Episode Transcript

Chris Villanueva 0:00
How can I ensure that my resume stands out? What are the best practices for resume formatting? How can I ensure that I showcase my extensive experience and accomplishments? These are some of the questions that we’ve seen come up time and time again.

Chris Villanueva 0:19
And welcome to the Let’s Eat, Grandma Career Warrior Podcast, where our goal is not only to help you land your dream job, but to help you live your best life, senior level professionals, it’s time to move on up and fulfill your potential, we’re going to go into some very practical and topical tips for senior level job seekers or even those who are not senior level yet, but who want to apply for this upper management positions.

Chris Villanueva 0:42
I’m excited because we’ll talk about how senior level resumes are different. How can you use them to land more interviews? Why you can’t just rely on solid experience and accomplishments to get those jobs? And another hotbed question is, why am I so darn overqualified for these roles, and I’m not getting any callbacks.

Chris Villanueva 1:02
I’ll discuss all of these pain points and more with this podcast. So stay tuned in for something amazing, and I can’t wait to get into it.

Chris Villanueva 1:12
Before we get into this episode here, I want to remind you as a listener, we are doing giveaways for this podcast. If you are a listener or a friend of a listener, you can go to let’s eat grandma.com forward slash podcast and submit for a free resume package.

Chris Villanueva 1:30
We are currently highlighting layoffs in this really difficult year. So if you were laid off most certainly submit your name and email address and you will qualify for a potential free package in this giveaway.

Chris Villanueva 1:43
Alright, so warming it up talking about some things that are concerns for senior level job seekers. We have been getting a lot of amazing data here at Let’s Eat, Grandma, we have a resume submission process to where folks can submit their resume. Let us know what level they’re at what their top concerns are, I take that information very seriously and dive into what the top concerns are and in a survey for over 700, senior level job seekers where they sent in their resumes, and the top concern was professional experience and how that was being conveyed.

Chris Villanueva 2:21
On the resume. Second place was relevant to target industry alongside word choice when you compare that to the folks who are more entry level relevance to the target in this industry is the top concern and professional experience drops to second place.

Chris Villanueva 2:37
This makes a lot of sense because you’re accumulating more and more experiences on your resume, and how you shape those experiences, how you refine them to include numbers, accomplishments and even what you choose to highlight becomes even more important at the senior level.

Chris Villanueva 2:54
Another top concern was layoffs as well as folks who have had gaps within their resume serving the last 200 clients we’ve had at let’s see grandma 27%. That’s a whopping number. It’s a huge number 27% have been laid off. I’ve never seen numbers like that for our business. I’m not saying that represents the general population.

Chris Villanueva 3:16
These are of course the clients who we attract and help. But that’s huge and we’re just noticing that things are getting more complicated and tougher. With that being said, I’m going to address top questions from senior level professionals that can address how to shape your professional experience as well as how to overcome a complicated scenario such as a layoff.

Chris Villanueva 3:37
Now let’s dive into the first question for senior level professionals. How can I ensure that my resume stands out and effectively conveys my leadership abilities and executive level skills, your leadership is huge.

Chris Villanueva 3:50
This is the biggest difference between a mid level resume versus a senior level resume, this is going to be the thing that a hiring manager is going to be zooming in on to make sure that you are going to be somebody to propel their organization into success.

Chris Villanueva 4:07
Whether that be increasing revenue, profits, or even making processes easier and more effective for the entire organization at large. People make the mistake of including leadership on their resumes, but at the wrong scope.

Chris Villanueva 4:23
I’ve looked at a resume the other day that for example, said that they led a team of 10 IT professionals but it didn’t go into those upper level things that the job posting would have called for things such as strategic planning, or organizational leadership across multiple departments or the big one financial oversight.

Chris Villanueva 4:44
Remember, I was working a mid level manager role at a restaurant and I was in charge of coming up with daily financial reports and sending them over to the senior level managers. I was not senior level myself, but the fact that I was able to look at the p&l statement, what their revenues were, and even come up with some suggestions operationally to reduce expenses.

Chris Villanueva 5:09
Those are the things that I would highlight on the resume even over the fact that I lead 10 to 15 staff on a daily basis, I might even put that first on the resume if the company was looking for financial oversight as a key thing. So don’t just include leadership experience, include leadership experience at the exact level that you’re going for.

