Session 2: Starting to Rewrite the Resume

A coach needs to know his/her student. That is why we start with the resume. By asking careful questions about every part of the resume, and we mean every part, not only can we write the resume to build the profile we want to create of the candidate, but we can also understand how the candidate thinks, explains business issues and sees herself/himself. This process allows us to truly understand the candidate versus the simplified, and usually poorly portrayed, information on an A4 sheet of paper. Resume rewriting takes a lot of time, at least 2 to 3 weeks. It is vital that all ambiguous, subjective, technical, jargon and/or industry driven terms are removed. We want English. Moreover, each bullet must be about a single accomplishment and additional data must reflect achievements as well. We will provide substantial edit requests in each session and it is up to the candidate to go back, remove the existing bullet and create a new bullet to address the concerns we have raised. The effort taken by the candidate to do this will ultimately determine the quality of the resume. That said, we will not sign-off on a resume until we believe it has reached the appropriate standards.

Minor and unimportant items such as the GMAT score must be purged. It really concerns us when a candidate believes one of their greatest accomplishments is a GMAT score, especially when consulting firms place so little stock in this measure. GPA is far more important. As a partner, I have never hired someone with a low undergraduate GPA, but several times with a low GMAT score. That is a general rule of thumb.

For effective time-management, Samantha is expected to load new iterations of her resume into her online folder. We provide feedback in the format of a podcast. This ensures we do not lose time due to scheduling conflicts.

In the session descriptions which follow, we are using one description for 4 different candidates. Yet candidates do not perform the same, and while the descriptions are mostly accurate, there will be some differences as a few cases are brought forward, others moved back or candidates fail to prepare adequately. While these differences are minor, they sometimes occur.