Over the course of my career as a Career Coach and Resume Writing Strategist, I have written in excess of 10,000 resumes for job seekers at all levels from entry level, management, and technical to senior level executives from fortune 100 companies. There are thousands of books, journals and websites with tips and strategies on writing an effective resume. Writing a resume is challenging however, with the right information and focus you can write a resume that is high impact, credible and engaging.

Whether you are writing an executive resume, management resume, and entry-level resume or for a profession such as the law or engineering, your resume should clearly show your qualifications and how it fits the requirements of the job. For this article, I will focus on the management resume to illustrate targeted and effective resume writing techniques.  

Complete a skills inventory

When a writing a management resume,  the first step is to perform an in-depth skills analysis to identify your value, core competences and successes to write your management resume.  It is important to know that an effective management resume should be relevant, convey your work experiences quickly and concisely and in a manner that makes you stand out from your competitors.  To complete a skills inventory, ask yourself the following questions:

What am I good at? How have my past employers describe? What makes me a great manager? Or What is my management style? What skills do I use to meet my goals?

Cater to the Employer’s skills requirement

 You should determine what the requirements are for the jobs or careers you are targeting by carefully reviewing the job descriptions. For instance, some managerial careers require abilities such as strategic thinking, leadership, reliability, teamwork, attention to detail and communication. If you possess these core strengths, you should ensure that they are written on your resume.  When writing your management resume, you should create a short profile or career summary that outlines your core skills and abilities and encapsulates your career goals and are specific to the needs outlined by the employer. For example “Certified Real Property Administrator with 15 years of experience managing high-asset-value commercial, retail and mixed use property portfolios in Vancouver, Calgary and Toronto.” This sentence clearly shows to a future employer knows how many years of experience the candidate has, his areas of expertise and the relevant Canadian markets in which he has experiences.

Focus on the employer’s needs

An effectively written resume will focus on the requirements of the employer and not the needs of the application. Many job seekers make the mistake of stating in their resume objectives what they want from a job i.e. advancement, security and challenge. They neglect to inform the employer of what they bring to the table – such as leadership, problem solving, critical thinking, business acumen and other core strengths that would be of immediate value to an employer.

Tailor your resume 

When writing a management resume or any other level resume for that matter, one size definitely does not fit all. You should always tailor your resume for reach job or occupation of interest. For example, if you are targeting accounting and want to use your innate sales abilities, do not use the same resumes for both career paths. Write a targeted resume for each career path with an eye on highlighting how your transferable skills and experience relates to that job by using action words, verbs and terms specific to the job you are targeting in your resume.   

Image taken on 2007-03-31 11:18:08. Image Source. (Used with permission)