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How To Write A Resume For An Executive Position

Your Emphasis On Core Proficiency Or Specialty

Executive Resume Tip: How to Write a Functional Resume

Your executive resume should have a consistent message aboutthe skills you bring to the table. For instance, if youre a regional managerwith years of experience in trimming production costs, that should be evidentin every section of your resume.

Heres how:

  • Write about your experience inoptimizing production lines in your work history.
  • List leadership skills needed inoptimizing manufacturing process, such as process re-engineering, improvingsupplier relationships, and workflow management.
  • Include the savings in manpowerand production costs achieved in your executive summary.

CEOs and some high-level executives often have experience inmore than one function, because they need to know how different parts of thecompany work together. Because of this, its advisable for them to havemultiple executive resumes, each one tailored to the core proficiency required in their target job .

Choose A Resume Design

Find a resume design to use for your template either online or on word processing software. When selecting one, try to find a simple one that accents your information well. Also, try to keep your fonts and color choices to a minimum to avoid being distracting. Employers typically prefer resumes with 1-inch margins and 12-point font.

How To Write An Executive Cv

An executive CV is a document that acts as an alternative to a traditional resume. A typical CV includes everything a resume does, plus information on grants, fellowships, licenses, awards and more. An executive with a strong CV can communicate why they are the best fit for a role. In this article, we show you what an executive CV is, how to write one and provide a template and example for reference.

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Executive Resume Format: Chronological Functional Or Hybrid

What’s the best executive resume format you should use?

A chronological resume works best to show your careerprogression, but it has its limits. It makes the reader work twice as hard tounderstand your value because your achievements areburied in your careers timeline.

A functional resume showcases your achievements and areas ofexpertise, but it hides the narrative of your achievements. So it doesnt sayif you managed to increase the product sales of the team youre handling as amanager, and five years later leveled up to increase the sales performance ofthe State where youre Regional Director.

A hybrid resume combines the two formats:

  • Contact information
  • Executive summary
  • Achievements categorized intodifferent skills or areas of expertise
  • Employment history
  • Education

All your qualifications are in the first half of thedocument, and the skills section doubles as an organized list of achievements. A hybrid resume format is often the best one to use for an executive resume.

Make Me Fall In Like With You

executive recruiters Archives

Weve all met those people everyone wants to see succeed. Your resumes job is to cement your position as that person, ensuring the recruiter, hiring manager, and everyone else is rooting for your success.

Think of your resume as your own diplomatic envoy, going forth into unknown organisations to lay the groundwork before your official visit. While your resume has to communicate the skills and competencies required for the job, it has an even bigger job which most candidates never consider: building a team of champions, and getting recruiters and hiring managers onside to support your candidacy above all others.

The key to doing this is being likeable, and while it takes time and practice to master the art of putting personality to paper, the best place to start is with a Professional Summary section.

Forget the objectives section from decades past, and tell me a story about who you are, what you do, and what makes you different. Write in the first person, using I language to make it relatable, and mix up the content with information about your story, relevant keywords, and your professional approach and leadership style.

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Resume Education Section: Do You Need It

Although experience is deemed far more important than education history for any executive position, youâll rarely find a job that doesnât require at least a bachelor’s degree.

Education requirements vary from job to job. Some companies require a Master’s degree in business or related field.

If you donât have a relevant degree it might be substituted with an advanced business training, such as MBA. Make sure to put it before other information on education in your resume.

Identify What Makes You Stand Out

Consider your unique selling point, or USP. This is usually a term used by marketing teams to differentiate their products from similar ones on the market, but it is equally applicable to job hunting.

What will help you to stand out in a crowded job market? Identifying your USP will enable you to build your personal brand and market yourself to recruiters. If you have a clear understanding of the value that you can add, recruiters will see it too.

To identify your USP, take some time to assess your biggest wins over the last 10 years. Is there a common theme running through them? What have you been particularly good at? Where do others seek your input and expertise? What problems or challenges have you been able to resolve?

The trick is to find a USP that is specific enough to position you as a uniquely desirable candidate without being so niche that you narrow down your options too far.

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How To Write A Senior Executive Resume

  • Target your resume to the position. Itâs imperative that youtailor your executive resume to the position and the company that hires you. Donât just demonstrate that you have the needed skills. Use the Experience and Summary section to demonstrate that you overcame challenges similar to what they experience right now. Often companies switch leadership in time of crisis and uncertainty. Learn more about the target companyâs recent challenges and use this information to build authority and relevance.
  • Make the most impact with the top-third of your resume. Your senior executive resume is going to be long, but to make sure people will read all of it you need to give them a motivation. Use the top third section to present your key achievements and skills.
  • Maximise the impact of your third page. Thereâs no need to describe all the jobs you had over the span of a 20 or 30+ year career. This will certainly eat all the pages on your senior executive resume. Instead, use the last page of your resume to showcase your unique identifiers and set yourself apart: list awards, publications you were featured in, research projects, and lifetime accomplishments.

