Executive resumes are breeds in themselves. Why? Employers are looking for some special leadership traits in the senior managers that they want to hire. The traits of good leadership embody a portfolio of attributes that are not always quantifiable. They are often indefinable, a jen ne sais quoi, and yet those who are looking for such qualities can recognize them when they see them.
As up-and-coming managers seek increasingly higher titles and responsibilities in their ongoing career growth, how they present their value proposition to the prospect employer becomes increasingly important. A resume is your proxy in a job search, and, regardless of how your connections help you get in to see the decision makers, it is your resume that establishes your credentials. True, a senior executive can bring you in because someone has recommended you or that they know you personally. Nevertheless, once you walk away from that encounter your resume that you leave behind is what is circulated for further review and actions. If it does not project the right message, you may not be able to sustain the welcome that was accorded by those whom you knew!
So, what makes the message on an executive resume stand out and what projects that je ne sais quoi that everyone is looking for? Well, the answer is simple, and, yet, it is elusive for most.
One thing for sure that is a “maker” in an executive resume is the progression of responsibilities and accomplishments in the specific area of your expertise. For example, if you want to be a senior executive at a retail conglomerate, you must show progressively greater span of responsibilities and accomplishments in the retail space. At very senior levels, e.g., CEO, this matters less. But, for most senor executives specific vertical experience in an industry is central to moving ahead.
The “breaker,” then, is the inability to build consensus and relationships across broad constituencies. A single ‘breaker” can negate many “makers’ for moving ahead in an executive selection process. One major breaker for senior executives is their “soft skills.”
So, what are soft skills?
Soft skills is a phrase that some HR person concocted in the late ‘70s to describe attributes that round out leadership skills of those who are otherwise technically very proficient (It is probably the same person who came up with the word empowerment, a little later!). Most leaders (managers and executives) grow in their careers by parlaying their technical expertise in an area into becoming a people manager. Here, technical implies the subject matter in which they are an expert (SME). SMEs can be in any field, not just in technology, as is often mistakenly perceived. You can be an SME in corporate law, forensic testing, or a language, etc. As they grow in this role as an SME, they realize that the skills that they practiced to be a top technical contributor are very different from the ones that make them a top manager. To be a good leader and a manager of resources you must learn how to inspire others to achieve results. In its original framing, whoever conceived the idea of soft skills envisioned them as a disparate layer of attributes that round out one’s leadership capabilities. Although this may be true to certain extent, a true leader accomplishes what they set out to do by integrating their technical and soft skills in an intertwined way. They are not separable. If you try too hard to portray your soft skills (through affect), especially during the screening process, you can undermine your leadership force and come across as a weak leader.
What are some of the soft skills that are important in a leader’s role and as a manager? The following list may provide a glimpse:
- Quickly grasping the gravity of a situation (also known as lateral thinking)
- Being a visionary
- Leading/Inspiring teams
- Crisis management
- Public speaking
- Being approachable
- Having composure
- Ethics and values
- Respect for other
- Empathy
- Integrity
- Listening skills
- Conflict management
- Morale building
- Decision-making
- Critical thinking
Although this is not an exhaustive list of soft skills, they represent a good sampling.
In a resume it may be fatuous for you to present yourself as a “Highly ethical and moral leader with great conflict-management and decision-making skills who respects others and treats them as true equals regardless of their age, sex, race, and accent.” However, it may be entirely apt to tell several stories that reflect leadership achievements, which would not be possible without these soft skills and which are anchored to your Unique Skills.
For example, this resume bullet tells a great deal about a leader who can deliver: Was recruited to turn around a foundering project with key team members leaving and the customer threatening legal action. Discovered that the original project was ill conceived, without specific deliverables. Met with the customer and redefined project, re-scoped entire effort, regrouped team, and led the new effort to completion, exceeding customer expectations.
Such a bullet, although a bit longer than its traditional counterpart, (Delivered a critical project on time), speaks volumes about a leader’s true capabilities: hard skills, soft skills, political skills, and each of the 16 listed items above and then some, when anchored to a Unique Skill(s) and placed on a resume! Traditional resume writers exhort their clients to write about their soft skills because they do not know how to present their clients’ leadership stories that embody their entire suite of valuable skills. In such cases, a listing of mere “soft skills” looks almost gratuitous and inapt.
To continue the above illustration, a relevant Unique Skill can be Inspire Teams: Re-ignite demoralized and dysfunctional teams by providing hands-on leadership and establishing accountabilities. Build new teams from the ground-up and inspire them to achieve unprecedented outcomes.
So, what is the take away from this article? If you are positioning yourself as an executive through your resume, make sure that you have a good assortment of stories that provide a glimpse into your leadership window from different perspectives and that capture different aspects of your hard and soft skills. Writing such stories in a concise, compelling, and intriguing way, of course, requires a skill that is worth developing.