With entrepreneurial skills and qualities such as analytical thinking, confidence, and decision making, business leaders set the foundation for running a profitable organization.
But such skills can be a little hard to highlight in a resume. Also, showcasing your skills correctly in a resume becomes extremely important when you know the recruiter will make a decision of hiring you based on this document.
In this guide, we will help you overcome these challenges and create an impressive business leader resume that you can land your dream job.
Check the tips outlined below, by adhering to these guidelines you can make a stellar resume.
Create a professional experience section
The goal of making a professional experience section is to convey your expertise and display your achievements effectively to the recruiter. You can achieve this by curating one-liner statements and using the STAR format.
The situation-task-action-result format helps you emphasize the results of each statement you write. For instance, let’s say you want to write a point about “budget planning”, to showcase your achievement and try to curate the statements while keeping the STAR format in mind. Check the below point for an example:
“Planned the budget to identify inaccuracies reducing the spending and saved ~USD 100k worth of resources”
Further, bold important words and numbers in your statements to showcase your achievements and job responsibilities.
Also, try to use power verbs to begin all your statements as they will act as embellishments to make your point more lucrative.
Optimize your resume header
As you are writing a business leader resume, you need to think constructively about how you can optimize your resume header. Firstly, you cannot name it as a “resume” or “CV”, it is not ideal and when you are in a senior position and it will not create the right impression on the recruiter.
Instead, you should write a proper designation here. You can change as per your current/last held work profile. If you can hold any certifications that are relevant to the target profile, you can even mention that along with the profile title.
For example: “Business Developer & Certified Global Leadership Professional”
Add keywords
Most organizations use a talent management system like ATS (applicant tracking system). This system helps companies filter resumes based on a set of job-related keywords.
You can find these keywords in the job description. All you need to do is go through it and identify the skills and requirements that you can include in your resume. However, make sure that you do not add something that you cannot substantiate during the interview.
These keywords can be industry-related skills such as “lead generation”, “stakeholder engagement”. Or, they can be transferable skills like “leadership”, and action verbs like “oversaw”.
After identifying these pointers, you can highlight them in your resume and optimize your resume as per the target profile. As these requirements will be different for each company, it may be ideal that you edit for each job you apply.
Craft a professional summary
Recruiters do not sit and diligently read a resume. In fact, they do not spend more than 6 seconds on a resume. They look for skills and achievements that are in line with their expectations and job description.
Hence, you need to have an overview of your resume written in a professional summary within 3-4 lines that showcase your key accomplishments and expertise relevant to the target profile.
Since it is a summary of your resume, consider writing it at the very end when you have written everything. Doing so will help you choose the key achievements and points that you wish to highlight.
Check the example below to understand how you can write this section:
“12+ years experienced Business Leader with expertise in acquiring projects worth millions of dollars by leveraging market analysis. Adept at penetrating new markets by a data-driven approach to understand the target user base. Proficient in deploying resolutions for customer inquiries to improve the retention rate.”
Add your education and certifications details
For a lot of business-related profiles, a bachelor’s degree is a requirement to apply. In the case of entry-level professionals, a relevant certification can help improve their chances of getting shortlisted.
Hence, adding your education details and certifications in a resume is very important.
But make sure that you create a separate section to write your certifications and do not include them in the education section. The education section should just be reserved for your education degrees.
Refer to the example below to understand the format and how you can write it:
“Master in Business Administration | Harvard University | Boston, Massachusetts | Jun ‘09 – Jul ‘13”
Key takeaways
To end, here are a few key takeaways:
- Write a professional experience section to convey your achievements and expertise.
- Optimize the resume header as per your designation and certifications.
- Add keywords to your resume to make it specific to the target profile.
- Write a professional summary that gives an overview of your accomplishments.
