The 2025 job market is calling. It’s time to distinguish yourself.

By now, you’ve seen the fallout from this year’s abundant layoffs and downsizings. You already know the competition is fierce, especially at the executive level.

So how can you give your resume a powerful edge in 2025 and attract the attention you deserve?

First, Quit Focusing on Your Competition.

Looking at how others write their resumes won’t give you a unique edge. Too often, job seekers look to their colleagues or browse resume samples to spark new ideas. 

You know you’re falling into this trap if your resume describes you as a results-driven or highly accomplished leader.

Some job seekers tap well-meaning friends for advice. But these contacts can’t lay claim to YOUR of experience, leadership perspective, or distinctive achievements.

Employers are interested in what sets you APART.

A powerful and targeted resume must speak to your OWN promise of value, with a hefty dose of data to back it up. (See real-life examples here.)

Nail Your Own Value Proposition.

It’s time to brainstorm your value-add to a new employer.

This could be the speed in which you deliver projects, the revenue you generate, how you coach teams to peak performance, the tactics you use to open new markets, or how you cut costs – anything that singles you out from others at the same level.

Gather success stories that PROVE your competencies, and document these wins in short, powerful sentences on your resume, such as:

• Created training programs educating 200+ sales reps and enabling 85% better close rate for a VP of Sales role.
• Realized 26% lower expenses by restructuring divisions for a COO position.
• Regained hospital accreditation with top-ranked patient safety metrics when targeting a healthcare CEO job.
• Fielded investor queries, built TPAs, and established lender relationships for the #1 divestiture in company history as VP of Investor Relations.
• Secured global payment systems processing 2+ trillion daily transactions, preventing common data breaches as CISO.

These success stories should be written to pique employer interest, preferably using the C-A-R Strategy outlined here or the ideas in 5 Steps to a Compelling Executive Brand.

Save the longer explanations for your interview.

Condense Your Resume to Essential Facts.

Even if you have decades of experience, employers may NOT have the time to read about it!

Most hiring authorities and recruiters are looking for standout achievements and information on your career progression, typically tucked into 2 pages or less.

Trying to fit decades of detail into your resume? Ask yourself:

• Are my most important qualifications presented in sufficient detail? (Great! You’re covered.)
• Will employers care about achievements from more than a decade ago? (Not unless they’re directly related to your goals. Cull older accomplishments to make room for more recent wins.)
• Does this resume need ALL the detail used to land my previous jobs? (Probably not. Focus on skills that are relevant NOW.)

Ruthlessly edit until you’ve reached 2 pages (3 at most) that contain compelling, data-driven examples of your strengths – and make your top wins take center stage on Page 1.

You’ll see this technique throughout my executive resume samples.

Show Employers the Money.

In other words, focus on how you’ve made it or saved it.

For every success in your career, ask yourself how much it affected the company’s bottom line:

• If you’re known for fast results, such as projects completed ahead of time, estimate how much money your employer saved if stakeholders could use new software or other capabilities faster.
• Involved in negotiating vendor contracts? You have have reduced operating expenses, gained more purchasing power, or cut deals for better long-term savings.
• If your career includes mentoring employees, consider whether you influenced retention, and then take a shot at how much it costs the company to hire new staff.
• What if you designed the first offshore contract – that shaved 45% off headcount expenses?

Keep going until you have a group of achievements with dollar figures and percentages key to strengthening your resume for 2025.

There are MANY ways to quantify your impact in terms of dollars, new growth opportunities, or cost savings.

If you struggle with this type of writing, make a list of your top 10 career successes, then work backwards to shorten them and add figures.

Use Headlines to Direct Attention to Your Best Wins.

To help make more space on your resume or LinkedIn profile, summarize the high points of your career.

Consider writing a succinct headline to quickly point out your top achievements.

As shown in this example of an award-winning Engineering leader resume, Market-Leading Software Quality & Scalability tells employers this executive delivers high-value products.

A bullet-point list underneath also includes 11 Consecutive Quarters of Profit and Innovative ERP Startup in bold text. Each of these successes is quickly framed for easier reading and navigation.

Think about headlines or summary statements that apply to you. If you’ve been repeatedly sought for new roles, try Promoted 4 Times in 6 Years at XYZ Company.”

If you’ve led changes that improved team retention, Trusted Turnaround Leader & Mentor might be suitable.

The sky’s the limit with these summary statements for your resume!

These tips will help you write a standout executive resume for 2025.

By analyzing and writing about your top qualifications and impact, you can shine brighter, even if you’re facing a market filled with highly qualified job-seeking competition.

See Also:

What Should Your Resume Look Like to Capture Attention?

Over 50? How to Write a Winning Resume

How to Update Your Executive Resume – The 4 Steps You’re Missing

Recruiter-Endorsed, Premium Executive Resume & LinkedIn Writing Services

Become the TOP candidate by working one-on-one with a multiple award-winning executive resume writer and former recruiter skilled in positioning 3,600+ leaders for success at Amazon, Eli Lilly, GE, Disney, Google, EY, Kaiser, Oracle, Ericsson, UHC, Intel, Pfizer, UC Health, and others.

Your new, personally branded Resume and LinkedIn Profile will gain attention from Fortune-ranked, niche, PE, multinational, startup, and boutique companies - even in a competitive job market.

