Your resume should tell your story, show your value, and evolve with every job opportunity you pursue.
Just because an approach is different doesn’t mean it’s wrong. And just because something has always been done a certain way doesn’t mean it’s the best way for you.
I’ve hesitated to write about resumes for a long time. Not because I don’t have opinions about them. Quite the opposite. I have some fairly strong opinions, and many of them challenge what we’ve traditionally been taught about writing a resume.
You’ve probably heard this advice. Keep your resume to one page. List your jobs in chronological order. Use the right keywords. Follow an accepted template. Make sure it looks professional. Print several copies and start handing them out.
Some of that advice is useful. Some of it works very well in certain circumstances.
But I’ve come to believe something quite different.
Your resume should be built around you, your abilities, and the opportunity you’re pursuing. Your resume should work towards solving the employer’s problem and showing that you have the skills they are seeking. You shouldn’t have to fit yourself into somebody else’s idea of the perfect resume.
Sometimes that means questioning the rules in order to stand out.
Your resume is deeply personal
Think about what you’re actually being asked to do when you write a resume.
You’re being asked to take your experiences, accomplishments, abilities, education, interests, and perhaps years of your life, and somehow communicate their value in one or two pages.
That’s no small undertaking.
Your resume isn’t simply a record of where you’ve worked. It’s a representation of what you’ve learned, what you can do, and what you might contribute to someone else’s organization and how you can help that organization achieve its goals and mission.
No two people bring the same combination of experiences and abilities to the workplace.
You may have developed skills through employment, volunteering, education, caring for family members, hobbies, community involvement, sports, or simply figuring out how to overcome challenges in your life.
Some of those experiences may never have appeared on your resume before, but it doesn’t mean they don’t belong there. It also doesn’t make them any less valuable.
Your employment history tells me where you’ve been. Your abilities help me understand what you can do next.
That’s why I believe developing a resume should begin with understanding you, not trying to squeeze your experiences into a template designed by someone who has never met you.
Start with yourself, not the resume
Before we write anything, I want you to consider a few questions.
What are you good at? What do people rely on you to do? What have you accomplished that you’re proud of? What problems can you solve? What have you learned from your experiences, including the difficult ones? What kind of work would give you the opportunity to use those abilities?
Then ask yourself what success would actually look like for you. How might you achieve it? What smaller, manageable steps could help you get there without becoming overwhelmed?
You may find some of these questions surprisingly difficult.
We’re often much better at identifying what we haven’t done, what qualifications we’re missing, or where we believe we fall short than recognizing what we actually have to offer.
That’s one reason I encourage people to develop what I call a Skills Bank.
Think of your Skills Bank as an inventory of everything you can genuinely do. Don’t worry initially about whether a skill belongs on a resume. Just identify it, understand where it came from, and consider how it might be useful to an employer. You may discover that you’ve been overlooking abilities simply because you acquired them outside traditional employment.
Something interesting can happen during this process. You may begin to see yourself differently. Not because we’ve invented qualifications or exaggerated your experience, but because we’ve taken the time to recognize abilities that were already there.
Your resume is a living document
Here’s one of the biggest differences in my approach.
I don’t believe you should write one resume, print twenty copies, and hand the same document to twenty different employers.
Why would you? Those employers aren’t necessarily looking for the same things.
A retail business, a manufacturing company, a restaurant, and a community organization may all value reliability, teamwork, and communication, but the work they need accomplished can be very different. Even two employers hiring for similar positions may have different priorities. So why would you present the same information, in the same order, to both?
I believe your resume should be a living, evolving document.
As you develop new skills, gain experience, complete training, volunteer, or discover new strengths, your Skills Bank grows. As you pursue different opportunities, your resume should evolve to reflect what matters most to each employer.
You aren’t changing who you are. You’re changing which parts of your story you bring forward.
Think of your resume less as a permanent record and more as a carefully selected presentation of your abilities.
The information remains truthful. The emphasis changes. That distinction is important.
Tailoring a resume doesn’t mean inventing qualifications, exaggerating accomplishments, or pretending to be someone you’re not.
It means recognizing that different employers need different things and helping them see the genuine connection between those needs and what you can offer.
How you think about your resume
I encourage you to think of your resume and cover letter as precision tools.
Each should be carefully designed for a particular opportunity, drawing attention to the abilities and experiences that matter most to that employer. You’re not trying to tell everyone everything about yourself. You’re trying to help one employer understand why you may be the person who can meet their needs. It’s not something you scatter indiscriminately, hoping it eventually reaches the right person. It’s something you prepare deliberately, with a specific purpose.
