I spoke to a candidate recently who’d applied for 112 jobs.
Yep, one hundred and twelve.
He’d been sending the same resume out again and again, convinced it was great.
It wasn’t.
It was basically a list of job descriptions. A tidy, chronological summary of everything he’d done. But there wasn’t a single mention about what he’d achieved.
So, I asked him a few simple questions:
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“What did you actually change in that role?”
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“What difference did you make?”
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“What did you take from and to?”
Eventually, we pulled out the gold:
He’d built treasury centres across three continents, implemented Kyriba, trained teams, and helped expand internationally.
Not one line of that was in his CV.
But after rewriting his top paragraph and making his achievements – the stuff that actually moved the needle at his company – obvious, suddenly the interviews started coming in.
Here’s the thing most people forget:
Your resume isn’t a static record of your past. It’s a living document.
Like a good website, it should never be finished…
Update it as you grow. Refine it for each opportunity.
And if you’re using tools like ChatGPT, don’t let it write fluff for you.
AI has its uses, but it’s not the solution to everything…
It’s brilliant for saving time and helping you think, but terrible when you let it speak for you. It averages everything out, always giving you the “safe” version, not the version that stands out.
So use it smartly. Don’t ask it to write your resume; get it to interrogate the job…
Feed it the job description and ask:
“What are the top three pain points for this employer?”
Then map your experience to those.
That way, you’re still in control (and your resume still sounds like you, not a robot!).
Best regards,
Mike
P.S. When was the last time you actually re-read your resume? If you’d be embarrassed to hand it to me today, it’s probably time for a refresh.
