3 Benefits To Incorporating Storytelling In Your Leadership Resume
Seeking an executive career transition? You've probably realized (before even starting
to write) that it's difficult to sum up your total value proposition in a resume.
You may be able to recall some facts and figures of your career, including key budget or revenue numbers. However, you'll quickly realize that a leadership resume limited to this data doesn't generate interviews by itself.
Why? Employers seeking an executive leader often face specific business problems, such as how to grow the company, resolve service issues, or address a lack of capital. They're reading your resume with these needs in mind, wanting to know HOW you'll meet these challenges, in addition to WHAT you'll do for them.
Storytelling is what differentiates an executive portfolio from a mid-career resumeseparating your qualifications from the pack, so to speak. Therefore, your resume will need to describe each of your professional successes in crisp, clear detail.
Here are 3 results you can expect from getting this information out of your head and onto your resume for employers to digest:
1 - Responses for jobs that really fit your leadership skills.
If you look back over your career, you can probably recall many situations that required your leadership, from stepping in to defuse team conflict to presenting key facts for a Board of Directors. Here's where you'll want to include the context of each of these events, in addition to the results of your work.
As an example, CFOs are often tasked with ensuring that audit requirements are satisfied, and can point to high accuracy ratings as proof of effectiveness.
However, adding backstory can pique more interest: consider the case of the CFO who reconciled the entire company's equity structure, including all rounds of venture capital, prior to passing an external audit.
This detail provides a better picture of candidate's adherence to accuracy, plus his ability to transform jumbled financial records into coherent reporting.
As in this example, you'll need to strengthen your leadership message by supplying more contextual dataallowing employers, in turn, to find a candidate whose credentials fit the demands of their businesses.
2 - Less interviews for jobs beneath your capabilities.
You want to save time, right? There's no better way to be efficient in your job search than to cut off inquiries that don't match your career level.
Adding more detail to your executive resume allows you to define the scope of challenges that you've faced, which can be defined by the size of budgets, number of reports, or span of authority, PLUS your actions in the role. This information is valuable to companies that want to identify a candidate that fits their desired profile.
For example, a CIO that has expanded technology capabilities throughout Europe, Asia Pacific, and the U.S. will probably be seeking a new job that demands an understanding of global challenges.
If you're in this situation, you most likely do NOT want to take interviews that require only a basic understanding of regional business and related technology supports. Instead, I recommend adding achievement sentences that describe your global authority (such as leading IT infrastructure buildouts in different countries or directing remote technology teams).
Doing so sends a clear message that you're ready for managing initiatives of larger, more complex scope.
3 - Faster results from your job search.
Leadership resumes that deliver the most punch are nearly always the ones selected for interviews, even when the storytelling aspect makes them longer than the standard single- or double-page document.
Case in point: after creating an executive portfolio that detailed industry and environmental challenges, as well as his success in dealing with these obstacles, a construction executive client was able to secure an interview within just a few hours of sending it to an employer.
In it, we had added not only job title information (showing his progression), but also feedback from colleagues and clients (reinforcing ethics in his brand message), plus information on his consulting and permanent roles in land development planning (demonstrating his ability to move back and forth while representing the client's best interests).
As you can see, using storytelling in your leadership resume also allows you to reframe your experience, showcasing your accomplishments and adding your own slant on your career so that it makes sense to employers.
As another example, I worked with a retail operations director who had progressed to roles of smaller scope throughout her career.
As she had quickly turned profits for mid-sized operations based on big-box leadership experience, we highlighted revenue increases in each role so that employers could see the effect of the previous, deeply ingrained leadership culture on her approachtaking the focus off her downsized roles and placing it back on her value proposition.
In summary, when you add specific how-to details in a leadership resume, employers are able to grasp the true meaning behind your career experiences. You'll receive a much warmer reception from your resumeplus a faster decision on your credentials.
Just don't be surprised if it's one made in your favor.
by: Laura SmithProulx
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