From the course: Resume Makeover

Build your resume roadmap

From the course: Resume Makeover

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Build your resume roadmap

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- Now that you've determined your target job and brainstormed on the most crucial messaging for your new resume, you're ready to build your resume roadmap. Essentially, this will be an outline of what will become your final resume. I recommend that you use the resume roadmap template in the exercise files for this. It'll give you prompts for each resume section, and help assure that you stay focused on your core goals and that most important messaging. Now, as you build your roadmap, I encourage you to focus on three things. One, what's the most important overarching message that I need to convey? In other words, based on your understanding of what it takes to be a great fit for the roles that you're targeting, how do you need to introduce yourself in the summary section of your resume so that right as someone reviews it they understand who you are professionally and how you make sense for that job. Remember, no one is going to deduce this for you. They're not going to look at your resume and see, "Oh, you know, she knows how to do X. "I bet that means she'll be good at Y." So in the summary section of your roadmap template, go ahead and jot down a few high level thoughts on core themes or fundamental strengths that you feel need to come across to that next employer. Next, think about the skills that need to come through loud and clear. In the key skills section of the roadmap template, list out some skills that you possess and are noticing in the job descriptions you've studied like project coordination, strategic planning, team leadership, change management, and so forth. Don't worry about adding too many right now. You can narrow those down as you pull together your resume. And finally, think about this. What key wins do I want to share from my professional experience? Pay particular attention to the accomplishments, and these can be quantitative or qualitative wins that might serve as supporting evidence to the core themes in your summary section. So for example, let's say you've realized that you need to introduce yourself as, among other things, a strong problem solver. Okay, great. Make sure you do that. Now, where can you show evidence of problems that you've successfully solved through your career to date? It's one thing to say, "Hey, trust me. "I'm really good at solving problems" as you introduce yourself, but it's even more powerful if you can then show recruiters and hiring managers an example or two of a problem that you've successfully solved. In the roadmap template, you'll see a few additional sections as well. So be sure and jot down some notes in any section that's relevant to you before you begin the drafting process.

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