Iris, 34, was recruited for a role as the director of marketing and communications at a real estate finance startup in 2020. She quickly found that the job wasn’t as described, nor was it aligned with her career goals. A year later, in May, 2021, she went on maternity leave.
Time away from the office reinforced her desire to leave the company. “The pandemic has emphasized that life is short, and I want to spend my time doing meaningful, rewarding work,” Iris writes.
Before she’s due to return to work in May, Iris would like to find a new position focused more on communications and less on marketing. The job she liked the most was being an account manager for a public relations firm. “I enjoyed project and people management, executive communications, media relations, crisis communications and writing,” Iris says. She’d prefer to be working alongside experienced public relations professionals as opposed to being at the top of the organization, as she is in her current position.
Iris is hoping to land a role as a director, senior manager or manager of corporate communications or external communications. She’d like her next position to involve tasks such as executive communications and counsel, crisis communications, reputation and issues management, and media relations. “While I enjoy people management, and have been commended for being a strong mentor and building high-performance teams, this doesn’t have to be a component of my next role,” Iris writes. In five years, she hopes to land a job as assistant vice-president or vice-president of corporate or external communications.
We reached out to career coach Alysha Chin and Kathy Rammage, vice-president of human resources at National Public Relations, to review Iris’s résumé and offer their advice for her next steps.
The resume
What the career coach says
Ms. Chin says Iris’s résumé is clear and easy to read. But she has some suggestions for its improvement. To start, she recommends adding a skills section to the top of her résumé. “This will help recruiters and HR managers who are doing quick skims of résumés to easily and quickly grasp her key skills,” Ms. Chin says. A skills section will also help job seekers to incorporate the right keywords to be flagged by companies that use applicant-tracking systems.
She also suggests Iris ensure that the tasks she includes in the résumé are relevant to the role she’s applying for. “Adjust the wording based on each position and application,” says Ms. Chin. Iris should go beyond just describing tasks to including their impact.
“Explain how they benefited the company and what the results were,” says Ms. Chin. This doesn’t have to be quantified. Simply adding “resulting in increased company growth” or “leading to overall team satisfaction” gives the reader a better sense of the role you played.
As for Iris’s desire to secure a role as a director, senior manager or manager, Ms. Chin believes she meets the minimum qualifications. To help with her goal of achieving an assistant vice-president or vice-president role in five years, Ms. Chin recommends looking for companies that foster growth and have the capacity for upward movement. To do this, Iris can research organizations of interest on LinkedIn to see whether people in leadership positions were promoted internally, or if companies offer mentorship or personal development programs.
What the industry expert says
Ms. Rammage also applauds Iris’s résumé for being clear and concise. “She outlines her experience and uses quantifiable metrics to demonstrate her successes,” Ms. Rammage explains. She also commends her use of colour to help major sections stand out.
To further improve her résumé, Ms. Rammage recommends that Iris include a desired job title, goal or area of interest to her résumé. “It would be helpful to understand what Iris is looking to do next,” says Ms. Rammage. “The hiring manager [can] see if there might be an immediate alignment in terms of what she’s looking for and what the company is looking for.” If Iris has multiple areas of interest, she should tailor her desired job title to each role she applies for.
Ms. Rammage also suggests Iris add more detail to the education section of her résumé. “She graduated from Humber, but doesn’t say when,” says Ms. Rammage. “In terms of her degree at Western, she doesn’t give any sense of what program she was involved in or when she started or graduated.” At National Public Relations, Ms. Rammage says Iris would meet the minimum requirements for a director or senior manager position. “She’s done a really fantastic job in terms of presenting herself.” The company is hiring and expressed interest in connecting with Iris.
The new resume
Iris rejigged the formatting of her résumé to make room for a skills section, where she listed keywords that will help recruiters and applicant-tracking systems to flag her résumé. She has also incorporated a statement detailing the type of job role and industry she’s looking for in her summary paragraph. Lastly, Iris has added dates to her education section, as Ms. Rammage suggested.
INTERESTED IN HAVING YOUR RESUME REVIEWED?
E-mail us with your résumé at globecareers@globeandmail.com with Résumé Review in the subject line and we’ll ask a career coach and an expert in your field to provide their feedback. E-mails without the correct subject line may not be answered. Names and some details are changed to protect the privacy of the persons profiled. If you’re a hiring manager interested in reaching out to the person profiled, we encourage you to contact us. You can find all our Résumé Reviews here.
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