Whether you are a seasoned executive or emerging into the C-suite, it is essential to create a resume that reflects the achievements that you have accomplished throughout your prolific career. Writing a senior level resume is no easy feat – while they share some similarities with entry-level and professional resumes, executive resumes present their own unique set of attributes and challenges. Below are several strategies that you can employ to propel your executive resume to the next level.

Language is Key

One of the primary differences that sets a senior resume apart from a professional resume is the language itself – as an executive, you have demonstrated an exceptional ability to advance the needs of your organization, and the language of your resume should be elevated to reflect that. Utilize strong action verbs to describe your accomplishments rather than passive, task-based language in order to show the direct impact you made on the companies that you have worked for. Be confident in your depiction of your achievements; above all else, a resume is a piece of marketing collateral advertising your attributes to a company, and it is important to utilize language that shows your strength as an organizational leader.

Formatting Matters

Similarly to language, formatting plays a key role in executive resumes. Your document should be clean, professional, and easy to read in order to capture the attention of executive recruiters and hiring committees alike. You can also leverage the formatting of your resume to highlight select career accomplishments that demonstrate the unique skills that you bring to the table as an executive. Steer away from objective statements; instead, create a strong executive summary that outlines the talents and qualifications that make you the best candidate for a role.

Be Strategic

There is a limited amount of space on a resume to present your experience, so it is paramount to utilize it wisely. Rather than including a complete history of your professional experience, draw the attention to the most recent 20 years of your career – not only does this strategy minimize the introduction of outdated or unnecessary information into your resume, but it also can help prevent bias or ageism from executive recruiting teams. Focus on accomplishments that are relevant to the opportunities that you are pursuing, and be sure to craft your resume with keywords that apply to each role that you are applying to in order to bolster your resume’s search engine value within digital applicant tracking systems (ATS) and career databases.

You have been a trailblazer in your career, and with these tips in mind, you can leverage your senior executive resume to further advance your success in the C-suite.

Whether you’re looking to sharpen your skills as a corporate executive or you’re looking to make the transition from management to an executive-level role, the executive resume is consequential to success in the corporate world. An executive must be a fearless strategist and confident in his or her ability to effectively grow and expand the business operations of an organization.

To prepare for an in-depth scrutinization from executive recruiters and hiring managers, you must know how to construct your executive level resume to fare well against a heavy examination. Here’s what you need to include in an executive resume.

Executive Summary

The executive summary is a brief section at the beginning of an executive resume that summarizes an executive candidate’s experience, value, career highlights, and measurable achievements. Executive recruiters look to quickly answer the question of “what can you do for me?” when looking at an executive’s resume. The executive summary must be written at a high level to immediately demonstrate candidate value within seconds in order to grasp the hiring manager’s attention.

Concrete Examples

To effectively land an executive role, you must effectively prove what you have done to impact your previous organizations. In doing so, executive recruiters will be able to fact-check just exactly what you can do for them. Include numbers and evidence of the problems your company faced and how you were able to provide resolutions. Anything monetary that you can include to show that you initiated and pioneered a strategy to improve processes and increase organizational revenue gives you a tremendous advantage against competitors.

Accomplishments

Many resumes tend to detail daily responsibilities in conjunction with professional accomplishments. However, in an executive resume, your key focus should be accomplishments and projects. When applying to executive level positions, you must be cognizant of the fact that executive recruiters are not interested in your duties in management or executive level roles. Instead, let your writing show your worth as an executive and immediately portray the dynamics of your effect on your organization. Leave the responsibilities out, as this will truly differentiate you from other executive level competitors and boost your chances of breaking into the C-Suite.

When you think about the corporate landscape, executive jobs are few and far between. There are far fewer executive-level jobs available in the job market than other kinds of positions. These executive-level jobs require candidates and individuals who are well-qualified, accomplished, and have a track record of prior career success. After all, leading organizations, whether large or small, is no easy feat – and only those who have strong experience are usually put in positions to guide organizations into the future.

When applying for executive jobs, there are a few things to consider about your executive resume that need to be slightly different than a standard, professional-level resume.

Use Your Executive Summary as a Story-Telling Section

It is safe to say that when candidates reach the executive level, they should all possess the core skills required to run an organization, regardless of industry or field. Executive-level decision-making is a blend of science and art, and a skill that is honed over years of high-stakes decision-making. The series of decisions that make up your career can be told in a story arc within the executive summary.

While there should always be a focus on keyword-optimization throughout the executive summary on an executive resume, top-quality executive resume services should include the creation of a strong, executive-level summary for your executive resume that has elements of storytelling. What were some of the key decisions that have made you who you are today? Which decisions provided the strongest boost to your organization and career? These are all elements that can be used within the executive summary.

Call Out Selected Accomplishments in its own Executive Resume Section

When you think about Executive Resume Services and how to best highlight the executive accomplishments that will make you stand out, consider creating a section on your executive resume that speaks to two or three of your highest-achieving accomplishments, and call this section the Selected Accomplishments section, or something to that effect.

