Ready to write your best resume ever in 2024?

Your brand needs to stand out immediately in order to counter intensive competition.

• According to HR Executive, up to 90% of employers may be planning 2024 layoffs and Newsweek adds that a hiring freeze could be instituted at companies anticipating a recession.
• To write a resume that outpaces your competition, you’ll need to convey your value proposition (by getting in touch with your own leadership brand), keep your resume succinct, and limit your content to salient details.

Use these tips to market yourself effectively on your resume in 2024:

Focus on What Differentiates You in 2024.

Too often, job seekers look to other sources for resume writing inspiration, such as a colleague’s resume or examples of resumes in your field. However, employers are interested in what sets you apart.

This could be the speed in which you deliver projects, the revenue you make for your employer, how you coach teams to peak performance, or how you cut costs. Employers are less interested in your basic tasks, unless you’ve handled some unusual duties that set you apart from other candidates with the same job title.

Your resume needs success stories that PROVE your readiness for the new job. Write these achievements in short, powerful sentences, 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 Joint Commission hospital accreditation with top-ranked patient safety metrics when targeting a healthcare CEO job

Bonus: you can also use these success stories for your interview after crafting impactful, memorable accomplishments for your resume.

Pare Your Resume to Essential Facts.

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

Most hiring managers 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 2024 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.

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.

Keep going until you have a group of achievements with dollar figures and percentages useful in writing your 2024 resume. 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.

Make More Space for What Matters in Your Resume.

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 2024 resume.

These tips will help you write the best resume in 2024.

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.

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.

Your new 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 a ChatGPT-generated leadership resume?

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

But what are the implications, advantages, or pitfalls you might experience when using ChatGPT for resume writing?

A compelling, branded resume MUST SET YOU APART with unique content… ensuring others can’t claim your achievements or own your professional perspective. It takes work and introspection to write about yourself, even with the help of ChatGPT.

No matter if you turn the job of resume writing over to ChatGPT (or its competitor Google Bard), both you and the bot will need to dig deeper to discover your competitive edge.

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

1 – Use ChatGPT if you’re not concerned about 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 a ChatGPT-generated 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 ChatGPT to write your resume, be ready to supply your own career data – leveraging the app as a resume-writing framework.

As noted by Cliff Jurkiewicz in “Should you use ChatGPT to apply for Jobs?” on FastCompany, “ChatGPT is just another tool that requires input to create something.” Your input must be compelling and distinctive.

2 – You have a straight-line career path that needs minimal explanation.

If your career aligns with the typical trajectory in your field, using ChatGPT 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 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. ChatGPT 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 chatbots can prompt you for individual achievements, but function best as a foundational tool for a resume (as described by Eryn Marshall of Oyster in “ChatGPT writing résumés and cover letters needn’t be feared, HR pros say“), who points out that the “human element” will always be a factor in your job search.

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

Targeting an operations manager, chef, or medical technician position? Chat apps 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 ChatGPT 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, chatbot, 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 ChatGPT-generated text.

In 2024,  your resume must hit the mark quickly – while DIFFERENTIATING you.

Prompting ChatGPT 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 chatbots like ChatGPT to write your resume if you’ve already assembled your career successes, you have a typical career trajectory, and 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 3,500+ leaders for success since 2002.

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