Before applying, take a little time to understand the employer. What does the organization do? What does the job advertisement actually tell you? What responsibilities appear most important? What skills, qualities, and experience does the employer emphasize? What problem is the employer trying to solve by hiring someone?
That last question matters. Employers don’t hire simply because you need a job. They hire because they need something accomplished.
Your task is to help them recognize how you could contribute. Suppose you’re applying for a position where customer service is especially important. If you have strong communication skills, experience helping people, patience, and an ability to resolve problems, those abilities deserve prominence and should be moved to the top of “What You Bring To The Workplace” or what conventional resumes have as your Skills and Experiences.
Now suppose you’re applying for a position where organization, accuracy, and working independently matter more.
You may still possess all those customer service skills, but perhaps your organizational abilities should lead the conversation.
Same person. Same honest experiences. Different presentation.
That’s what I mean by a precision tool.
Your resume should be designed to show how you can address the needs of the employer you’re approaching, not simply describe everything you’ve ever done. When you combine that resume with a carefully tailored cover letter, you have two documents working together toward one purpose.
Why I put skills before employment history.
This is another area where I often depart from traditional advice. I generally prefer to begin with a short profile written in the first person, followed by a section I call: What I Bring to Your Workplace
I use the first person because I want the document to sound like you. A resume is not an anonymous description of an applicant. It’s not a collection of fashionable phrases. It’s you, speaking directly to a potential employer.
I recommend you put your skills near the beginning because I want the employer to understand what you can contribute. As a former employer, what you can do for me is far more important as a first step than simply becoming absorbed in where you’ve worked.
I organize those abilities into categories that make sense for you and the position you’re pursuing. It might be Customer Service. Technology. Organization. Practical Skills. Teamwork. Problem-Solving. Whatever genuinely represents your abilities and what the employer is seeking.
Those categories can move depending on the opportunity. If the employer values technical abilities, we bring those forward. If the position emphasizes working with people, we make those strengths easy to find.
Your employment history still matters, of course. But when your skills have already been clearly demonstrated, your employment section may only need to identify your previous positions, employers, locations, and dates.
This isn’t appropriate for every occupation or every applicant. Some positions require detailed employment histories, specific qualifications, or evidence of progressive responsibility.
The point isn’t to replace one rigid set of rules with another. It’s to choose the format that communicates your value most effectively.
Your cover letter should complete the conversation
I believe your resume and cover letter should work together, but they shouldn’t do the same job.
Your resume demonstrates what you can do.
Your cover letter explains why those abilities matter to this particular employer.
Think about that distinction.
If your resume tells an employer that you have experience with customer service, inventory, and organizing merchandise, your cover letter shouldn’t simply repeat those statements. Instead, it should connect your experience to the employer’s needs.
Perhaps the business needs someone who can keep shelves organized, assist customers, and work dependably as part of a team. Your cover letter is an opportunity to show that you understand those priorities and explain how your experience prepares you to contribute.
Your resume provides the evidence. Your cover letter makes the connection.
When both documents are tailored to the same opportunity, they become much more purposeful. You’re no longer simply saying, “I need a job.” You’re saying, “I understand what you’re looking for, and here’s what I can bring to your workplace.”
That’s a very different conversation.
What about the traditional rules?
You’ve probably heard that a resume should never exceed one page. I disagree with treating that as an absolute rule.
If you have meaningful skills, qualifications, and experiences that deserve attention, a clear, well-organized two-page resume may serve you better than squeezing everything into one crowded page, especially as you gain further skills and experiences.
You’ve probably also been told to save references until an employer asks for them.
Sometimes that’s sensible. But consider this: if someone who genuinely knows your abilities, work ethic, and character is willing to speak positively about you, could that endorsement help an employer recognize your potential before the interview?
In some circumstances, I believe it can. With the person’s permission, including an appropriate reference may strengthen your application. Especially in rural or smaller urban centres, references that the employer may potentially know will reduce the inherent risk that occurs whenever an employer decides to interview and subsequently hire someone.
And what about employment gaps, career changes, limited experience, or an unconventional background?
I don’t believe these automatically need to become the defining features of your resume. They may be relevant. They may require an explanation at some point. But they don’t necessarily tell an employer what you’re capable of contributing today.
I would rather begin by helping an employer understand your strengths.
Your resume should never be dishonest about your circumstances. But neither should it allow your circumstances to overshadow your abilities.
One more point to consider: if your resume is supposed to help an employer recognize what makes you valuable, why are we so often encouraged to make it look like everybody else’s?
A resume is more than a document
There’s another reason I care so much about this approach. I’ve worked with people who have experienced rejection, unemployment, disability-related barriers, difficult circumstances, or years of being underestimated. I believe those experiences can affect how you see yourself.
You may begin to focus on what you haven’t accomplished rather than what you have. You may believe that because your employment history doesn’t look like someone else’s, you have less to offer. You may even find it difficult to describe your own strengths without feeling uncomfortable.
That’s why I believe developing a resume can be a much more meaningful process than simply preparing a document. When we take the time to identify your abilities, understand your experiences, and recognize how those strengths could benefit an employer, we’re doing something important.
We’re helping you build the evidence to speak about yourself with confidence. Not false confidence. Not empty encouragement.
Confidence grounded in what you genuinely know, what you’ve actually done, and what you’re capable of learning.
Before your resume can help an employer recognize your value, sometimes it needs to help you recognize that value yourself.
Your resume is only one building block
As important as your resume is, it isn’t your entire job search. I think of employment development as a series of building blocks and steps on a path.
Begin by understanding yourself, what you want for yourself, and defining what success means to you. You identify your abilities and develop your Skills Bank. You create a resume that communicates those abilities. You research employers and tailor your resume and cover letter to their needs. You identify people who can speak credibly about your strengths. You prepare for interviews so you can explain your experience with examples rather than simply making claims, and you explore opportunities beyond job postings.
That might mean networking, asking for referrals, researching potential employers, having informational conversations, or approaching a business directly.
I call this broader strategy the Opportunity Pyramid.
The important thing is that your resume becomes a tool you use throughout the process, not simply a document you attach to online applications.
Each building block supports the next.
But none of them accomplishes very much unless you’re willing to use them.
Eventually, you have to take the next step
You can have an excellent resume, a carefully tailored cover letter, strong references, and a good understanding of an employer’s needs.
Still, you may feel nervous about applying.
That’s understandable. Putting yourself forward means accepting the possibility of rejection. Perhaps you’ve already experienced more rejection than you care to remember. I have. But preparation isn’t supposed to eliminate every uncertainty. It’s supposed to give you something solid to build upon.
My goal is to help you recognize what you can do, understand what an employer needs, and identify the genuine connection between the two. Once you’ve made that connection, you have something meaningful to say and a reason to begin the conversation.
That might mean applying, sending an introductory email, making a telephone call, or walking into a business and introducing yourself.
It might mean taking one small step today that you weren’t quite ready to take yesterday.
And if the answer is no? You haven’t necessarily failed. You’ve gained information.
Perhaps you need to strengthen a particular skill. Perhaps another employer would be a better match. Perhaps you need to present your experience differently.
You learn, adjust, and keep building.
That’s another reason your resume should never be considered finished. It should grow as you grow, change as opportunities change, and become stronger as you learn more about yourself and the employment marketplace.
Different doesn’t mean wrong
I know this isn’t how everyone approaches resume writing. I’m comfortable with that. I’m not suggesting traditional resumes are ineffective or that every established practice should be abandoned.
There are good reasons why certain formats have endured, and there are situations where they work exceptionally well. But I don’t believe a resume should be judged simply by how closely it follows a set of conventions.
This is important because not everyone has had the same opportunities to build a conventional employment history. Some people have faced barriers, interruptions, responsibilities, or circumstances that have taken them along a different path. That doesn’t automatically make them less capable. It simply means we may need to look beyond job titles and employment dates to understand what they can contribute. And isn’t that what a good resume should help us do?
I believe it should be judged by how effectively it communicates your genuine value to an employer. For example: Does it help the employer understand what you can contribute? Does it make your relevant abilities easy to recognize? Does it reflect who you are without exaggeration or apology? Does it create enough interest for the employer to want to learn more? Perhaps most importantly, does it help you approach an opportunity knowing that you have something worthwhile to offer?
Those are the questions that matter to me.
One Final Thought
Your resume is deeply personal because your experiences, abilities, and ambitions are uniquely yours. But it should never become so fixed that it stops reflecting the person you’re becoming or the opportunities you’re pursuing.
Think of it as a living document. A tool that grows with you. A carefully constructed introduction to a particular employer. A way to connect what you genuinely have to offer with something that employer genuinely needs. Remember, your purpose isn’t to create the perfect resume.
Your purpose is to create an opportunity for a meaningful conversation. Because somewhere, there may be an employer who needs exactly the combination of abilities, experience, perspective, and potential that you bring.
Your job isn’t to become the person you think that employer wants. It’s to help the right employer recognize the value of the person you already are.
If that requires doing things a little differently, perhaps that’s exactly what you should do.
Paul