Create A Master Executive Resume

How to Write Your Resume For An Executive Promotion

Once you have done the first three steps above, you have the material to start writing your resume. A master executive resume will include far more information and be far more general than any resume you submit to a job you are targeting.A master resume, though, gives you a framework to have at hand for tailoring a resume and prevents you from having to go through and create a new resume from scratch each time a new company or new position catches your eye.

When you create a master resume, format it in an organized fashion that gives you quick access to information. Keep it in a professional, neat format even though you wont be sending this version to a potential employer. Its good practice for when you actually do create a tailored executive resume, and will help you to determine an effective format. As youre formatting your master executive resume, dont worry about its length. Your goal here is to have one master document for yourselfnot for anyone elseso its okay if it goes over the recommended one to three pages for a professional resume.

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Administrative Resume Career Objective Examples

An administrator resume objective consists of an outlay of your technical skills that make you the best man for the post offered. According to administrative resume samples, it must outwit the other administrator resumes. The best way to write a career objective in a resume that captivates the recruiter is by referring to your technical skills, best used to the job youre applying for.

In short, the objective of a resume is not a plea, but a cleverly researched statement that projects your best skills. By going through resume samples, it is clear that a good career objective must summarize your personal and professional achievements

    • Versatile Administrative Professional well versed in Presentation, Documentation, Goal-Planning and Facility Reports for Healthcare Industry looking to leverage the practical experience
    • Adept Administrative Specialist with a Proven Record of Delivery Goals before Deadline in Finance and Law aspiring to join XYZ Firms as the Administrative Head
    • To exercise my meritorious academic excellence in IT for new startups by using Website and Content Management Skills parallel to assess
    • Administrative professional with expertise in office management, problem-solving, and computer skills who thrives in high-pressure is aiming to improve the internal relations of XYZ Group of Companies
    • Agile Administrative Expert with flexible working hours and leadership skills who thrives under high-pressure, seeking opportunities to leverage my administrator skills

Best For Ats Software: Zipjob

ZipJob

After learning that his wifes resume was being filtered out by automated resume screeners, Michael Krikheli created ZipJob in 2016 to help job seekers build resumes that make it through the filters to real recruiters. We chose it as the best for ATS software because it focuses on creating keyword-optimized resumes that will land more interviews.

ZipJob asks users to either upload an existing resume or fill out a questionnaire to create one from scratch. From there, a dedicated writer works with each client to build a properly formatted resume that highlights their skills and goals. Writers communicate with their clients through the entire process, asking questions and getting clarification along the way.

All of ZipJobs resume writers are experienced in resume keyword optimization to ensure that every resume has the best chance of being scanned and accepted by automated screeners. Once a resume is written, the writer will scan it through ATS software and adjust it as needed.

ZipJob claims that its optimized resumes get their clients two to three times more interviews. It backs this up with a 60-day interview guarantee and will offer a free rewrite of a clients resume if it doesn’t generate more interviews after 60 days.

ZipJob offers three packages:

  • A professionally written resume from an experienced writer
  • Keyword optimization to pass ATS scanning software
  • 1-on-1 communication with your writer

Fast Track

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Identify What Makes You Stand Out From Your Competition

Next, ask yourself these questions, they will help you to determine what makes you special:

  • What are my proudest career achievements?
  • Which areas of the business would struggle if I left tomorrow?
  • What are my strengths?
  • What do I love doing?

The answers to these questions will be the achievements that will sell you to your next employer. The objective here is to evidence your expertise with examples. Wherever possible, quantify your examples with numbers monetary values or percentage increases work well to add flavour to your CV.

Emphasize Your Leadership Skills

Resume Samples

In addition to providing concrete examples of your achievements, quantified by boldfaced numbers or percentages, try to incorporate powerful action verbs into your work history that demonstrate your leadership skills. Strong phrases include Promoted to lead , directed, spearheaded, guided, pioneered, accelerated, drove, and advanced.

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Be Specific About Your Experience

While administrative skill sets are highly transferable from one company or industry to the next, administrative assistant jobs arent one size fits all. So in addition to reading up on your work experience, recruiters might be especially interested in learning additional details about your past jobs, like:

  • The types of industries youve worked in
  • The company or office size
  • The departments youve supported

Take a look at the example resume below to see how you can seamlessly incorporate these details into your own resume.

