TheLadders Blog

I first discovered TheLadders through my participation with StreetWise Partners, a nonprofit organization that helps low-income individuals overcome employment barriers and obtain better jobs. When I began my career, I was working 40-hour work weeks in a customer service position that didn’t utilize my skills or compensate me properly. I then took a position in accounting, which, due to circumstances beyond my control, led me to doubt my capabilities in the workforce.

After that experience, I turned to StreetWise Partners, a bit scarred and needing to rebuild my natural confidence. With hard work and commitment, I made it through the program with aspirations of finding a job that would suit me and support my intentions of continuing my college education. My resume was already adequate but definitely needed an update to combat this ailing job market.

At the Career Boot Camp, hosted by StreetWise Partners and TheLadders in June 2012, I was lucky enough to win a resume rewrite, which I used immediately. To my extreme delight, my rewritten resume was a perfect representation of my career history and potential. Beaming with confidence and acceptance of change, I left my customer service position and decided to hit the ground running for my bright future. Within two weeks of leaving that position, I was able to acquire a temp-to-perm office coordinator role with Success Academy Charter Schools.

This was made possible by my burning drive for accomplishment, a great phone interview, an amazing resume and a glowing cover letter (that I can also thank TheLadders for). Just two weeks into my new job, I was offered a permanent position. TheLadders gave a woman with so much promise an extra boost in the game of life.

- Octavia Thompson

You hear a lot these days about how a powerful resume can make all the difference in the job search. The web is full of tips on writing, rewriting, polishing, and re-polishing your resume. There’s certainly value in learning what goes where, how keywords work, what to say and, especially, what not to say. While there’s something to be said for the DIY approach, it’s also worth considering how a professional approaches a complex and challenging resume. We often talk about how a resume should tell your story, but this is the story of the resume itself.

Meet Aaron.

Aaron came to us as a VP of product development with an Ivy League degree and some seriously varied experience. In addition to his VP role, he’s successfully launched his own magazine and held a director-level position at a digital agency. As if this budding career wasn’t varied enough, he told us that his next challenge would be landing an executive-level marketing position. Aaron had never held a marketing title, but he was convinced of his ability to land the job.  Upon review of his resume, it became clear that the skills were there, but the resume itself was a muddled hodge-podge of tasks and achievements without any trajectory or context.

Certified Professional Resume Writer Michael Cirigliano with TheLadders said that the biggest challenge was prioritizing the focus of Aaron’s resume. He had great experience in many different areas, but not all of it was applicable to the positions he was interested in.

During the initial call with Aaron, Michael spent about 30 minutes digging through the existing resume and placing all of his accomplishments in their proper functional context. The next step was to turn the Aaron’s accomplishments into a narrative. Deconstructing all of his experience in e-commerce, marketing, and business development provided a more complete picture of him as a professional.

Within 48 hours, Aaron had a new resume that told the story of his career path, highlighting key attributes that would make him an attractive candidate for an executive-level marketing position.

About six weeks had passed before Michael received the following email from Aaron.

Hi Michael,

Not sure if your remember me, but you helped craft my resume a few weeks back.  I wanted to let you know that the first company that received the revised resume has hired me as their Chief Marketing Officer — an ideal position that I’m very excited to begin.  I’m certain that the extraordinary version of the resume significantly helped this process, and I wanted to personally thank you for your help.

If there’s anything I can do recommend your work, please let me know and I’ll be happy to assist.

While the typical executive-level job search takes several months, lightning sometimes strikes. We wish Aaron the best of luck in his new position, and are so happy to have been a part of his success story.

Do you have a resume success story? We’d love to hear from you! Email us at resumesuccess@theladders.com. Meanwhile, stay tuned for more resume wins in the weeks to come.

Ryan Galloway is the Content Development Manager for the TheLadders’ Career Services Team. He helps writers develop innovative strategies that make members’ job search documents more effective. When he’s not working, he’s out buying way too many books. But he doesn’t have a problem. Really.

After 25 years with a major retailer, Tommy M. was ready for a change. He had been steadily promoted through application-development and project-management positions based on consistent success, but his resume had rarely been seen outside internal HR. He knew that resume – comprising 40+ bullets scattered across four pages – was not going to cut it, and he wasn’t confident that he had the knowledge to create a resume that could open doors on his own.

“You can’t use an in-house resume – it’s just not going to work,” he says. “And if you’re not familiar with what really works, you won’t find it on your own.”

After some time away from the corporate bustle that left him feeling burnt out, he decided it was time to get serious about his job search in February and came to TheLadders to turn resume development over to the experts. During the initial information-gathering process, he found himself panicked on how to accurately describe his experience. Many of his greatest achievements spanned multiple positions, and he wasn’t sure how to take ownership for them.
“In any long-term position, your whole mentality becomes team based,” he says.

During a long car ride, Tommy discussed the process with a friend. He told stories of projects that ensured the success of larger initiatives and of rising through the ranks from a sales associate during his college years to an influential IT leader, capable of designing sophisticated technology solutions and forging relationships with top executives. That’s when Tommy realized that he had to stop writing about the trees and start writing about the forest.

“Write your story,” he advises others going through the resume process. “Don’t try to pick out bullet points; try to tell the story.”

With a detail-rich work history, a writer can understand a job seeker from a holistic point of view and draft a resume that that captures the client’s unique strengths. Many members I work with struggle to detail the scope of their work or feel unsure about when to take credit for collaborative work. The best way to work with your writer through this challenge is to follow Tommy’s advice. A writer can never have too much information!

For Tommy, the first draft was a major relief. “I read it and thought, ‘This tells the story I wasn’t telling,’ ” he says. “I could quit worrying about getting a job and start getting a job.”

Within a few days of posting his resume and applying for positions, Tommy saw exceptional results with phone contact with several interested employers. Energized and optimistic about new challenges, he feels well prepared for the job search with a document that reflects his driven personality and the impact he’s had on his organization. “The biggest thing that I gleaned from the whole process,” he says, “is that I have value beyond my company.”

Meredith Spencer is Academy Certified Resume Writer and Certified Professional Resume Writer who specializes in technology industry resumes.

“Bragging is not my strong suit.” As a Professional Resume Writer, it’s the most common refrain I hear from members within the first few days of working together. The second is “I’ve never worked with a resume writer before.”

And that’s OK.

Because we’re here to help! A Professional Resume Writer knows how to coax information out of the shyest of members and can sift through pages of work history to find the most valuable points to include for our more loquacious ones. The result is a document that presents members in a whole new light, and often creates a competitive mental edge in the job search as members’ self-perception aligns to match their new resume.

Watching members’ confidence blossom when they get their new resume is my favorite part of the job. Often the physical appearance of the document undergoes the most concrete transformation: slap-dash paragraphs, long lists of bullets, and haphazard spacing are streamlined and organized into visually inviting text with polished verbiage and clean, sophisticated formats. The mental shift it inspires is best described by our own members. A few recent reactions from the Inboxes of the resume team include:

“Very impressive – I wonder who that guy is? Seriously, that looks very good.” – Rick F.

“Wonderful! I just cannot get over how the presentation changes the image of me. Thank you.” – Mary J.

“It’s been refreshing to see how a proper resume and cover letter are composed – I was definitely not with the times.” – Jose D.

“I can’t wait to upload this for the recruiters to see. You really helped me to organize my career in a way that is relevant to my experience.” – Janet T.

“You did an outstanding job. Writing a resume is a unique talent.” – Anonymous

“Thank you for transforming my lackluster resume into a professional and first class document.” – Anonymous

Just like a good haircut can make anyone stand a little taller and smile a little wider, a good resume can give job seekers the confidence boost they need to apply to a job that’s a bit of a “reach” and walk into an interview knowing that they have already put their best foot forward. Through our weekly posts, the Resume Team looks forward to illuminating the resume writing process and sharing more of our members’ success stories.

Meredith Spencer is Academy Certified Resume Writer and Certified Professional Resume Writer who specializes in technology industry resumes.

In April, TheLadders sponsored the annual Career Thought Leaders Conference & Symposium at the beautiful Hyatt Regency Baltimore. The city’s iconic Inner Harbor provided the perfect backdrop for more than 100 of the top minds in resume writing, career coaching, and job-search consulting to share key knowledge about how to help job seekers win by constructing arguably the most critical weapon in their arsenal: the resume.

The funny thing about a resume is that every candidate knows they need one, yet few understand or are willing to acknowledge its tremendous influence. A resume isn’t just a list of your previous employers to be haphazardly submitted to every recruiter and job portal available – it’s a highly sophisticated tool that leverages the power of words to create perception and target you for the perfect opportunity. And it’s not easy to write!

Just like any other aspect of doing business, you get out of your resume only what you invest. The amount of time and (the conference’s attendees would hope) money you spend on your job search directly correlates to your success. We frequently hear elated job seekers on TheLadders gushing about how overjoyed they are with their professionally written resumes. “Who is that person?” and, “I never realized I did all that!” are common refrains that illustrate a newfound confidence. So why do candidates understand the importance of the resume only after having it evaluated and written by a qualified professional? They don’t have the data.

So what can an analytical, numbers-obsessed guy like me do to help a group of card-carrying wordsmiths understand how best to present that value? Share statistics, of course.

I was honored to partner with event co-host Wendy Enelow (a training consultant for all of TheLadders’ Executive Resume Writers who is widely recognized as the national thought leader in resume writing)  to deliver the conference’s keynote address, “The State of the Union: What Recruiters and Hiring Managers Want.” My speech provoked some buzz (and some tweets) thanks to eyebrow-raising stats gathered in a survey of recruiters who use TheLadders to source talent.

According to the data, 43% of recruiters declaring that a weak resume is a job seeker’s biggest mistake, and they know one when they see one – recruiters receive an average of 52 resumes per $100K+ job listing.  That’s 52 resumes from Monster, 52 resumes from Dice, 52 resumes from CareerBuilder, and on down the line, for any one job. I explained that only 21% of all resumes are considered “Very Good” by recruiters, and that those resumes garner 50% more recruiter contacts than their average or below average counterparts.

Of course, recruiters aren’t the only gatekeeper between candidates and their next job. There is now applicant tracking software that scans resumes for keyword matches before they move through the ranks of agency recruiters, corporate recruiters, HR managers, and hiring managers. Those hiring professionals are increasingly selecting candidates based on first impressions, as a remarkable 68% of US companies have no standardized definition of a quality hire.

How do you combat that? With a quality resume. Our analysts at TheLadders have reviewed and critiqued more than 575,000 of executive resumes, and our staff of writers (many of whom were among the thought leaders assembled in Baltimore) has rewritten more than 60,000 of them. Those resumes typically earn a score of around 4 on our 10-point scale before they are rewritten, but leap to an 8 or better after a professional rewrite.

So what does it all mean? Judging by the conference attendees’ frantic note-taking, it means that executive candidates must be reminded that it’s not enough to rely on your ability to sell yourself. A weak resume fails to differentiate you from your equally qualified peers, and simply believing that your resume accurately represents your value doesn’t make it so. Recruiters want those Grade-A resumes that score an 8 or higher, and sure enough, they perform much better. The increased confidence that comes with a professionally written resume is statistically proven to be accompanied by increased performance, and increased engagement from recruiters and hiring managers.

Ware Sykes is Vice President Consumer Services and Head of Resume Services at TheLadders.com