Making a Tech Professional’s Hybrid Resume

In 2009, resume writer Steve Burdan compared job seeker Jeff Held’s jumble of formatting details to splattering ketchup on a meal. Looking back, it’s amazing how well that analogy applies to today’s resume – and how professionals of all types continue to make the same old mistakes.

Let’s look at how Burdan and Held improved the former CIO’s story before learning how you can get a recipe for success in the form of a free resume rewrite – 2022 style.

In a job search, what do you have control over? According to professional resume writer Steve Burdan, your resume.

Burdan, who lives in the Chicago area, has been writing resumes for 17 years and has been a certified independent partner with Ladders for several years. With his resume writing expertise and executive background, he’s quick to summarize things for job seekers.

“A job search has too many variables,” Burdan said. “So, I always tell people to manage their expectations and do their best to avoid getting ulcers over things they can’t control. Concentrate on what they can influence, which is their resumes and how much they promote networking.”

Steve collaborated with Ladders subscriber Jeff Held, a former Watson Wyatt CIO who hadn’t updated his resume in at least eight years.

Investigating job-search services

“I hadn’t done much with my resume in a long time, since I got my job back when the opportunities were more plentiful,” Held explained. “I had done my research on a variety of sites and services available.”

So, after subscribing to Ladders, Jeff decided to try out the complimentary resume critique. Many websites provide free critiques, but he felt more at ease with this one because it focuses on C-level and senior positions, which is where Held worked after 20 years in technology and government

“With a million places to look for work online, only about 5% of what’s available is something I’d be interested in…. “To use an old cliche, ladders separate the wheat from the chaff,” Held said. “You don’t waste time on activities you know you don’t want to do.”

Held said he knew he’d be satisfied with the results of a full resume rewrite based on the free critique he received from Ladders. In fact, since his resume was updated, Held has had three interviews..

Emphasize your areas of expertise.

“Jeff’s resume was solid, but his opening statement was lacking,” Burdan said. “He had a branding statement, but his ‘areas of expertise’ needed to be fleshed out a little more. There were also far too many bullets that all looked the same. To keep the reader’s attention and avoid being repetitive… with wording, we needed to mix up the language and format.”

Burdan improved the opening statement by including some keywords and stronger leadership language, as well as a stack of six solid bullet points outlining Held’s overall strengths. He followed that with a more assertive ‘areas of expertise’ section that went into greater detail about Held’s management and technological background. Then, without repeating the same words, several of Held’s stated accomplishments were incorporated back into the chronological areas of his previous positions.

Burdan made a point of discussing formatting and bullet points because he believes that too many resumes bore the reader’s eye.

“It’s like sprinkling ketchup on top of a meal,” Burdan explained. “For one thing, it’s not tasty. Two, it looks bad, and three, it fails to hit the mark because that’s all you taste… You need to mix up the look and feel.”

“After the initial questionnaire process, which took a few days to complete, I talked to Steve a few times over email and the phone,” Hold explained. And the new resume was completed in about a week… I can see now that my old resume was too chronologically focused. The new one places a strong emphasis on keywords and the most important information near the beginning of the document.”

“He also needed to play up his international experience more,” Burdan said. Held’s international experience could be a significant differentiator in the job search, so Burdan emphasized it with a combination of keywords and sentences.

The hybrid resume triumphs.

“There are three kinds of resumes: chronological, functional, and hybrid,” Burdan explained. “The harsh reality in this business is that the best resume is the one that works.”

What works for Held’s qualifications and career objectives is a hybrid resume that is easy to scan, hits on quantifiable business metrics regardless of the position, and presents his qualifications in a way that will pique a potential employer’s interest.

“In a resume, content is king,” Burdan said. “An information technology resume, such as Jeff’s, may contain more jargon than a profile of what you can manage and lead for the new employer…. I see my role as that of a dating matchmaker: one person seeks chemistry, while the other seeks stability. It’s a match game, but one that I can help facilitate because I’ve done it thousands of times before.

“I enjoy what I do because I am paid to help people,” he added. “You sort of realize that after doing this for as long as I have that people who are having their resumes done are at a vulnerable point in their life. You have to treat it with respect, and you become a sort of coach behind the scenes with the wording. I believe that 99 percent of the people I work with have the talent to advance, but lack the knowledge of how to package it for others…. I can assist you with that.” The good news for professionals in 2022 is that they can get a free resume rewrite from Ladders’ partnership of resume writing experts at Leet Resumes if they need an up-to-date, optimized resume that can sail past ATS (Applicant Tracking Systems) and is designed squarely on the needs of today’s hiring teams.