See why my resumes open doors to C-Suite, EVP, VP, Board, and Director roles by viewing interview-winning resumes that show a clear competitive advantage.

- Laura Smith-Proulx, CCMC, CPRW, CPBA, TCCS, COPNS, CIC, CTTCC, NCOPE

Will you get what you need with an AI-generated leadership resume?

Now that ChatGPT and other AI tools have taken the world by storm, you might be wondering about its application in your job search – namely, to write your resume or other materials.

It takes work and introspection to write about yourself, even with the help of AI.

A compelling, branded resume MUST SET YOU APART with unique content… ensuring others can’t claim your achievements or own your professional perspective.

No matter if you turn the job of resume writing over to ChatGPT, Google Bard, or other tools, both you AND the bot will need to dig deeper to discover your competitive edge.

Here are 5 considerations for using AI to help produce your resume:

1 – Use AI if you’re okay with a generic branding experience.

Recruiters and employers have been unimpressed by bland resumes for YEARS.

These resumes fail to provide the context crucial to describe your specific contributions.

If you already know someone at the company, you might be in luck. But if you’re planning on targeting an executive role where you’ll face stiff competition and a grueling interview process, think again before cranking out an AI-assisted resume and calling it done.

The text will look professionally done, but will it convey the heart and effort behind YOUR career success? Therefore, when you use AI to write your resume, be ready to supply your own career data – leveraging the app as a resume-writing framework.

As noted by Madison Hoff in “Using AI to to Help With Resumes, Cover Letters Could be a Dealbreaker“, some recruiters find AI-produced content to be a turnoff.

Your career marketing materials must be compelling and distinctive.

2 – Consider AI assistance if you have a traditional career path.

If your career aligns with the typical trajectory in your field, using AI might help you get started.

If your career has taken a few left turns, however, it’s important to build a writing strategy that describes your penchant for your field, echoes your leadership philosophy, and helps employers realize why you’re a good fit despite some bumps in the road.

ChatGPT and other LLMs won’t automatically produce strategies for a work history with gaps, career detours, or other setbacks, where you might need:

• Your last several jobs to appear on the first page (where they can take center stage). If this is the case, each entry must be short and crisp. AI does NOT produce tight content (see point #5).
• A strategy for explaining how your career path adds up to a new, high-level role that could be a slight detour from your previous experience.
• Formatting that features some experience over others, especially if you’re aiming for a position reflecting only a segment of your skills.
• Deeper explanations of your expertise in new industry trends.

If you’ve encountered these issues, you already know you need a plan to address them.

So keep in mind you may need a compelling way to craft your STORY, not just assemble the components piece by piece.

3 – You’re okay with using a bot to crank out your achievements, one by one.

If you’re pursuing an early career position, some of your accomplishments and career path might look similar to other professionals.

For example, an IT security analyst should be able to describe how they’ve engineered threat detection solutions, and an RN should have a good grasp of patient safety.

However, when you’ve amassed decades of leadership experience, your resume (and LinkedIn) should also capture your leadership style, pattern of success, career trajectory, and personal brand reputation.

You’ll find that bots can prompt you for individual achievements, but function best as a foundational tool for a resume. Recruiters often point out that the human element is a strong factor in your job search.

4 – You’re pursuing a role commonly found in job descriptions (familiar to AI).

Targeting an operations manager, chef, or medical technician position? AI tools can dig up and leverage MILLIONS of related job descriptions before you can even blink.

However, there’s only one CEO, COO, or CFO (and a select number of SVPs, EVPs, or Directors) in a healthcare system, manufacturing corporation, fintech company, or other business entity.

The more esoteric your career pursuits, the more difficult it will be for AI to provide the distinctive content needed for your career.

In Should You Write Your Own Executive Resume?, you’ll see that the task of setting yourself apart requires some introspective thought about your personal brand and career contributions.

You must answer the tough questions likely to be posed in an interview – and get that compelling story on paper!

This is true whether you rely on a professional writer, bot, or resume template, and even MORE important when you’re approaching or targeting the C-suite.

5 – You don’t mind taking the time to edit AI-generated text.

In 2025,  your resume must hit the mark quickly – while DIFFERENTIATING you.

Prompting AI models for resume content will produce lengthy, often generic sentences. If you’re unsure how to make each sentence your own, or how to roll up each bullet without losing its meaning, you may need more help than a bot can supply.

The verdict?

Use AI tools to help stimulate thought for your resume only if you’re already familiar with your career successes, have a typical career trajectory, or you’re ready to fine-tune the results.

It’s important to ensure your resume is powerful enough to support your ascent to the top.

Recruiter-Endorsed, Premium Executive Resume & LinkedIn Writing Services

Become the TOP candidate by working one-on-one with a multiple award-winning executive resume writer and former recruiter skilled in positioning 3,600+ leaders for success at Amazon, Eli Lilly, GE, Disney, Google, EY, Kaiser, Oracle, Ericsson, UHC, Intel, Pfizer, UC Health, and others.

Your new, personally branded Resume and LinkedIn Profile will gain attention from Fortune-ranked, niche, PE, multinational, startup, and boutique companies - even in a competitive job market.

See why my resumes open doors to C-Suite, EVP, VP, Board, and Director roles by viewing interview-winning resumes that show a clear competitive advantage.

- Laura Smith-Proulx, CCMC, CPRW, CPBA, TCCS, COPNS, CIC, CTTCC, NCOPE