Clear and Impactful Résumé Writing: What Game of Thrones and Sarah J. Maas Can Teach Us
I have a résumé writing tip for fans of Game of Thrones or Sarah J. Maas. If you know both, you may be able to guess.
Many of the books from Game of Thrones are are titled with the same naming convention.
👑 A Game of Thrones
🐉 A Clash of Kings
⚔ A Storm of Swords
Sarah J. Maas took this convention one step further in her fantasy books.
🌹 A Court of Thorns & Roses
🍃 A Court of Mist & Fury
🦋 A Court of Wings & Ruin
While this is attention grabbing for titles, I see this kind of sentence structure in résumés a lot, and it's something to get away from.
Why?
It's unclear.
The formula is: A Noun of Noun & Noun (or) A Noun of Noun & Adjective.
In other words, subordinate clauses.
What I see in résumés that is unclear, is:
🙅♀️ Led the improvement of...
🙅♀️Oversaw the development of...
And sometimes multiple clauses, like:
🙅♀️Assisted in the coordination of the launch of...
🙅♀️ Contributed to the development of strategies that...
What this sentence structure keeps you from doing is
1) Showing your impact
2) Being clear (and thus being understood by the reader)
3) Focusing on your leadership
🌟 Consider removing multiple verbs from the same sentence in your résumé, at least in some places.
👉 You don't always have to use "developed and launched" - you can just say "launched" to pinpoint the impact from launching. The "develop" part may be a separate, equally strong bullet.
👉 Instead of 'provided support for...' try 'supported...'
Making these changes will not only help with clarity, they will shorten the résumé and force you to choose the highest and best of what you've done, which is what you should present.
And I'm not saying these can't exist at all, I've definitely written some. I'm saying if your résumé is filled with them, it gets taxing to read and unclear.
Now that I've given a long-winded story about how to shorten your résumé, I'd be happy to answer questions in the comments or feel free to DM me and I will get back to you ASAP.
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