Chris Villanueva 5:31
The second question from senior level professionals is how can I ensure that I showcase my extensive experience and accomplishments without appearing overqualified for roles? So first of all, if you’re trying to move on up, I want you to ask yourself, are you applying for positions that are meant for you, a lot of folks are selling themselves short and just applying for positions lower than their grade, because they’re afraid they can’t get their dream job, whatever position they’re going for, I should say.

Chris Villanueva 6:01
So number one, probably a different podcast in itself is making sure you’re applying for the roles that you were called to do, again, fulfill your potential move on up. But just because you’re overqualified for a role does not mean that you are just going to be a shoo in and start landing interviews, I see this over and over again, folks who are applying for positions that they just look way too overqualified in hiring manager sees that as an immediate flight risk, not going to take a chance on somebody in paid good money for somebody who looks like they shouldn’t be applying for senior level roles.

Chris Villanueva 6:36
This is a common thing. So I know you’re perfectly qualified for that managerial level position, I know that you can do it, because you’ve done it before. But think about what the very first half of your resume is saying you’re saying that you are director level your executive level, and it just does not match applicant tracking systems may not even be picking up on your resume because those keywords may not even be matched.

Chris Villanueva 7:01
So it’s not even personal. This is just a matching issue. So my top tip there is to know the audience and match your leadership scope as much as possible to that some things to consider is scope. How many team members were you in charge of at that time, if you’re applying for roles where five to 10 is necessary, and you’re throwing 30 to 35 numbers like that on your resume, then that may be out of scope.

Chris Villanueva 7:01
If you have been managing budgets of five to 10 million, and the companies that you’re applying for are calling for under 1 million. Again, that might be out of scope. So in a situation like that, where still, heck I want to apply for these positions, I want to work for whatever reason for these companies, then what I would suggest is highlighting other numbers, yes, you need to include those on the resume.

Chris Villanueva 7:53
But don’t necessarily showcase and highlight those numbers, you can use words like extensive or more than 10 years of experience, or 10 Plus on the resume ethically, if it matches with those roles, you don’t want to overqualified yourself.

Chris Villanueva 8:09
That’s just as important as showcasing experience. Now, when it comes to making sure that those accomplishments stand out, strategically, you can save time by focusing on above the fold. This is a marketing term, I think about it all the time, because I’m in charge of my own website and the hundreds of 1000s of website visitors that have seen my own website, this is such an important concept for your resume. Also, because 90% of the time, folks are not going to go beyond a certain part of your resume.

Chris Villanueva 8:40
Let’s call it the second half of the first page, that top half of the first page of the resume is where you’re going to be wanting to put a lot of focus and attention on so why not focus on that summary at the top, and that most recent professional experience to make sure that you’re perfectly qualified for those roles.

Chris Villanueva 8:57
Another question that you may be asking is What strategies can I use to address career transitions, especially moving from senior level roles? How are changing industries, look, you’re going to need to get more creative than ever and I’m saying it’s going to be a tougher job search because this is what I’ve seen in other people too.

Chris Villanueva 9:17
If you are looking to transition to another role, it’s going to be a little bit tougher, and you’re going to need to get more creative and you’re going to need to give persistence after persistence in applying for these roles.

Chris Villanueva 9:28
So let’s say you’re applying, for example, to an operations position at a technology company. It came from oil and gas now down here in Houston. I’m not from Houston, but Houston is next door. down in Houston. We have a lot of oil and gas and folks who may be say moving to Austin and applying for technology, director positions, ask what you have going for you here are some crossover examples that you may take from oil and gas to technology, maybe it’s project management, applying for companies where large scale projects meet meeting deadlines are important. Yeah, you had that stuff in oil and gas or maybe it’s innovation management. Innovation is something that is not just unique to technology.

Chris Villanueva 10:10
But think about all of the oil and gas examples and things that you’ve had to deal with in the last five to 10 years. Think about quality assurance, or even think about risk management. Oh my gosh, there’s so much risk to manage in oil and gas. And also in technology, it’s going to be a bit different for technology when you’re thinking about things like hacking or downtime, uptime, things like that.

