🤫 Revealed: Make Your Resume Work Harder... and Smarter

Hello, Connectors 😎

Today in 5 minutes or less, you’ll learn how to capture the hiring manager’s attention with your resume using a powerful framework (that no one else is using).

Plus, the best links and resources... you'll learn:

• 🛳️ A cruise for remote workers? 

• 👭 Remote work’s effect on women in work 

• 🏡 “Can a retired person establish tax domicile there?” 

…and more. 

Let’s jump in:

Is Your Resume Doing Its Job?

I've done dozens of resume reviews this year. 

A problem I see repeatedly: 

Most people invest time and money into perfecting their resumes…

But don’t understand the job of their resume. 

Your resume, and each section of your resume, can follow a framework called Job To Be Done, or JTBD.

By following JTBD, we clearly define the job your resume is hired to do and ensure it’s crafted to fulfill that purpose.

The JTBD framework has hundreds of applications that we won't go into here, but here's a quick summary:

Let's dig deeper into what this means for your resume:

What is the "job" you hire your "resume" for?

Think of the resume as your product. Hiring managers and recruiters are your customers. Your resume's job is to capture your customer's attention and convince them you're their ideal candidate. 

To do that, it needs to highlight your skills and experiences as the key solutions to the challenges your customers are trying to solve.

Makes sense, right?

This also implies what the resume is NOT:

• It's not a list of every job you've ever

• It's not a timeline of your work history

• It's not an examination of all your responsibilities

When we understand how JTBD applies to resumes overall, we can apply it to each resume:

1. Summary

2. Role and company

3. First bullet in your experience

4. Subsequent bullets points

5. Skills section

Let's look at each section:

1/ Summary

What is the JTBD of the summary?

Things to consider:

• Are you focused on how you will help the company? 

• Do you have the appropriate years of experience?

• Have you done this job before? 

• Or worked in parallel industries?

• Do you specialize? 

Do this: 

Not that:

2/ Role and company

What is the JTBD of your role and company?

Do you have brand names on your resume? Highlight them. 

Don't have brand names? Highlight the narrative arc of your roles on your resume.

Do this:

And this:

Not that:

In the above example: 

• The time frame and location get top billing, when it should be a sub-bullet point

• These are non-brand name companies and therefore should be emphasized after the role

• The sequence of roles is odd, which makes for an unclear narrative 

3/ First bullet in your experience

What is the JTBD of the first bullet point? 

Do this:

And this:

Not that:

The first bullet points here are too specific and don’t paint an overall picture of accomplishments.  

4/ Subsequent bullet points

What is the JTBD of the subsequent bullet points?

Do this:

Not that:

What’s missing here?

The impact: what metrics did you move? Did you earn money, save money, or save time for your company? 

Always include the impact. Ideally at the start of a bullet point (don’t bury the lede). 

5/ Skills section

What is the JTBD of the skills section?

Do this:

Not that:

In the above example, there’s not narrative to the Skills. Find the narrative - don’t leave an inventory of all the skills, software, or languages you know.

Conclusion

That's it - how to use the Job To Be Done framework to up-level every section of your resume to capture the hiring manager's attention and convince them you're their ideal candidate. 

Try this out when editing your resume and let me how it helps.

That’s a wrap. See you next week 👋

🤝 3 ways I can help you with remote work: