-based. When describing your role, you don't have to include the 50% of those task-based responsibilities like Peggy did. Your description of your role can just focus on the leadership activities you did that are relevant to the job you want. Tying into that, you don't have to include every bullet point from every job you've ever had. You can take bullet points out and you can even take out entire jobs that are just not relevant.

Hiring professionals assume that what's on the resume is what you've done and that it's what you want to be doing in the future, so you also want to keep that in mind and focus on that. Another don't is to have a single resume that you use for every job. What you want to do instead is customize your resume for the job. The best way to figure this out is to look at the job postings and compare them. Are they the same or are they really different? Are the qualifications similar? Are the descriptions of the roles similar? It really comes down to the job postings you want to apply to, and if the requirements and responsibilities of the roles are the same or not.

Now, as I said at the beginning, independent contributor and management jobs are different. Job descriptions are different, qualifications are different. If you are in the situation where you're applying for both, maybe you're thinking, "Well, I'll apply for manager roles, but I'll also apply for independent contributor roles." You might need two versions of your resume, one that's focused on the requirements for IC and one that's focused on management requirements.

Going back and looking at Peggy again, I think the consensus was that she's really done a whole bunch of stuff on the don't list, so let's see how we could fix this up. The first thing we have on the list is that she graduated from secretary school, and this might be left over from the version of her resume when she applied to her first job as a secretary there. She might want to still include it because it's known as a prestigious school, but this is definitely a no. It's a big problem because this is totally irrelevant for her to do her job as a copywriter, and it makes her seem more junior. She's just not applying to that secretary role anymore, and of course it's at the top of the resume, so we want to replace this with something that shows her level of seniority and speaks to the things that the job ad wants to see.

Let's replace that with managed a team of five junior copywriters and illustrators. Then the next point we've got is about contributing copy to women's accounts. This is also not ideal, she hasn't just contributed, she owned many of these accounts, she took credit, she took control of the pitches, so she's really understating her role here. She may not have officially been the leader, but she did take the lead on these. Another thing she's doing for some reason is limiting her role to only a subset of the clients that focused on women's products.

At the time, she was viewed as a “lady copywriter” that could only get assigned female accounts and work on the accounts focused on female products; she's really just playing right into that stereotype. Now, that's totally unfair to her because she's worked on all kinds of products. This is actually limiting her experience and potential. So, let's replace that and start portraying her level of seniority.

Let's call her senior copywriter and have her managing multiple international campaigns across seven industries, not contributing to them. We want to show off the full breadth of clients she works with too, not just in those female industries. Let's add in there that she's worked across seven industries. For the last one, now we've got her being responsible for printing sample ad campaigns for client meetings. Yes, she may have done that, but that wasn't her main contribution, she was coming up with the creative ideas, she was pitching at the meetings and winning over clients. Again, she's made herself seem like she's on the admin staff rather than the copywriter that she is, so let's replace this one with an achievement –one of her biggest successes where she pitched and won a $2.5 million campaign for Burger Chef.

After a few revisions, this is what her resume looks like now. Does she seem like management material? Jillian's saying, "She comes across as a leader." Awesome. Maureen says, "Yes, she's a rock star." That's quite the transformation. "10 out of 10, would interview." Excellent, yes. So, from this, it sounds like now we want to hire her, so that's quite the transformation.