If it’s been awhile since you’ve updated your resume, it can be hard to know where to start. Today, I want to share the process that helped me convert 15 years at Google into a narrative which showed the progression of my career.
Even if you’ve been at the same company for years, you and your career evolved over time. Your goal is to figure out how to represent that as a story arc with defined beats. The right slicing for me was to structure my career by team. Your right slicing might be by role/level, location, or something else.
Whatever slice you choose, the goal is to represent your career in a way that is targeted toward your career goal. Tell the story of the sort of contributor you want to be.
Start with memory. Make your career journey live again. Go back — maybe even back to your school days. How did you end up the places you did? Include the bare facts — “started this team on this date and did these projects” — but also remember the things that add texture: who were the people you worked with? What did you like about them? Dislike? What were some inspiring accomplishments or frustrating challenges? Take the time to remember the fun things too — like the time 4 of us from my team distributed 60 inflatable Portal turrets around the office.
The purpose of this exercise is twofold: first, it will help you recall the bare facts that will make up your narrative. Second, it will bring your career back to life so that when you talk about it in interviews it’s clear that you’re talking from real experience, not memorized talking points.
Once you’ve spent some time walking down memory lane, capture key events. Include official transitions such as changing teams, changing roles, or getting promoted. Also include points of personal significance such as being chosen to run a significant project. For each point, write down information that captures why this milestone is important to you and your role in it. What did you do? What did this milestone mean for your career progression? Then capture why it was important to the company you worked for. This second part is where the data that resume advice stresses come in. As best as you can recall, what did you make better? Why? By how much? How many people and teams did you work with?
This is the raw data. Now it’s time to put it into a narrative. What that narrative looks like will depend on the role you are targeting. Do you want to apply for a role as a highly technical individual contributor? Look for points that emphasize your technical contribution and impact. Do you want to tell a story of someone who gets things done? Focus on data that shows an “after” that is significantly better for users or the company than the “before”. Looking to emphasize your leadership skills? Find the points in your narrative that show how you grew and impacted people and teams? Capture the points and supporting detail that support your desired narrative.
Now you are ready to write the actual resume. Follow the standard resume writing advice including things like removing company specific jargon, including keywords, being quantitative, etc. Be sure to run it by someone in your industry but who has no idea about the internals of the teams or companies you’ve worked for so they can make sure it makes sense without that context.
No resume can guarantee an interview, but by being intentional about how you think about your career in the context of the role you want to have, you can make sure that your resume is the best representation of how where you’ve been connects to where you want to go.