Master Class Resume Learning Lab: How to Clean It Up and Get it Out There

Is your resume a monster pieced together from TAP class, your current evaluations, and a bunch of bullet points cribbed from a resume your buddy gave you? Is it four lines long or four pages long? Is it trying to be all things to all people? If so, that would be typical for a veteran, spouse, or transitioning active duty service member.

In this master class, we reviewed individual resumes for a dozen candidates and walked them through the resume review process so they could achieve that "aha" moment.

The three most common mistakes were:

1. Professional or Objective statement. Including a lengthy, dense "professional statement" paragraph at the top of your resume wastes prime real estate. Since the research shows that recruiters and hiring managers never read that paragraph, cut it completely.
2. Pre-COVID resume format. After changes in the job hunt process following COVID, the preferred template is a Checklist Resume format. We provide you with that new template for FREE. 
3. Lack of results. Military life trains people to be humble about their professional accomplishments. This may have led you to list only the actions you took on a job, not the results. Employers need to see your results to appreciate your work's scale and scope. They prefer numbers, percentages, and dollars saved, but you can also include the phrases like "resulting in being rated #3 of 22 peers." Or "leading to appointment to such-and-such prestigious school given to less than 2% of professional peers."

For more tips and more resume examples for all levels of services, watch this 90-minute class.

Class Resources:

• Checklist Resume Template Under 40 (Word Doc)
• Checklist Resume Template Over 40 (Word Doc)
• Federal Resume Checklist (Word Doc)