How To Write An Executive Resume

List Out Accomplishments Skills Strengths References

Brainstorming isnt just for lengthy meetingsit can be a very useful tool as you are trying to write your own resume. If you are looking for jobs at the executive level, you probably have a lengthy career behind you and a long list of accomplishments and skills that you have amassed over the years. However, just listing them all out on your resume itself is not the path to success. You need to pare down your work experience and accomplishments to address only the most relevant, impressive points to the specific position or employer. However, to make sure you dont miss any of those important points you should have a comprehensive list of your achievements, skills, and strengths to pull from.

I highly recommend keeping a running document, whether in Microsoft Word, Excel, or even just an old-fashioned notebook where you list out accomplishments throughout your career. You never know what accomplishment might be relevant to a future job opportunityand you certainly dont want to forget any when you are feeling pressure while writing a new resume.

If you havent been keeping such a list, take your time to write one out now. Do as much as you can in one session, but recognize that you will think of things as you go about your day, so keep a list on your phone or have a notebook handy.

Other Sections In An Executive Resume

As an executive, you must have many significant executive resume points which you must mention. These build your personality along with your profile which is important for the hiring of an executive.

A few important activities or additional information might allow you to build your credentials as an executive. An example is:

Additional Activities

• Received 5M views in an article published on data transmission in Forbes
• Headed the team that won the “Best in the West” contest
• Active member, Sales, and Marketing Executive Association
• Attained 5,000 subscribers in the online youtube channel “How We Sell.”

What Is An Admin Executive Resume

An admin executive resume is a professional document that candidates write to show their work history, credentials and skills to a hiring manager. These resumes emphasise the skills and qualifications that highlight how the candidate can fulfil the needs and preferences of an admin executive position. In particular, admin executives typically have advanced administrative skills to provide essential support to high-level company executives. These professionals may have more specialised knowledge in their industry than typical administrative professionals. Since admin executives perform advanced clerical functions, their resumes often reflect their technical skills.

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What If You Don’t Have Executive Experience Yet

If you’re planning to step into your first executive role, it shouldn’t be a problem all executives have needed to take that step at some point. Evaluate your current and previous roles to identify the skills and results that will translate well into executive positions. Then, build your CV around them. For example, if you don’t currently influence large-scale change on a daily basis, emphasise change management skills gained during a one-off project.

And remember, a CV is as much about what you don’t say as what you do. If 80 per cent of your work didn’t involve executive responsibilities and skills, focus instead on the 20 per cent that did. This is your personal sales document, so concentrate on the details that will sell you. The car salesman will tell you about a car’s low running costs, but not its dodgy brakes apply the same principle to your CV!

Resume Education Section: Do You Need It

Although experience is deemed far more important than education history for any executive position, youll rarely find a job that doesnt 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 dont 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.

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Define Your Value Proposition

Hold on, youre thinking.

One minute youre hunting for a template, and the next minute Im hitting you with some marketing lingo. But dont run away just yet.

Succinctly explained, your USP expresses your distinct ability to solve commercially relevant business problems within your field and/or for your employers of choice.

Your USP should drive the narrative and what you choose to include in your resume something a template could never pull off. And something even most professional resume writers often struggle to do well.

Done right, your USP will allow you to see yourself through an entirely new lens, weaving together points of interest from your career into a compelling narrative that positions each of your career moves as strategic and connects them to your deeper purpose.

Deeper purpose? And you just came for an executive resume template.

List Your Past 10 15 Years Of Professional Experience:

Your work experience is by far one of the most important parts of your resume. A great headline, summary, and key skills will peak a recruiters interest enough to want to review your work experience. Now that you have them on the hook, its time to close the deal with an amazing work experience section.

Executive resumes tend to be 2-pages long. Its unlikely that you will be able to fit all of your work experience on 1-page and anything over 2-pages is typically too long. If you are having a hard time getting your resume to fit on 2-pages, theres a simple trick. Only list the most recent 10 to 15 years of experience on your resume. Most recruiters only care about what you have done recently, and dont need to see that you started out working in the warehouse 20 years ago.

