Transforming the resume: Transforming posthumous careers into the future of the C-suite

One of the traps that IT leaders often fall into when looking for a new job is to view their resume as a historical document of their career. The reality is that your resume should paint a clear picture of your future career, detailing your past work experience as a road map that inevitably leads to your next leadership gig.

But finding that balance between detailing the past and depicting the future can be tricky, especially while keeping the summary accurate. A few key strategies, however, can help you tell your career story through your resume without getting bogged down in the past.

With more than 20 years of experience in data and analytics, Gloria Edsall, whose identity has been changed for this article, is an aspiring CDO looking to break into an executive role. We paired Edsall with Steven Van Vreede, President, Executive Resume Writer and Coach of ITtechExec.com, to help her strengthen her resume to show how her career path qualifies her for the CDO position.

“Our meetings focused on discussing how the company and its customers gained value from the actions of the candidate and his team. We spent a lot of time talking [her] goals and interests so that the new CV can be tailored to the future and not just a post-mortem of her career,” says Van Vreede.

What follows is an account of that process and some tips that describe how Van Vreede’s work with Edsall can help you better shape your resume as a leadership pathway to new opportunities.

Highlight your leadership qualities from above

Van Vreed worked with Edsall to create a cohesive theme for her resume based on her career goals and interests. The first two or three pages of Edsall’s initial resume covered education, certification, training and publications, which Van Vreed said were “big distractions.”

“For someone looking to fill leadership positions that focus on transforming data science and analytics organizations into drivers of business value, there was virtually no content that matched the candidate’s track record and delivered tangible business value.” — he says.

> Download: Original summary by Gloria Edsall

To remedy this, Van Vreed included a summary at the beginning of the resume to clearly outline how Edsall’s experience and knowledge help her succeed in leadership roles, detailing what type of leader Edsall is and how her management and data analysis experience make her an ideal candidate to the role of CDO.

Van Vreed also cited three career highlights for Edsall, including creating $25 million in value from building a predictive analytics system, securing $25 million in new contracts and $14 million in business value from advanced predictive analytics practice and driving $5 million in value by maturing the data science practice. These top achievements demonstrate Edsall’s ability to bring value to an organization through her analytical expertise, and to lead successful and resilient teams in the process.

Be brief and strategic

One of the glaring problems with Edsall’s original CV is that it was too long and, according to Van Vreed, “more appropriate to be used as an academic CV instead of a personal marketing document for corporate roles”, at seven pages. This is one of the the most common resume mistakes tech professionals do, especially as your career gets longer, it can be difficult to know what to keep and what to leave on your resume.

As a general rule, a professional CV should be a concise 1-2 pages when applying for corporate roles. Recruiters read thousands of resumes, so they’re likely to lose focus or reject your resume altogether if they can’t understand your qualifications within the first few minutes.

Edsall knew her resume was too long and wasn’t happy with the formatting around her skills, work accomplishments, and past work experience. She didn’t know a better way to consolidate more than a decade of experience or how to highlight her accomplishments and relate them to the value she would bring to the CDO role.

In addition to being too long, the initial summary was also “very technical and tactical in nature,” according to Van Vreede. This is a common problem technologists face when writing resumes: they include technical jargon that can put off recruiters or hiring managers who aren’t as familiar with the technical side of the role.

Van Vreed solved this by combining her professional experience and creating a sidebar along the right side of both pages to showcase Edsall’s education, credentials and key skills. Including this type of sidebar allowed Van Vried to bring the chronological history of Edsall’s work to the fore without obscuring her education and credentials at the bottom of the resume.

Adding a resume and sidebar detailing your education, skills, and credentials is a great way to get rid of redundant work experience, allowing you to focus on specific accomplishments for each position, consolidating your evergreen skills, experience, and knowledge into a summary. and simple lists. It also gives recruiters and hiring managers an easy way to make sure you have the skills and qualifications they need at a glance. Ultimately, you want to grab the recruiter or hiring manager’s attention from the jump, encouraging them to delve into your overall experience.

Final results

Van Vreede eventually helped transform Edsall’s resume from “technical and tactical” to “strategic and achievement-based.” Most importantly, he focused on highlighting accomplishments that illustrate how Edsall built or transformed the science and analytics departments at each company and increased revenue and business value through his efforts. These accomplishments help tell the story of her career and how those experiences will make her a strong candidate for CDO.

> Download: Gloria Edsall’s latest summary

Edsall says she was most surprised by how Van Vreed was able to cut the original seven-page resume down to just two pages, noting that the process helped her “learn what leaders look for when hiring leaders.” She is pleased with the final resume, which better highlights her qualifications for the position of supervisor.

Van Vreede also believes that Edsall’s experience and skills now stand out thanks to a resume that is “aesthetically pleasing and filled with great content, but it’s all wrapped up in just two pages,” he says. Overall, the final document will help Edsall demonstrate the added value she brings during interviews with potential employers.