016. Crafting Your Director Resume: Mastering Powerful Bullet Points

Ready to get promoted to Director and increase your salary by 10k-30k?
Book a sales call with Alejandra:
https://calendly.com/empowherchange/directorweeksalescall  

Wants to connect with Alejandra?
Join Alejandra’s LinkedIn Community: www.linkedin.com/in/alethompson

----------------------------------------------------------
Intro Song: Cumbia No Frills Faster by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1100275

Artist: http://incompetech.com/

Transcript

0:46

Hey friends. Welcome back to the podcast. It's hilarious. If you want, if you listened to my previous episode, life and business update, then you heard me say that I'm releasing two episodes and I am. But literally what happened is I recorded that episode and then I was like, okay, I'm going to eat dinner. And then I will record the next episode. So that both episodes can go out today. Tuesday when you're listening to it or whenever you are listening to it, but essentially that it would be released on July 2nd. And I go and have dinner. And I'm cleaning up, or my husband was helping me so much with the cleanup and I'm getting things ready to get back to my desk and record this episode for you. And then the power goes out. And I was like, oh no. And I don't even register. Right. And I'm like, okay, well, we're going to walk the dog. Let's go walk the dog. And I am like, okay, I want to get back. Cause I want to record the podcast. And then I was like, wait, I can't even record my podcasts because the power is out. So it is now 10:00 PM. Our electricity came back at 9:45 PM. And I was like, okay, I just, I need to record this podcast. I want to record it. I want to release my episodes. On July 2nd and get back. So here we are, it's 10:00 PM. I'm going to get through this so that I can go to bed and you can still have valuable content for you when you get up. And so this is what we're doing. I am starting a short series and what I'm envisioning for it. I haven't laid it all. Out just yet, but it's in my mind, what I'm envisioning for it is that. We are going to talk through the. Major things that are going to make your resume from what it currently is at right now, that's not landing new director level positions to a director resume. And so this is all about crafting your director resume right now, you may have a resume, but from just this, this ain't even personal to you just know I've seen a lot of resumes and most of them are not going to land your director level positions. Even when I talk to people who have been in manager positions for so many years, I look at their resume and resume, and I'm just like, this does not reflect your capabilities. And it does not reflect the type of things that a director level. Uh, job is going to require a view. And so this part that we have today, I'm going to go over mastering powerful bullet points. And then I will also do an episode on a resume summary. And then I will also do an episode on what was the other thing. Oh, skills. Uh, because there's just key things that you need to really change the way that you think about how you talk about your work and how you reflect your bullet points. All of this needs to change when you're going into a director level position, because you're going into a different level of leadership. And so a lot of times I just see the same mistakes over and over again. And I want to help you prevent those mistakes so that you can land your director level position. Okay. And so for today, I want to go over first. Like if you're struggling to land director level interviews, because your resume is still streaming manager and you're not alone in this. And so here's the good news is we can change that. That is things that we can change. These are fixable is figureoutable. And so I want you to think about your resume, like a marketing ad. Think about it as this, you know, A billboard or a banner or something that you see on the road, it's meant to really captivate your attention. It's meant to quickly really show you why you desire it, why you want the thing. Right. And so think about your resume, like a marketing ad, the moment the hiring manager or the recruiter sees it. They should see a director level candidate. They should want to read more. They should already have an inkling that this is a possibly. Qualified candidate. And so how do we make this happen? One major mistake that I see Latinas make is you're not highlighting your leadership and your great experience in your bullet points. In your bullet points, you use weak verbs and they don't convey ownership. This is so big. The part that I just mentioned about not conveying ownership, and I think part of this has to do culturally with the way that we're raised. We're raised in a very communal type of mindset, which I don't think is good nor bad. I'm not saying that it's bad to think about community. I think there's many beautiful things about that. However with Latinas, I find that we are ingrained with that mindset to the point where we don't own things in our work. It feels uncomfortable. We always want to say. We helped out. We assisted, we worked on it together. We collaborated, it was a team effort. It was like all these things. And so what I have to tell my clients all the time, and I want you to really take this away is they are not hiring your team. They're not hiring your former colleagues. They're hiring you. They want to hire you, and they're only paying for your salary. So in the resume, a big mistake I see are these weak verbs and not taking ownership of. Of your work and feeling to use numbers to qualify your results. So those are the three main things in the bullet points that I see that are not great and are not going to land you those director level positions. I said, weak verbs, number one, you don't take ownership of your work. Number two, and number three, you fail to use numbers to quantify, to really drive home those results. And so here are some examples of what that sounds like or what that reads like. You may have on your resume that you quote unquote, worked on a team project for a new product line. Or you may have on your resume, quote-unquote assisted with the annual budget planning process. Or you may have quote unquote helped implement a new CRM system. All of these are no. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. These phrases do not scream leader. They do not make me want to go. Oh, this is a director here. We're talking about director level leadership. We're talking about strategy. Results. Team development. You know what I'm saying? And again, I'm going to have a whole episode where I go over skills, but your resume in terms of bullet points, they need to showcase your leadership roles and responsibilities. Clearly they need to talk about results. They need to talk about the impact that you had. So, did you lead a team? Did you manage projects? Did you oversee budgets? You want to highlight these experiences? And so here's a simple formula that I use to upgrade an old manager level resume, or even some resumes. I look at like no shade or like this ain't even. How'd you even get your manager level position? I don't even know. So no shade, but I just want to make sure you have your director qualified resume. And so here's a formula that I use. And look, it's a formula, use it to guide you. Right. I don't use this exact sentencing for every single bullet point. So don't, don't take it for that, but just know a general way. I like to think about it is in this way, and this is the formula. You're going to have action verb, plus. What you did. Plus the result or achievement. Plus metric slash timeframe if applicable. Okay. And so here are some examples that I have done for previous clients. And I think I may be even made up a couple just for you. So listen to these right. Bullet point number one. And instead of me saying, worked on a team project for a new product line. I will say something like directed a cross-functional team of 10 and the successful launch of a new product line. Achieving a 20% increase in market share within six months. We swapped out, worked and we put in directed. We put in more color in there. So cross-functional because that tends to be very important. At the director level is being able to work well. Cross-functionally. The amount of people. So quantifying that. Being able to put that timeline within six months, we also quantified a result here. So 20% increase. Okay. So that's example number one. Number two. Led a project. Oh, actually let me tell you the, the old one that we said here. We have here helped implement a new CRM system. That was the old one, the one that's manager level, the one that's not going to get you those director level interviews. And then what I put in here was led a project to implement a new CRM system, improving customer satisfaction scores by 20% over one year. Again, we're quantifying here. Another thing. Is another example here. Managed a team of 15 in executing marketing campaigns, boosting brand awareness by 30%. In Q two. These statements, they showcase your leadership. They showcased results. And impact, and this is exactly what hiring managers are looking for. In a director candidate. Now, if this feels overwhelming for you right now. Cause you're like, I don't have those numbers. I lay, I don't know. I don't know how to do that. Here are a few tips that I have for you that I share with my clients when it comes to being able to find quantifiables when, of course, I mean, we don't even know what we ate for lunch yesterday. So I don't expect you to know these numbers from two years ago, three years ago, five years ago. So if you don't have any of these numbers, for some reason, here are some things that you can do. I have a couple of tips for you. Tip number one. You can reach out for help. So reach out to former colleagues, managers, they may have insights or memories that can help quantify your achievements. And this is also why, I mean, you should always have good relationships with people that you've worked with, so you can collaborate with them together, any relevant data or anecdotes. That's number one, tip number two, review performance reviews. Oh my gosh. These are a goldmine consult, any old performance reviews or evaluations pass assessments because they very likely contain valuable metrics or feedback that can quantify your accomplishments. So look for any mentions of specific achievements or outcomes on there. My client went back and we found so much good stuff on there, and I can't even tell you what it did for her confidence and her resume. Resume was so good because we had these powerful numbers in there that exemplified how strong of a leader that she already was. Tip number three, you can use qualitative metrics. You know, you can consider this. Of course, quantitative data is really nice to have. However, if you don't have any of that, you can also add in qualitative metrics. So highlight positive feedback from clients recognition, from supervisors, awards that you received. So while not numerical, they still demonstrate impact. Number four, you can create estimates. This is tip number four, create estimates. If exact numbers are unattainable, create estimates based on your best judgment while not ideal, providing a ballpark is still being honest, and it can still communicate the scale of your accomplishments. And so here's an example I did for a client in the past. She knew her process had saved the company money. And I was asking her, do you think that it at least saved$10,000? And she was like, yes, I for sure know that it at least saved$10,000, but she didn't know the exact number and it wasn't, you know, it, wasn't also going to be like$60,000. Like she knew somewhere. Probably between 10 and 20. But she didn't remember exactly. And so what I put on her director resume is I had put as the result increased sales by$10,000 plus. So it's still honest while allowing me to quantify your resume. Right. And so again, I know that all of this can be overwhelming, especially if you're doing it alone. And that's why I created my coaching intensive program director week and during director week, we will completely transform your resume to ensure that you start landing interviews for director positions. And that's not all within that week. You will also receive. A director level, LinkedIn profile and interview success kit, a strategic followup plan, a job tracker and informational interview tracker and templates from messaging, hiring managers. So it's designed to give you everything you need, the tools you need. In order to make that leap from manager to director. So, if you're ready to transform your career and start landing those director interviews, I invite you to join director week. We can churn your resume into a powerful marketing tool that screams leader and director instead of manager, instead of not being at that level. Okay. So thank you for tuning into today's episode. You can book a sales call by clicking into the show notes. You can also find me on LinkedIn and you will find the link on there as well. My LinkedIn is linkedin.com/i N slash Ali, a L E Thompson, T H O M P S O N. And you will see. The link to book your call there as well. Okay. Again, thank you for tuning in. I'm so happy to be back. I hope you find this helpful and we're going to talk sooner, right? Have a beautiful holiday. Enjoy the 4th of July. Enjoy your time off. Thank you. Bye.