THE ULTIMATE STAR

RESUME GUIDE
LEARN HOW TO CREATE A RESUME THAT
IMMEDIATELY STANDS OUT TO THE EMPLOYERS

thecareerdiet.com
Contents

01 RESUME HACKS

02 RESUME HACKS EXPLAINED

08 RESUME TEMPLATE
FOR RECENT GRADUATES

11 RESUME TEMPLATE
FOR PROFESSIONALS
 CHAPTER 1

10 Ultimate Resume Hacks

1 KEEP IT CONCISE

2 USE BULLET POINTS

3 FOCUS ON RELEVANT EXPERIENCE

4 MIRROR JOB DESCRIPTION’S LANGUAGE

5 USE POWER VERBS

6 LIST ACHIEVEMENTS, NOT RESPONSIBILITIES

7 QUANTIFY YOUR EXPERIENCE

8 MAKE IT EASY TO UNDERSTAND

9 BE HONEST

10 PROOFREAD AND CHECK FORMATTING

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 CHAPTER 1

1. KEEP IT CONCISE

While ideal resume length causes a lot of debate, I encourage one-

page resumes for corporate jobs.

Shorter resume means that important information is easy to find.

Realistically, recruiters and hiring managers quickly scan through your
resume, focus on your recent experience and tend to not even look at
the second or third page.

Plus, what you list beyond the first page of your resume is often not
really relevant for the job you’re applying for. For example, with 10+
years of experience, entry-level roles you had right out of university
might just not be relevant; yet, they’re occupying precious real estate
on your resume.

If you feel strongly about a longer resume, make sure that everything
you add on there is information relevant to the job you're after.

2. USE BULLET POINTS

Every experience you list on your resume should include bullet points,
rather than paragraphs - no one is going to read an essay of a resume.

You want to make it easy for the recruiter and hiring manager to see
key information. They will skim through your resume, so having your
experience organized in bullet points allows them to quickly find what
they're looking for.

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3. FOCUS ON RELEVANT EXPERIENCE

Some of the past experiences on your resume might not necessarily

be relevant to the job you’re targeting today.

This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t include those roles at all.
Instead, focus on parts of those jobs that would be important for the
role you’re applying for now.

Let’s say you were in accounting and then went into sales. If you had
client facing experience in your accounting roles, that would be
relevant to a career in sales so that would be a great point to add. In
this case, go ahead and add your experience in accounting but
highlight the work you did with clients.

Similarly, your accounting expertise might not be that important if

you’re looking to sell consumer goods, so don’t include a lot of past
experience details in that case. However, if you’re looking to sell
accounting software, your background will be a bonus and in this case
you’d want to add it.

With anything you list on your resume, make sure that it creates a
story and is relevant to the job you’re applying to.

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4. MIRROR JOB DESCRIPTION’S LANGUAGE
Your goal is to show the hiring manager that you have the relevant
experience required for the job you’re applying for – and make it easy
for them to find it.

Read the job description and make sure to use similar language in
your resume: a job in marketing might require you to ‘Brief,
coordinate and direct the advertising agencies and media buying
group’. If you have experience in that, include this language into one
of the bullet points.

5. USE POWER VERBS

Start your resume bullet points with power verbs. These are action
verbs that help you highlight the value you created in each role you
had.

Think verbs like manage, lead, create, grow, initiate, increase, reduce,
develop.

Compare:

‘Took care of the day to day operations…’ AND ‘Led day to day
operations…’

‘Oversaw 100 accounts…’ AND ‘Managed 100+ accounts…’

‘Worked on marketing plan…’ AND ‘Developed and executed

marketing plan…’

This simple change instantly transforms your resume and profile in

general. Using power verbs shows you as a manager, a leader, and as
someone who takes initiative.

Simply google "power verbs" for a full list.

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6. LIST ACHIEVEMENTS, NOT RESPONSIBILITIES

You resume should list your achievements, not responsibilities.

A list of your responsibilities and a simple ‘responsible for’ or ‘took care of ’

don’t tell the hiring manager whether you were good or bad at your job –
it’s just something you did.

