Does Your Executive Resume Generate Calls?

Early in your career a resume that proves you have experience may be enough to get you the job. Once you’ve reached the executive level, it’s not.

Once you’re at the executive level, or are targeting those roles, you need to demonstrate value.

The value you bring to a potential employer.

At this level, recruiters and employers won’t be impressed that you managed a team, even a large team. That’s expected.

Recruiters and hiring managers want to see the positive impact you’ve had on your current and previous employers. The impact you’ve had on your team, on your department, or across the company.

To put it simply, they want examples of your accomplishments. Specifically, instances where you’ve made money, saved money, saved time, increased efficiency, cut costs, negotiated better rates, developed staff, etc.

Some professions, like sales, lend themselves to quantitative results. But, with the right perspective you can come up with other ways to measure outcomes.

If you work in operations, for example, you may have redesigned the method used to process expense reports so it takes only 3 days a month rather than 6. You’ve given you staff another 3 days a month to perform other duties. In other words, you cut expense report processing time 50% by redesigning the procedure.

And easy way to uncover your achievements is to use the CAR (Challenge, Action, Result) formula. Sometimes referred to as the Situation, Action, Outcome formula.

You may have stepped into a difficult situation when hired. Perhaps, something came up during your tenure. If you think carefully, you’ve probably overcome many obstacles.

Maybe sales were down or morale was low or your department was in chaos.

Once you have the challenge, the next step is to indicate how you solved the issue.

If the sales team was underperforming what did you do? Steal additional staff from your competition? Develop sales training? Set up a mentor program?

It’s important to go beyond the result and explain how you accomplished the feat.

Finish with the result.

Sales are easily quantified by talking dollar amounts or percentages. Quantifying other accomplishments can be more taxing. But, as with the example above, it can be done.

Eliminate phrases like “responsible for” and “duties included” which can sabotage your resume. Instead, think in terms of Challenge, Action, Result. Yes, it will take more time and a lot more effort. But, it will be well worth it.

Don’t forget to establish momentum.

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