Adding a section that calls out a couple of your key achievements allows easier executive resume reading for a hiring manager. Executive Resume Services should be used to develop a clear and impressive brand for your candidacy across all executive resume documents, and a nice, clear, and succinct section of your executive career highlights does this very nicely.

Use Executive Resume Services To Be Concise

One of the hardest parts about looking back over a career and presenting all your accomplishments in a resume is the art of narrowing down and making sure your executive resume is concise and to-the-point. Regardless of how accomplished you may be as an executive, a hiring manager only has a limited amount of time to read an executive resume and make a hiring decision.

Therefore, leverage the executive resume writers included with your executive resume services to paint a clear, impressive, but concise picture of you, your candidacy, and your core competencies to show that you are the executive for the role.

Navigating a career, and making sure you’re executing the right steps each and every time you’re faced with a major career-related decision, is no easy task. Making sound, effective decisions regarding something as emotional as your career and livelihood can often be tricky, and getting it right every time could require an objective third-party. This is where Executive Career Management Services come into the equation.

When delivered best, executive career management services are designed to enhance an executive’s profile, showcase their skill set, highlight accomplishments, and establish a strong digital presence for thought-leadership and branding. This includes consultation to optimize career documents, such as the executive resume, but also executive-level coaching and job search advice that is tailored to the unique needs and background of the executive candidate.

How Do Executive Career Management Services Start?

Most comprehensive executive career management services start with the revamping of the executive’s resume and career-related documents – cover letter, LinkedIn profile, and thank you letter – to speak to executive-level search criteria. The next step in developing a strong executive candidate profile is to plan out and write an executive biography, one that provides the reader with a high-level view of the candidate’s strengths, philosophies, background, education, and tenure.

With a new executive resume, supporting documents written at an executive level, and an executive biography, we’re then ready to move onto executive branding and thought-leadership aspects of the modern executive candidate profile.

What Differentiates the Modern Executive Candidate?

We’ve all heard about how important it is for modern job candidates to have a strong digital presence. This is no different at the executive level. In fact, it can be argued that a strong digital presence is more important at the executive-level, and provides an opportunity for an executive candidate to separate themselves from the pool of executive job applicants with thought-leadership articles and a strong public presence on the web.

In an increasingly-competitive world, where most top executives possess all the fundamental leadership attributes necessary to lead an organization, the modern executive candidate needs to showcase a level of innovation and entrepreneurialism in their approach to branding. Long game are the days when a resume was enough, today, executive career management services are essential in building an executive profile that is geared toward top jobs.

What Are The Benefits Of Executive Coaching & Job Search Advice?

Tenure is a valuable indicator of dedication and success in the career. Executives are often masters of their crafts, and nobody can really master a craft when hopping around jobs and responsibilities too often in a career.

On the flip side to having good tenure is that many executives may not have interviewed for a new position or tested the job market in years! Being even slightly out-of-touch with modern hiring practices, interview techniques, and the job search landscape can be a significant disadvantage for an executive candidate.

This is where executive coaching and job search advice comes into the equation. Executive Career Management Services should include the opportunity to link up with an experienced Career Coach who can guide and provide insights into how best to position an executive candidate in the marketplace, how to tackle tough interview questions, and how best to navigate the negotiation stage.

Nothing is easy about switching careers, especially at the executive level. Executive Career Management Services provides a transitioning executive (or even an individual looking to be prepared in case an opportunity arises) with the tools and tricks to ensure they are ready – be it on the resume and career documents front, or during the interpersonal communication stages of the executive interview process.

Crafting a resume fit for an executive is hard, therefore needing help with an executive resume is common. If you’re a mid-management professional, director, or executive looking to make the transition into the next executive-level role, what do you do when you need help with an executive resume?

The first thing to get out of the way is compiling a list of positions or companies you would like to pursue a position at. Understanding the requirements and parameters of the executive positions you want to pursue is key when thinking about how to craft your executive resume. The attributes and skills outlined by the job description will inform the keywords you will use to highlight your experience and expertise on your executive resume.

If you’re not comfortable writing your own executive resume, consider hiring an executive resume writer or executive career consultant with the experience to collate all your executive experience into a succinct and attractive executive resume package that will allow you to shine during the interview stages.

Top-quality executive resume writing services, like the one ECM Agency provides, provide professionals with the opportunity to speak with their Certified Professional Resume Writers.

All careers are nuanced, especially executive-level careers. And the only way to explain the nuances of decision-making and certain experiences is to meet with a skilled writer and talk through your skillset and background.

Placing your executive dreams in the hands of a computerized or template-system hoping that it will craft you a top executive resume that has the power to sway the reader is foolish.

Executive resumes require an element of storytelling. What differentiates one executive candidate from another is not skillset or attributes, these are expected at this level. What differentiates an executive candidate is the nuance of their decision-making, their leadership philosophy, and what they can bring to an organization from a cultural and experience perspective.

So, what do you do when you need help with an executive resume? Consider partnering up with executive resume writers.