Before continuing to read this, open up your resume.
Got it? Now look for the following phrases, or anything resembling them:
- “Ensured all issues were handled in a timely manner.”
- “Maintained compliance with GAAP regulations.”
- “Tracked, measured and delivered report on all website traffic.”
Notice what those phrases all have in common? They’re all fluff, and I’m being generous by using that term. They describe the ordinary duties of a customer service rep, accountant and web analytics specialist, respectively. You might as well just say “I did my job.” Actually, saying that would be better, because then at least it would be clear to you just how unimpressive your resume really sounds.
And that brings us to the subject of today’s lesson: the Plain English Principle. You want your resume to highlight accomplishments, not just everyday activities or vague personality traits. (Tweet this thought.) Moreover, these accomplishments should be things you can intelligently discuss in an interview.
When you write in resume-speak, it can be difficult to see if you’re doing this right, but everything becomes clear when you write in plain English. Follow this process, and you’ll end up with a better resume than 75% of professional resume writers could ever produce for you.
Step 1: Write Your Resume In Plain English, Or Translate It Into Plain English
If you don’t have a resume yet, write one at a high school level. This means “revenue” is the biggest word you should consider using — and even that’s pushing it. This also means each item on your resume should be two sentences at most, and in most cases one sentence.
In the more likely event that you already have a resume, every item in it should be translated to a something the average high school student could comprehend. For example, suppose one of your past roles was Director of Brand Management, and you have the following items listed under that job:
- “Improved and rebalanced marketing mix to generate $2M of additional revenue for Brand X” becomes “I made our marketing better, and we made $2M more money as a result.”
- “Demonstrated a strong work ethic and high standards of excellence” becomes “I work hard and I’m good at it.”
- “Reorganized the marketing function to improve responsiveness” becomes “Reorganized the marketing team so they could communicate better and get things done faster.”
- “Implemented an $800,000 search ad campaign that generated $4M in additional revenue for $600,000 net profit for Brand Y” becomes “I spent $800,000 on search ads for Brand Y. This brought in $2M worth of sales, for a net profit of $600,000.”
Step 2: Delete All the Meaningless Fluff
Now it’s time to cut the crap. Go through every item on your resume and delete everything that just isn’t impressive. That includes items where you’re bragging about doing the bare minimum, using irritating clichés and where you’re almost literally saying nothing.
- “I made the marketing for Brand X better, and we made $2M more money as a result” sounds good. It’s obviously a bit vague, but making more money is clearly a real accomplishment — this one passes.
- “I spent $800,000 on search ads for Brand Y. This brought in $4M worth of sales, for a net profit of $600,000” sounds great. You boosted revenue and profit? Awesome.
- “Reorganized the marketing team so they could communicate better and get things done faster” sounds tentatively impressive. This one could be a great accomplishment or just cheap talk. If it’s true and can be illustrated better, it’s definitely something worth having in your resume, so it stays for now.
- “I work hard and I’m good at it” is obviously dead weight now that the resume-speak has been stripped away. Essentially, you’re bragging about doing not much more than the bare minimum. In the words of Chris Rock, “What do you want, a cookie?” Lose this one.
Step 3: Clarify and Punch Up the Remaining Items
The next step is to ensure your resume passes the so-what test, meaning that everything in your resume gives the reader a reason to care. According to Google’s HR head, everything on your resume should sound something like this: “I accomplished X, relative to Y, by doing Z.” At this stage, you’ll reword each of your accomplishments to follow this formula.
- First off: “I spent $800,000 on search ads for Brand Y. This brought in $4M worth of sales, for a net profit of $600,000.” This one sounds great as is. If you could add in a comparable profit margin metric for other campaigns, that would be even better, but the fact that you’ve included net profit at all makes this one of the most impressive resume line items a recruiter is likely to see.
- Next: “I made the marketing for Brand X better, and we made $2M more money as a result.” This item clearly needs more detail, both on what you did to boost revenue and on how big of a proportional increase that is. Now try this on for size: “I spent more of our ad money for Brand X on mobile ads and less on banner ads. Brand X sales went from $10M to $12M a year as a result.” Now that 20% increase is sounding pretty good, and I have some idea of how you did it.
- And finally: “Reorganized the marketing team so they could communicate better and get things done faster.” This could be incredibly impressive, or completely junk, depending on how much you’re really able to say about it. For the sake of this exercise, let’s suppose there’s a real accomplishment here that you can expound upon in the interview. It might read something like this: “I reorganized the marketing team around brands rather than functions. This helped people communicate with each other and reduced the average time it took to plan a campaign from 2 months to 3 weeks.”
Step 4: Add In More Relevant Accomplishments
When all is said and done, you want your resume to be one page long — maybe two pages if you’re really accomplished. You have some leeway here, but a half-page or one and a half-page resume isn’t going to look good.
You also want 3-4 highly impactful accomplishments listed under each item on your resume. If any of your past jobs has fewer than three accomplishments listed, add in one or more accomplishments, and then take them through steps 1-3 to make them impressive and eye-catching.
In this case, we’ve eliminated one of four items, leaving a respectable three. There’s no need to add another item here, but if you wanted to do so, something like this would work well: “I increased the average number of units of Brand Y that each customer purchases over time from 12 to 15 units. This means we get $75 instead of $60 per customer.” In other words, you increased the value of each new customer by 25%. Gangbusters.
Step 5: Translate Back Into Resume-Speak
Now that you have an entire resume full of real accomplishments, expressed in a way that shows their value and written in plain English, the last step is simply to translate everything back into resume-speak. The key here is to translate each item exactly so that you don’t undo the improvements you just made by punching them up. In our example:
- The item about search ads for Brand Y goes right back to its original phrasing, since it hasn’t be changed.
- “I increased the average number of units of Brand Y that each customer purchases over time from 12 to 15 units. This means we get $75 instead of $60 per customer” becomes “Increased average lifetime purchases per customer for Brand Y from 12 to 15 units, increasing customer lifetime value from $60 to $75.”
- “I spent more of our ad money for Brand X on mobile ads and less on banner ads. Brand X sales went from $10M to $12M a year as a result” becomes “Shifted ad spend for Brand Y from banner to mobile ads, increasing sales from $10M to $12M.”
You may find that, having done this, your resume has gotten a few lines longer or shorter. You can choose to ignore that, fix it with formatting, or actually add/remove items from your resume to make it fit the page. If you remove items, remember to keep at least two accomplishments listed for each listed job. If you add items, do so by going back to step 4, adding a line in plain English to make sure it sounds good before translating back into resume-speak.
Wrapping It All Up
Now at the end of this exercise, you have a resume that will blow hiring managers away, because every single line has earned its way onto the page. Although cover letters have a different structure and purpose than resumes, this same principle can also be used to greatly improve your cover letter as well.
Of course, writing the resume and cover letter is only one stage in your job hunt, and the next stage is to prep for the interview, and particularly to talk about the major accomplishments on your resume. Keep in mind your most important accomplishments are the ones that are most relevant to the job you’re applying for, not necessarily the ones that were most important back when those accomplishments were made.
What’s some of the least-plain English you’ve seen on a resume? Let us know in the comments!
Image: demotivationalposters.org