Your work experience should include a mixture of job duties and accomplishments. We recommend using paragraph style writing for the summary of your job duties and bullet points for your accomplishments. Use the resume sample above as reference.

Heres a short sample of what your work experience section could look like:

Recruited to turnaround an underperforming call center with an annual budget of $15M. Responsible for leading a team of two managers and 25 call center agents across multiple states.

• Reduced ticket response time by 30% and increased client satisfaction ratings from 3.4/5 to 4.6/5.

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Add Education And Qualifications

In the next sections, an executive CV will typically list the applicant’s education, any educational recognition or awards, qualifications and achievements outside of educational institutions and more. You can also list specific certifications here. This section can be brief to increase readability, but typically it contains the name of each institution you attended, your degree or certification and your date of graduation.

Related:How To Write a Personal Statement on a CV

Executive Resume Format And Structure

The structure of your resume should give you enough space to do justice to your skills. Many executive resumes are three pages rather than two, so if you have things that are worth sharing, dont be scared to add more detail. If a prospective employer is interested in hiring you, they wont mind reading an extra page and a longer resume will give them more information upon which they can base your interview. There are no specific rules about which format to choose, but we can suggest some guiding principles:

Firstly, ensure that it is visually clean, easy to read and symmetrical. You will have a lot to say about your achievements, but the starring moments of your career will be lost if it is cluttered. Secondly, dont make it too densely technical in any sections. A recruiter without a deep understanding might skip over to more readable parts. Including technical terms is good for the ATS, but make sure that they are integrated into the story of your career. Our professional resume templatecollection can be found here.

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Best For Ats Software: Zipjob

ZipJob

• Insightful testimonials on their website

• Resumes Skills area contained strong keywords

• Resume draft was delivered on time

• Design and format made reading the resume difficult

• Education and Training sections were poorly formatted

After learning that his wifes resume was being filtered out by automated resume screeners, Michael Krikheli created ZipJob in 2017 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 answer some questions 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.

How Do I Write A Senior Executive Resume

Executive resumes are a unique and specific type of resume. They are designed specifically for those in executive or managerial positions, who need to highlight their skills and experience above all else. Because an executive resume is so different from other types of resumes, it can be tricky to know how to write one. This blog post will outline the steps you need to take to build an effective executive resume.

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Think About The Job You Are Applying For

Each time you apply for a job, you want to adjust your executive summary to fit that specific job description. Think about what skills they are looking for, the years of experience they want and the type of college degree you need. Study the job description to not only see what the job requirements are, but which requirements are the most important. Then be sure to mention meeting these requirements within your executive summary.

Stress Leadership And Management Experience

Executive roles require leadership above all else, so make that the focus of your resume. Here are some quick tips:

Use keywords in your resume title and headline. Your resume title should reflect the title of the job youre applying for, while your headline can contain core competencies or similar roles youve held in the past.

Use the right keywords in your resume summary to bypass ATS and show recruiters that you have the experience theyre looking for

Focus on management experience in your summary and bullet points. Choose accomplishments that show leadership and related skills, and put your most relevant achievements at the top of your resume. If a recruiter only spends a few seconds skimming your resume, they should still walk away with the sense that youre a potential fit.

Lead with your most impressive accomplishments to make sure they get noticed

A good way to check if youve chosen the right accomplishments that show leadership and related skills, is to upload your resume to the tool below itll tell you if your resume summary and bullet points show enough of the management skills that hiring managers and recruiters look for.

Choose skills that speak to your leadership ability. Your skills section is a small but powerful part of your resume, so make every word count.

List a small number of skills that are most relevant to a high-level leadership role

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What Is An Executive Assistant Resume

An executive assistant resume is a document you submit with a job application that demonstrates your work experience, skills and education related to an executive assistant position. They may explain your professional or personal goals and provide summaries of your past job duties. These documents are one of the most important parts of a job application because they demonstrate your value to employers. They also may reveal why you’re the best candidate for the job.

