Putting together an executive resume is a daunting task. Even career professionals can find them challenging to write.
Resumes are just one aspect of executive job search my clients have questions about.
Over the years, I’ve kept track of some of their questions about the challenges they face. These are the major road blocks and/or strategies they’ve told me they need help understanding, across various topics:
- Executive Job Interviews
- Personal Branding
- Online Reputation Management
- Executive Job Search, in general
You’ll find links below to the articles I wrote about their FAQS on these topics.
Executive Resume FAQs
Here are the executive resume FAQs job seekers ask me the most:
1. My executive resume stinks. How do I get it to represent who I really am and what I have to offer?
Start by making your executive resume an interesting read.
How do you do that? With targeting and personal branding.
Targeting will help you zero in on specific areas where you can add value for specific employers.
Why do you need to target specific employers?
Because if you don’t, your resume is likely to be generic to cover as many bases as possible. A generic resume isn’t likely to hit home with employers because it won’t help them see you in the job, making a positive impact.
Personal branding will help you differentiate your unique combination of skill sets, qualifications and personal attributes that make you a good fit for them.
And personal branding helps you generate chemistry for who you are and what kind of employee you’ll be.
Doing the work to define your personal brand typically includes developing career success stories around your accomplishments.
Storytelling is one of the best ways to elevate your resume from generic, dry resume-speak to vibrant personal marketing that resonates with your target employers.
Don’t be afraid to tell people about your personality – how you work with and lead people, how you make things happen for a company, what you’re known for by peers and others at work, etc.
If your executive resume is still partying like it’s 1999, you need to think like a resume branding pro, with 10 Do’s and Don’ts.
And always be mindful that grammar and spelling errors really matter in your resume, biography, cover letters, LinkedIn profile, and any other personal marketing content.
2. How many pages should my resume be? Is 3 pages too many?
For the 25+ years I’ve been writing executive resumes, I rarely held fast to the rule that they should be no longer than 2 pages.
I feel that 3 pages, when necessary, are perfectly fine . . . especially for c-suite and senior-level executives. It all depends on what information truly needs to be included, to best position my client as a good-fit candidate for their target employers.
Here’s the deal:
Resume length is not so much the issue. Including the right content (with nothing arbitrary) is the key.
Additionally, around half of the first page should be a snapshot carrying the most important points. This will draw the reader in and encourage them to read the whole document, no matter how long, while concisely showcasing the candidate’s value, if the reader only has time for a quick scan.
This pertains to the nicely formatted version of your resume, designed for human eyeballs as you network your way into jobs.
These days, in the age of Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS), job seekers need another version of their resume to make it through recruiters’ and HR departments’ databases.
An ATS-friendly resume is a barely formatted text version, that needs to contain enough of the right keywords searched to call up the resume for a particular job. For this version, length doesn’t apply. In fact, longer is better. More content means more relevant keywords and a better likelihood of succeeding through the ATS.
More details in my post, What’s the Best Executive Resume Format and Length?
3. How do I deal with the employment gaps in my career history?
With a long career history, many c-suite and senior-level executive job seekers may have employment gaps for various reasons.
If your gaps happened during the pandemic years, they may not be a factor. Many hiring professionals understand and forgive such gaps.
Even so, your lapses in employment may cause problems.
But there are ways to deal with these gaps in your resume and LinkedIn profile.
To downplay them, you can use years only for employment length, not months. This is standard practice and can cover up fairly long gaps.
Better still, plan ahead to avoid future employment gaps with preemptive tactics like these:
- Go back to school, either online or in-person, and take courses or earn certifications to upgrade relevant skills.
- Secure temp work.
- Find consulting gigs or interim work, or set up a consulting firm and take on relevant assignments.
- Volunteer at charities, schools, hospitals, civic groups, etc. Even though you may not be paid, this kind of work definitely counts as professional experience. Volunteering is especially powerful when the work you do for the organization aligns with the expertise you’re offering your future employer.
4. Should I have a biography to supplement my resume? How do I use a biography?
An executive brand biography is a storytelling tool that breathes life into an otherwise flat rehash of your resume. For job search and career management, a bio affords the opportunity to reinforce your brand through storytelling, in a way that’s more difficult to accomplish in a resume.
What a biography does better than a resume:
- Showcase your leadership and management acumen through softer skills and “good fit” attributes, and link them to your value proposition.
- Personalize your Challenge – Actions – Results (C-A-Rs) stories and use them to reinforce your brand attributes and key strengths.
- Generate chemistry around how you use your key personal attributes, passions, strengths, and motivated skills to benefit employers.
- Help employers connect with you and envision you on the job, having a positive impact.
When I create LinkedIn profiles for my clients, I generate chemistry and showcase personality by using biography-type content with storytelling for the About section.
Read more about biographies in my post Why Is It So Hard to Write Your Own Executive Biography?
5. Do I really need a cover letter with my resume?
In a word, “YES!”
Some online job postings will require you to include a cover letter, but you’ll also need them for networking.
As you network your way into “hidden” jobs at your target companies, you’ll be emailing your resume to select people. You’ll need to introduce it with some kind of covering message or letter.
Although there are recruiters and hiring decision makers who will skip right over your cover letters, others will read them religiously.
They’ll judge candidates by them as strongly as they do their resumes, LinkedIn profiles and online presence.
Doesn’t it make sense to include a cover letter – one that’s as hard-hitting and brand-reinforcing as your targeted resume and LinkedIn profile?
My research and experience over the years revealed that NOT having a cover letter may ruin your chances, but HAVING a cover letter will never hurt your chances.
At the very least, a covering letter or email message is an expected courtesy to the reader, and specifies why you’re writing to them.
When emailing your resume and covering message to people, be sure to avoid these 10 worst job search email mistakes.
Read more in my post How to Write the Best Cover Letter for Executive Job Search.
More About Executive Job Search
Check out the rest of my series of posts on executive job search Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs):
Thank you, awesome article!
Thank you, Eva!