6 Practical Ways To Make Your Resume More Skimmable For Recruiters

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One of the hardest parts about marketing yourself today is understanding and quickly conveying your unique value to the digital-age reader. You may be saying, “But, I’ve worked at Fortune 100 companies and top-tier law firms, why aren’t recruiters knocking down my door when my resume comes across their desk?”

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A big part of my work as an executive resume writer is reading through dozens of resumes a week from legal executives, C-suite leaders in other industries, and board members. On the legal side, this includes the general counsel at a Fortune 25 company, an assistant general counsel or deputy general counsel of a private equity company or tech start-up, or an equity partner of an Am Law 50 firm (who is gunning for an in-house leadership role). Some have not updated their resume in years; others have continued to use the same template since they graduated law school in the 1990s or early 2000s.

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Most often, these resumes have a combination of foundational problems: long block paragraphs of text, not enough granular detail showcasing achievements or accomplishments, dozens of bullet points that don’t get to the root of the candidate’s value and feel more like a copy-paste of a job description, and a lack of organization that diminishes the overall readability and comprehension.

If you’re struggling to write your own resume, welcome to the club — it’s hard to write about yourself because you’re looking at your career from an internalized and subjective perspective, not the 30,000-foot view of an outsider.

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The average recruiter is skimming your resume for just seconds (typically less than 10), so you need to grab their attention quickly, put the important data in front of them, and make them want to call you for an interview. The reader of your resume does not have time to sit and read through pages and pages of information, or go on a fishing expedition to find the important details. It’s not a casual night out at the Cheesecake Factory where you’re studying the 14-page menu with 250 items to choose from. Think of your reader as someone who just sat down at a 5-star steakhouse, already knows what cut of steak they want, and anticipates looking at a small menu with a limited number of choices. It has to be clear, concise, and scream delectable.

Here are six practical ways to streamline your resume, making it more readable and skimmable for recruiters:

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Modern font. Use a modern, sans serif font like Calibri. Times New Roman or any variation of it, such as Garamond, is outdated and coined as the sweatpants of resume fonts (yes, I was quoted in that infamous article reference). This is because the curvature in the letters constricts the readability. Sans serif fonts are notoriously easier to read on a digital device or screen, and why you’ll always see them on websites.

Create clear headers and separators. One of the challenges of writing a resume is making sure your reader knows where a section ends and where it begins. This includes centering headlines for your “Professional Experience” and “Education and Bar Admissions” sections and putting a border line around it or below. This is helpful because it creates hard stops for the reader and makes it easier to parse. While a dark color like navy is perfectly acceptable for headers, do not opt for fancy graphics or columns — it creates confusion for the reader due to the eye shifting movements that occur. As I’ve written in past articles, legal resumes and executive resumes in general favor clean, modern design.

Consider the theme of your resume. If you’re seeking a corporate generalist role, it needs to delve into the major corporate generalist areas of what a GC does, focusing on that broad corporate legal function. The more specialized roles in areas such as data privacy, labor and employment, or intellectual property will favor very specific attributes, such as a being a licensed patent attorney, or having the data privacy certification and deep expertise in that niche on a variety of pressing issues. Relevant keywords matter but don’t keyword stuff. Remember, you have to show factual support in your resume as to your skills, so listing 30 skills in your resume will not help if you don’t provide the reader with evidence of the impact you’ve driven with those skills.

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Professional summary. This is prime real estate to demonstrate your value — if you’re targeting a public company general counsel role and you’ve served as the general counsel at three major public companies, include that fact. If you’ve worked at an Am Law 50 firm on securities transactions, include that fact. The professional summary should only be a few lines, and no more than one to three sentences. It’s a very small section, and one that I always write last when I’m crafting a client’s resume. It’s similar to the short paragraph on the back of a book jacket — it makes the reader want to continue reading.

Give enough detail but don’t overkill. The resume is not an endless list of every single thing you’ve done at a company or law firm. It’s not your autobiography. It’s merely a snapshot that’s used to tell a narrative of your career highlights and provide a sampling of your accomplishments and achievements. Consider organizing your resume by broad competency areas and then giving a few bullet points that speak to that experience. The resume should have a mix of quantitative and qualitative achievements.

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If you’ve managed large legal teams, give the number. If you’ve managed legal budgets, explain the size. It’s one thing to say you’ve drafted and negotiated a $10 million supply chain agreement, but the better bullet of information is one that explains the value that $10 million agreement drove for the company, the long-term impact it had, and the significance it played in your role as the general counsel.

White space matters. Keep your margins no smaller than half an inch around and make sure there is ample white space all around, including in between bullets and other sections. Remember, your bullets need to be digestible — keep them to no more than two or three lines. Executive resumes in general can run to two or three pages, with the third page functioning as an addendum of representative matters (in the case of someone with heavy litigation management experience) or a deal/transaction sheet (for those with extensive M&A transactions experience).

These are just some actionable steps you can take right away to improve the readability of your resume and make it more skimmable for recruiters. If you’re a recruiter who reads my column, connect with me on LinkedIn, as I’d love to have you weigh in on additional items you look for when ensuring the resume is clear and digestible.

Wendi Weiner is an attorney, career expert, and founder of The Writing Guru, an award-winning executive resume writing company. Wendi creates powerful career and personal brands for attorneys, C-suite executives, and board members for their job search and digital footprint. She also writes for major publications about alternative careers for lawyers, personal branding, LinkedIn storytelling, career strategy, and the job search process. Wendi’s decade-plus legal career included working in Biglaw and in-house at a Fortune 200 company. You can reach Wendi by email at [email protected], connect with her on LinkedIn, and follow her on Twitter @thewritingguru.

Topics

Biglaw, career counseling, In-House Counsel, Wendi Weiner