Stop Trying to Produce Your Executive Resume Under Pressure

It has taken you years to reach your current level of success. I am sure that you will agree that nothing in business happens overnight. 

Including your executive resume. 

This is why you need to have your resume prepared well in advance to a planned job search. Creating an executive resume under pressure and time constraints will only lead you to feel stressed and rushed, leaving out valuable details about your career history. Or worse, it can mean that you miss out on the opportunity because you weren’t able to move fast enough. 

In a perfect world, you would have plenty of time to prepare a resume when an opportunity arises. However, this is hardly ever the case.  

What do you do when a job opportunity requires an immediate response? 

First, dig into your files where you have been keeping regular notes on your executive career achievements.

Yes, I am suggesting that you keep a file on yourself. Call it a brag file, if you like, or a career management file. 

Record factual details about your progress at work, including finalized business deals, investments, process improvements, people development, organizational growth, time savings, turnarounds, money saved, and money earned.

Be sure to include quantifiable and tangible data where possible to support your statements and show your value. This means numbers, dollars, volume, percentages, timelines, team sizes, and budget amounts. 

For example, don’t simply record: Landed new business deal.  

Instead, include details that you can use to pull together a value-laden statement later:

• Landed lucrative new business deal
• 6 months to secure
• Worth $1.2M
• 3-year contract
• Partnered with X people
• Engaged with X stakeholders
• Championed actions X, Y, Z to make it happen

Next, determine what the opportunity needs are and target your executive resume for the position.

From your career management file, select the achievements that will have the most impactful alignment and value to the targeted position. 

Within each achievement, select the most relevant details. If there is a strong need for collaboration in the targeted executive position, then speak to partnerships and working together to meet objectives. If garnering high net-worth business deals is the need, then focus on the sales or revenue you brought in. 

With important facts at the ready, you can pull together your resume relatively quickly, building result-rich statements to support your candidacy, and tailor content easily. 

To support ongoing career success, a resume should be revisited every six months and your brag file refreshed regularly with recent achievements.  

If you have never really used a resume or it has been more than a few years since you dusted it off, consider partnering with a professional resume writer to help. They understand modern hiring and resume trends and can employ the right resume tactic for you and your unique career. 

I work one-on-one with each of my executive clients to identify personal value proposition and then design a file that strategically aligns top career achievements and skillsets with the needs of each audience (the employer).  

Stop trying to produce under pressure. Be ready before that next big executive career opportunity knocks.