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Need More Help Creating An Executive Resume That Gets You Interviews

Weve helped hundreds of top executives craft better resumes and land their dream jobs.

Work 1-on-1 with an expert executive job search coach to turn your resume into an interview magnet. Learn more and get started: kirbypartners.com/executive-career-coaching

If you prefer to DIY, our executive resume guide gives your a proven step-by-step plan for creating a resume that works.

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How To Write An Executive Assistant Resume

The Indeed Editorial Team comprises a diverse and talented team of writers, researchers and subject matter experts equipped with Indeed’s data and insights to deliver useful tips to help guide your career journey.

An executive assistant is an administrative professional who provides support to upper-level management and senior administrators by completing various management duties. Writing an effective resume is an important part of earning one of these positions because it reveals your qualifications for the job. Learning how to write an executive assistant resume may help you earn an interview. In this article, we discuss what an executive assistant resume is, how to write one, provide a template with an example resume and tips for helping you create your own resume.

Read more:Learn About Being an Executive Assistant

Write A Resume Objective Or Professional Summary

Underneath your contact information, create a section titled “Resume objective” or “Professional summary.” Resume objectives are usually one- to three-sentence summaries of your most relevant skills, goals and values. They also explain why you’re the best candidate for the position. These objectives are typically one of the first things an employer looks at on a resume, so it’s important to create a positive impression.

Professional summaries are slightly longer summaries of these skills and values. They often discuss the educational history and personal background information that explains why you chose this field of work and the value you may bring to an organization. They’re typically around five sentences or 150 words. People with moderate to extensive work experience often choose to write professional summaries instead of resume objectives because they can discuss their qualifications in more depth.

Read more:Career Goals for Executive Assistants: Importance and Examples

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What Makes An Executive Resume Different From A Professional Resume

Often, when we see advice for writing resumes, its geared toward those in the early or middle stages of their careers, or those making lateral moves. And while certain aspects of resume-writing standards apply no matter the career level , when you are writing a resume for an executive or C-level position, there are some important distinctions that you cant afford to ignore.

At the most basic level, a senior or executive resume differs from a professional resume in the simple fact that companies expect more from executive level employees. Your resume needs to reflect the fact that you are prepared for the top of the food chain, and that you have the experience, accomplishments, and career victories to prove it. Executives are expected to have a higher level of skill in areas such as leadership, decision-making, and strategic management, as well as the specific hard skills demanded by the role, and an executive resume needs to tell a career story that clearly shows those skill areas.

The good news is that executive resumes can and are generally expected to be more detailed and nuanced than professional resumes. An executive resumes pages must contain detailed information about your skills and experience, presented in an easy-to-understand, compelling format that demonstrates that you not only have the chops for the job, but an understanding of the current business environment and trends. No problem, right?

Blindly Copying Executive Resume Examples Is A Bad Idea

Doing so wont save you time, or money, in the long run. And it certainly wont help you take the fastest path to the CEO job. Heres why

Most online executive resume examples are created off of job descriptions. Which means they end up being task-, responsibility- and buzzword-based all of the things a recruiter would expect from a much more junior-level candidate.

Tasks and responsibilities say nothing about your unique ability to solve commercial business problems. Buzzwords simply fill space. All of which adds up to a dull executive resume that has no power to sell you.

Allow me to illustrate:

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Brand Yourself Above The Fold

As much as possible, make that section stand on its own as your calling card. Some suggestions for above the fold branding:

• Lead with your personal brand statement, which should generate chemistry by balancing your personality with your hard skills or relevant keywords.
• Add a powerful quote from a recent performance review or someone you work with.
• Include 3 or 4 value-driven statements with metrics.
• Put together your relevant keyword list, or areas of expertise, in an attractive graphic box.

Make Me Fall In Like With You

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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