Rosalinda works for a global company based in the US. Several years ago, she took over the previously underperforming Canadian division and turned things around for the better. About six months ago, she took the opportunity to share some of her ideas and her strategic suggestions with senior management. They liked what she had to say and recently opened a new VP position which is ideal for her, especially since it would involve implementing the initiatives she suggested. She wants to try for the promotion, so we work together to review her old resume. We take it from the mid-level manager resume she used when she was first hired to one that reflects the executive she has become during her time with the company.

Rosalinda (not her real name, of course) is transitioning her career up as a “new” executive, so it’s no surprise that she had a lot to learn about presenting herself in a new way through her resume. But I’ve also worked with a lot of seasoned executives who don’t seem to know that if you’re an executive, you have to follow a slightly different set of rules when developing your resume.

Below, you’ll find three particular reasons why the executive resume is so different from a regular resume.

By the way, I’m defining “executive” as CEOs, senior directors, vice presidents, C-level officers, board members, and anyone aiming for a strategic leadership position in their career.

Length

For the individual contributor or mid-level manager, we expect to see a two-page summary resume that shows about 10-15 years of work history. Experience prior to 10-15 years ago may or may not be shown, it is totally optional. However, for an executive, we want to see the entire career progression. Except, of course, for the menial jobs he had in the beginning, I don’t need to show the job he had as a pizza delivery boy when he was in school.

There is also much more information to include on the first page of the first section, which is the profile or summary section. On a regular resume for a non-executive position, this section can be as short as a sentence or two, or it can be as long as half a page. On the other hand, for some executive resumes, especially for C-level and vice president candidates, the profile or summary section takes up the entire first page.

Due to these two factors, more years of experience and more information in the profile, the executive resume is usually three, sometimes even four, pages long.

Executive Profile

As I just mentioned, the profile or summary section will, in most cases, take up the entire first page of the resume, and the content of that page is the second main reason why the executive resume is so different from a resume. regular.

Regardless of your role level, whether you’re an executive or not, your summary or profile section should inform and show evidence of your value proposition. If you’re an executive, you should also add something about your leadership style, as well as add more language about your strategic business acumen.

The executive profile will include the usual: a succinct positioning statement, industry-specific keywords, and something about your unique value proposition. But it will also include keywords that reflect strategic-level thinking and responsibilities, terms like “P&L,” “investor relations,” and “industry forecast.”

Most resumes I develop for clients include a career highlights section. In the typical resume, it is a separate section that is sandwiched between the profile and experience sections. Sometimes it will be included as part of the profile section instead of being inserted as a separate section. However, with the executive resume, I always include it as part of the profile.

Skills

Robin Kessler in his book, Competency-based interviews, defines competencies as “the key characteristics that the most successful have that help them succeed.” She notes that some organizations define competencies as “underlying characteristics, behaviors, knowledge, and skills required to differentiate performance. They define what superior employees do more often, in more situations, with better results.”

According to Hay Group’s Signe Spenser, these are the 10 most common competencies (listed in no particular order) desired by employers:

• Achievement/Results Orientation
• organizational
• Initiative
• Analytical
• Impact and influence
• concept thinking
• Customer service
• looking for information
• interpersonal
• Integrity

Now, here is a summary of what executives need to be able to do according to Loren Appelbaum and Matthew Paese, Ph.D., in their white paper “What Senior Leaders Do: The Nine Roles of Strategic Leadership”:

• Browser
• Strategist
• Entrepreneur
• mobilizer
• talent advocate
• captivating
• global thinker
• change driver
• business guardian

As you can see from the two lists above, the executive resume also differs from a regular resume because of the competencies that will be emphasized. To develop a stellar executive resume, you not only need to include some of these (I generally recommend choosing your top 3) competencies, but you also need to provide evidence of how the competencies you are choosing to emphasize have shown up as part of your leadership style.

Simple “rules”

Although the executive resume follows a slightly different set of rules, those “rules” are pretty straightforward and make a lot of sense. What all resumes have in common is that they all need to provide more than just a career timeline. Everyone, including non-executives, needs to show something unique about themselves in order to stand out. With the executive resume, there’s one more step, and that’s showing what it is in you that makes you uniquely effective as a strategic-level leader of people and organizations.