Instead, show the employer that you’ve excelled at those responsibilities.

Your goal is to highlight all the amazing things you’ve achieved in each of
your roles.

Compare:

Responsible for generating and maintaining a solid repeat client list

through top-level customer service.

(Automatically, I think: so, did you generate a repeat client list? Were you
good at customer service? What were the results?)

AND

Increased store sales by 10% in first year by providing outstanding

customer service to generate and maintain a solid repeat client list.

Now a hiring manager sees that you did provide top-level customer service
because you increased sales.

Remember, your resume is a summary of your achievements, not

responsibilities.

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7. QUANTIFY YOUR EXPERIENCE

The best way to highlight your achievements is

to quantify them. Aim to have numbers in every
(or most) bullet point you have. Think dollars,
percentages, months, years, etc.

Compare:

Exceeded sales targets by consistently growing

revenues.

AND

Exceeded annual sales targets by 30% in first

year, followed by a 10% increase each following
year, through proactively identifying upsell
opportunities with existing clients.

8. MAKE IT EASY TO UNDERSTAND

Use simple sentence structure and avoid using

vocabulary and abbreviations that are specific
to a particular company you worked for.

You can try giving your resume to a friend or a

family member to read, someone who is not
your colleague and doesn’t know much about
your experience.

You want to make sure they understand most

of your resume; they should be able to see your
achievements and that you were good at your
jobs, even if the specifics are not clear to them.

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9.BE HONEST

While I encourage you to focus your results, I urge you to include the
successes you actually achieved. A lie on your resume will always
become evident, at one point or another.

It’s also important to be transparent about the dates of your

employment. Often candidates only include years and skip months.
This might have happened unintentionally but for the employer this
can be a red flag: you’re either trying to cover up a gap in your
employment history (which is not a big deal in most cases) or show
more experience than you actually have.

10. PROOFREAD AND CHECK FORMATTING

Hiring managers skim through resumes, they don’t really read them.
However, what always stands out, even if someone is just giving a
resume a quick glance, is spelling errors and sloppy formatting.

Spend extra time spell-checking your resume. Leave it for a day and
read it again or give it to someone else to read. You’d be surprised
how quickly someone who is reading your resume for the first time
will find spelling errors.

Same goes for formatting. Double-check that you’re using consistent

font, font size, spacing and margins all throughout your resume.

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RESUME TEMPLATE
AND EXAMPLE
EARLY CAREER (UNDER 3 YEARS OF EXPERIENCE)

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EARLY CAREER - RESUME TEMPLATE

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EARLY CAREER - RESUME EXAMPLE

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RESUME TEMPLATE
AND EXAMPLE
PROFESSIONAL (3+ YEARS OF EXPERIENCE)

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PROFESSIONAL - RESUME TEMPLATE

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PROFESSIONAL - RESUME EXAMPLE

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 Before you go...

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 Hi, I’m Anna
8 years ago, I graduated from a competitive business school. I was feeling confident in my
perfectly manicured resume and excited to get started on the future I envisioned. Little did I
know what actually lies ahead of me.

Countless rejections later, I found myself defeated and unmotivated… that is, until I
discovered the skill of networking.

Since then, I’ve moved cities, changed careers twice, received multiple job offers without a
single job application, built a successful career in enterprise sales where I network for a
living and actually enjoy it!

In my 5 years in the recruitment industry, I’ve worked with top employers in Canada, read
thousands of resumes, and talked to hundreds of qualified candidates, only to reject 99% of
them as they weren’t what the recruiters were looking for. And so I founded The Career Diet
to share my tips and tricks on how to become the Star Candidate I was looking for as a
recruiter.

Since I started The Career Diet in 2020, over 600 people from 30+ countries have taken our
programs and courses and have achieved mind-blowing results like $55k salary increase,
moving abroad with visa sponsorship, changing industries, going from no reports to a team
of 100...

And we're just getting started! Are you going to be our next success story? :)

@thecareerdiet

@thecareerdiet

@annabelyaeva

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