One of the things I’ve enjoyed over the last few years has been helping folks write effective resumes. I started out just helping friends, but then helping friends-of-friends, and then randos through LinkedIn. And over time, a few things became pretty clear:

• Everyone makes the same mistakes
• I was repeating myself a lot

Every time I’d sit down with a new resume, my criticism was the same. My approach was the same. I assumed that for different people in different industries, with different backgrounds, I’d end up with more varied approaches. But no – almost everyone made the same mistakes with their resume, and because of that, the advice and perspective I tried to impart was nearly identical for everyone.

The tl;dr version that’ll get you halfway there in one sentence is this: Your resume isn’t an advertisement, but it should be. Most people don’t really think too much about what a resume is trying to do, or who’s reading it. It’s not a historical record of your work, even though you’re told that’s what it should be. It’s an ad. It’s purpose is to get you an interview. That’s it.

This message seemed to surprise nearly everyone, and the consequences of it were things people just didn’t ever consider when writing their resume. So I finally decided to just write it down. You can read the doc here, totally for free. If you do read through it, comments and feedback on the doc are totally welcome.

If you find that doc useful, or if you just have different preferences for format, you can also check it out here, where you can pick it up for a few $ for your Kindle, or in paperback form.

At some point I’m going to write a second version of this with more detailed examples, but this version has all the perspective and wisdom I’ve acquired from working with dozens of folks over the last few years.

If you know anyone whose resume could some help, or someone who’s sent out a lot of resumes but hasn’t received a lot of calls for interviews in return, please pass this on to them.