Chris Villanueva 10:34
But it’s still the same high level concept that you have to convey in your resume and again, think about above the fold. Think about that summary statement at the very top. And think about that most recent professional experience where you can put extra time and extra energy into that document.

Chris Villanueva 10:53
Last question I’ll cover here, this one’s huge is what are the best practices for resume formatting length, and ATS compatibility while maintaining a professional engaging format.

Chris Villanueva 11:05
So out of the senior level resumes I received the problem isn’t that, you know, it’s like an overly designed resume, I see that a lot of those entry level positions is let me get this beautiful, colorful resume that has like these tables and charts and has my picture on it because I look pretty, it’s not the concern for senior level professionals.

Chris Villanueva 11:25
The concern is yes, you have an ATS friendly resume, but you’re packing in so much information, because you’re awesome, you’ve accumulated all of these awesome experiences, but you’re packing them into a resume and it’s very difficult to know where to look on that resume, design becomes more important because skin value becomes more important.

Chris Villanueva 11:46
Skin value. I’ve said this before, I owe that to over that term to my professor I had back in college skin values, the concept of presenting your document to somebody who has very little time in their life, and they’re looking for very specific things and you can use things like bold or underline italics whitespace to your advantage, and you can guide their eyes exactly to where they want to go.

Chris Villanueva 12:14
Think about this as an example, say like you’re looking through the bookstore, I don’t know who goes to the bookstore anymore. I like going personally, I think it’s a fun experience. Shout out to Barnes and Noble but say you’re trying to decide whether a book is going to be right for you based on your needs, I always look at the title as the first indicator of whether a book is going to be relevant to me and then the next thing I look at are those Table of Contents.

Chris Villanueva 12:40
That is an example of skin Valley in providing an overview of where people can look in your resume. Think about things like your headline at the very top of your resume as something that can offer skin value.

Chris Villanueva 12:53
Think about your titles, those position titles themselves, which I know hiring managers gravitate to first, as the thing that people may want to look at.

Chris Villanueva 13:03
Think about those special accomplishments that you want to make sure people do not miss. So that’s going to be really important in design, it’s really tough to explain this on a podcast visually. So if you want some examples, you can go to our website, let’s see grandma.com and look at some of the sample resumes that we’ve put out there.

Chris Villanueva 13:22
Now, length is another commonly asked question, how long should my senior level resume be two pages is going to be that sweet spot, I don’t care how long your resume is, I don’t care that you’ve had six to seven pages of quote, relevant content.

Chris Villanueva 13:38
Most folks at the very top of funnel stage, I mean, at the very beginning stages of the hiring process are only considering the first half of the first page of the resume.

Chris Villanueva 13:48
So again, make sure that you’re condensing your resume experience to the most relevant two pages here, it’s perfectly fine to have a resume that’s three or four pages long, maybe as a separate document that you can send while you’re in the interview stage. But that two page resume when you’re just grabbing attention from the beginning, that’s going to be really darn important.

Chris Villanueva 14:12
So these are some of the questions that we’ve seen come up time and time again, I’m reading all of these questions from senior level professionals and so I really want to address those top questions that I know that senior level professionals had, is there something that I missed that is specific to you, my recommendation would be to head on over to letseatgrandma.com and submit your resume for a free review and we would love to dive into your specific situation and see how we can help

Chris Villanueva 14:41
Again, don’t forget that we have a giveaway for a free resume package you can go to letseatgrandma.com/podcast/

Chris Villanueva 14:47
Again, we’re prioritizing folks who have been laid off and I hope you enjoyed this episode as much as I enjoyed producing it. Have an awesome rest of your day and I’ll see you next time live

Chris Villanueva 14:57
Career Warrior Podcast and before you go Remember, if you’re not seeing the results you want in your job search, our highly trained team of professional resume writers here at Let’s Eat, Grandma can help head on over to letseatgrandma.com/podcast/ to get a free resume critique and $70 off any one of our resume writing packages.

Chris Villanueva 15:17
We talk all the time on the show about the importance of being targeted in your job search and with our unique writing process and focus on individual attention. You’ll get a resume cover letter and LinkedIn profile that are highly customized and tailored to your goals to help you get hired faster. Again, head on over to letseatgrandma.com/podcast/ Thanks, I’ll see you next time.