Resume Rewrite Helps Navy Pilot Lock onto New Target as Program Manager

Resume Rewrite Helps Navy Pilot Lock onto New Target as Program ManagerResume Rewrite Helps Navy Pilot Lock onto New Target as Program ManagerSix years out of the Navy, Bonnie Adams, an engineer and project manager for a defense contractor, needed a resume that highlighted her civilian skills.Bonnie Adams (elend job seekers real name) advanced through the ranks for eight years as a Navy officer and helicopter pilot. She still flies helicopters in the Navy Reserve. But for the past six years she has worked full time as a project and program manager for defense contractors. She enjoyed the work but recently began feeling underutilized and wanted to exercise full spectrum of her leadership, engineering and operational expertise.Problem was, the resume (PDF) that helped her land her current job was not going to get her the next one she desired. It described her eight years of military experience in detail great experience, lots of promotion, lots of solid accomplishments all good mater ial, but not directly applicable for her current objective, namely, a better job in program management. If she wanted a job in project and program management that would rely on her engineering and operational skills, her new resume better make that experience clear. Her priority was to rebalance the content by shortening her older experience (military) and adding details and accomplishments from her role as a civilian program manager.Telegraph who you are and what you wantBonnies new resume (PDF) takes control of the readers first impression and quickly provides direction and context by deleting the word Summary and replacing it with a headline and positioning statement Program Manager, Defense and Aerospace Expertise.Bonnies old opening profile paragraph jammed six lines of hard-to-read, low-impact information into a solid block of text. The reader would probably skip this paragraph because its too much trouble to read. We broke that section into a three-line paragraph and three bullets that do a much better job of supporting her current objective.Develop stronger content by focusing on accomplishment bulletsThe old resume was too heavy with job description instead of accomplishments. It can be difficult to develop strong, quantifiable accomplishment bullets for process-intensive job such as program management. For Bonnie, we started each bullet with an active verb and focused on contributions she made for her employer or client, for example Created Achieved and Successfully managedSimplify the format. Use two pages, if possibleThe original format comprised three pages, which was totally unnecessary in Bonnies case (and rarely appropriate for any job seeker).We deleted an unnecessary monogram (the letter B). Using an image on a resume is a bad idea for two reasons It usually wastes space and can sow confusion for the applicant tracking system software that collects and stores resumes for menschenfreundlich resources managers and recruiters. We also consolid ated her contact information at the top of the resume because thats where readers are looking for it.Heres a final tip that helped this resume We used the So What? test to strengthen Bonnies content. Imagine an interviewer reading one of her accomplishment statements, looking up and asking, So what? This simple exercise shook loose a stronger result. We applied it to every accomplishment bullet and created a stronger resume.