Put Other People At The Heart Of Your Summary

The true power of an executive does not come from their mind it comes from how they harness the minds and hearts of those around them. Helping to channel the talent of others will always have more of an impact than individual brilliance, so any executive summary should make mention of their work with their teams and others in their executive team. It is rare to see a group of executives pulling in exactly the same direction as sometimes plans will conflict, but if there is a willingness to work together, the end result will be optimal.

Inspirational Chief Marketing Officerin the consumer goods and cosmetics industry. Track record of running campaigns that resulted in double-digit sales uplifts, triple digit increases in social audience and $350m in tracked sales uplifts over an eight-year period. Led brands into new online selling channels and pioneered social selling at scale for an army of reps and promoters. Adept at influencing stakeholders and distilling messages from the wider business people are motivated when they have a clear message to unite behind. Led marketing teams of 60-80 and collaborated with some of the most talented external partners in the industry.

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Include A Core Proficiencies Section

Heres the key words conversation that everyone always wants to have. Now, Im going to argue that, if youre an executive, you probably should not be spending much time applying for jobs blindly via online applications. You should be networking. But even if key words arent imperative from the standpoint of the resume scanning software, you still need them. You need to showcase core proficiencies that speak to your executive-ness.

While your strengths in Excel and staff supervision may be important, these are not executive-level areas of expertise. You want to, instead, highlight things like employee development, P & L, change management, mergers and acquisitions, process reengineering, global strategy, and so forth. Put these in a standalone section right under your executive summary. And then, if you have technical skills that you feel are still vital to your future role? Note them at the end of the resume in a section called Technical Skills.

Job Positions Older Than 10 To 15 Years

How to Write an Executive Resume

Unless you’re a recent graduate or a senior executive with decades of experience, you should include no more than four or five positions that span no more than 10 to 15 years.

The older the position , the less hiring managers will care about it.

Rather than dive into outdated work experience, use that precious resume space to flesh out the details of your most recent jobs and accomplishments.

Peter Yang is a career expert and the CEO of Resume Writing Services, the parent company of ResumeGo. Before that, he worked as a hiring manager and recruiter. Follow him on Twitter .

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Best 20 Administrative Resume Objective Samples You Can Use

1. Strong analytical thinker, constructive problem solver, and an excellent communicator. Hopeful for the position of an Administrator to apply 6 years of administrative experience to manage and create effective workflow between systems and groups.

2. Experienced administrator with strong management and organization knowledge and Bachelors degree. Seeking the position of Administrative Officer at XYZ Organization coming with advanced knowledge in database management and office management to handle tactical day-to- day administrative matters.

3. Proactive problem solver with superior clerical skills and ability to efficiently prioritize assignments. Seeking for the position of Administrative Assistant to apply 2+ years administrative assisting and IT systems experience.

4. Extremely organized professional with high sense of discretion and confidentiality and excellent communication skills. Desire the position of Admin Manager at CBC Inc. bringing 7+ years administrative and customer service experience, plus advanced skills in database management.

5. Professional with excellent time management skills and ability to multi-task while working within deadlines and time constraints. Desire the position of an Administrative Specialist to apply 6 years of administrative experience and client service skills to efficiently manage office procedures and inventory.

It Works Both Ways By The Way

Not so long ago I was working with an executive who wanted to make a lateral, if not a slight downwards, career move. Every recruiter she sent her old resume to disregarded her as overqualified.

Thats the power of nuance.

Unless youre actively looking to diminish yourself, as our client above was, scrap the following verbs from your executive resume:

  • Managed.
  • Founded.
  • Transformed.

The key takeaway is this: pay attention to the nuance of the verbs you choose for your executive resume to avoid making a less-senior impression than you intend to.

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When In Doubt Spell It Out

Whereas some recruiters specialise by industry or function, many are generalists particularly at the management and executive level.

A common complaint among candidates is that recruiters dont have enough specialised knowledge about the role or industry, and to a large extent this is a fair observation.

Like journalists, non-specialist recruiters focus on building a knowledge base thats an inch deep and a mile wide. In other words, they know just enough about a lot of different industries and functions.

For professionals at all career levels, its wise to stick to common business language rather than specialist jargon or acronyms. Dont assume the recruiter will know you have particular skills, competencies, or knowledge simply by seeing your job titles and education. And dont assume theyll know what it is, even if you list a technology or process name.

For management professionals, its important to keep the main body of the resume at that 30,000foot level, focusing on role mandate, strategic priorities, and scope. Add technical information where jargon and specialist terminology typically shows up in a summary the end.

Take it one step further by listing skills in a functional group, such as programming languages or project management methodologies. This way, you communicate your qualifications without forcing the recruiter to do extra research, which may be a deciding factor in whether your resume moves forward.

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