What Today’s New Resume Looks Like
The resume of today does not look like the resume of yesterday. Yesterday’s resume was linear and marked a career progression in logical steps. Today’s resume most likely contains many more employment stops, industry and career changes, and maybe even breaks for volunteer work, travel, and career development. This leads to a shift in the resume whereby the candidate not only lists what they’ve done, but explains what they have contributed to a particular position and organization. These trends led Dr. David Miles to develop the Contributed Value Resume.
How does the Contributed Value Resume differ from the traditional resume? More than a laundry list of accomplishments, it seeks to emphasize:
- Critical Thinking & Logic
- Leadership & Consensus Building
- Sustainable Results
- Core values
Your professional journey has likely gone down a windy path and a well-crafted executive summary will reflect the choices and turns you’ve made in a cohesive fashion. Each step of your journey – your employment – needs to reflect the changes and value you contributed to the organization. A brief narrative is in order, instead of the expected bullet list of accomplishments. How did you achieve your numbers? How did you squeeze out inefficiencies? Show how your accomplishments came to be through your application of critical thinking, logic and consensus building.
Just as in linear resumes, present your education and other activities. Your certifications, conferences and other professional development are listed as ‘Developmental Experiences’ and your other activities as ‘Selected Activities,’ i.e. volunteer work. Demonstrate the Total Person.
The overall theme running through your Contributed Value Resume is your competency. Your resume stands out as it reflects not only what you have done, but also how you have done it. This gives hiring decision makers a better idea of you overall, not only as a professional, but also as a person.
An example of the Contributed Value Resume can be found on David’s Web Portfolio under the experience section.
