At the 2023 Esri User Conference, the YPN group sponsored resume reviews for attendees, where they had the chance to sit with a manager or recruiter from Esri to get feedback and coaching. I had the opportunity to lend my expertise and knowledge to many young professionals looking for their first professional job, an internship, or even making an industry switch. The process allowed me to reflect on my journey of building a resume for the first time and the challenges I encountered during a similar stage in my career. It also revealed some common patterns when reviewing resumes as a mentor or a hiring manager. Here are three essential tips for building a stand-out resume.
Lean into the discomfort.
Writing a resume may come with mixed emotions – it sure did for me! I remember feeling anxious, impatient, and frustrated with the resume-writing process. While it may feel uncomfortable sometimes, I found that the best remedy is to sit with the emotions to understand them and clarify why I felt that way.
For me, I found that most of the feelings came down to two things:
Once I knew why I felt like I did, my next step was easy – get curious! These questions that were circling my mind were something I could research and explore. They spawned other questions that I could find answers to, such as:
With each question came an answer that increased my knowledge, and with more knowledge, my confidence continued to build.
It can be easy to view writing a resume as a task to complete and get done as soon as possible. However, you will get shallow answers if you only ask surface-level questions. The longer you explore and the better questions you ask, the deeper your knowledge and confidence will become, giving you the exact advantage you seek.
Be focused, be concise.
One of the things I knew I needed to overcome when writing my resume was keeping it simple so that a recruiter could quickly scan it. It can be very easy to put as much information as possible into a resume so that you are covering everything imaginable. However, as we already know, recruiters may look at dozens or hundreds of resumes depending on the position and can only spend a short time with each one. Rather than being discouraged by this fact, we can use the knowledge to our advantage by finding the right balance of detail and brevity.
The key is to keep your resume design simple, consistent, and legible. Space comes at a premium on your resume, so you must discern what makes it in and what doesn't.
Don’t undersell (or oversell) yourself.
Before you dust off your thesaurus and start looking for the best resume verbs, we need to talk about the power of words. Take a look at the following statement:
Used ArcGIS Online to create maps for stakeholders.
How does this sound to you? Does it sound exciting and interesting? How much does it tell you about someone's experience?
It sounds generic and doesn't tell me much about the work being performed. So let's try something different:
Perform spatial analysis of environmental risks and design maps in ArcGIS Online for community stakeholders.
How did your perception change? Hopefully, you found it more enjoyable to read and have a complete picture of the work being performed.
This rewrite is more engaging to the reader and allows the recruiter or interviewer to ask better questions. What spatial analysis tools did you use? What environmental risks did you identify? How did community members use the maps to inform their decision-making?
The whole point of a resume is to sell yourself - you want other people to be interested in what you offer them. If you undersell your experience and use overly simplistic or generalized language, it will be challenging to entice a potential employer. It is essential to take the time to write, rewrite, refine, and improve your language to make it specific, accurate, and engaging. Reading your resume out loud, even to others, is a great way to gauge how it sounds.
Now, as a caveat, you'll also need to be careful overselling your abilities by stretching the truth or embellishing your experience. One way to avoid this is to ask someone familiar with your work to review your resume and ask if they agree with your writing.
Summary
I hope you found something helpful in this blog that inspired your curiosity to try something different when you write your next resume. There is a lot of great advice out there, and I encourage you to explore as much as possible to find what works best for you. You have something unique to offer this world, and your resume is one way to show people exactly what that is. So don't rush the process; give it the time and attention it deserves - you are worth it.
Thank you for your time!
Christian Wells
LinkedIn
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