Who is Steve?

Steve had focused his career in the health, wellness, and fitness industry, spending the past 18 years in various related positions-general manager of a gym, program director at the YMCA, and for the past 9 years, as the owner of a personal fitness coaching company. With a recent relocation to a new state, and his wife securing her dream job (we wrote her résumé also!), he thought the time was right to return to employee status and targeted a return to the YMCA, an organization he was deeply passionate about.

What did we do for Steve?

Steve's original résumé was very old fashioned, including a laundry list of bullet points presenting his day-to-day responsibilities. With this approach and design there was no prioritization to the information presented and little focus on anything beyond his job. With Steve presenting his career and education in 45 bullet points there was nothing of note to engage his target audience, focus their attention, or elongate the 4-to-7-second screening process.

By learning more about Steve's career I was able to glean additional information on where Steve had stepped outside of his role and really contributed to his employers and clients. Having most recently been an entrepreneur, we not only had to make that section great, but also pay special attention to making him look like a great employee, something that would be critical in overcoming any fear on the part of the employer of this being a temporary move until the economy rebounded.

Reprioritizing Steve's experience, I chose not to include his short-term retail sales job sandwiched in-between his fitness consulting and YMCA positions, a strategic move to ensure only his best experiences were presented on page one of his résumé. Within each of the professional experience sections I included a paragraph overview of his daily responsibilities along with several bullet points exploring his key contributions in each engagement. This approach made certain that the reader came away from the screening process with critical information on how to differentiate Steve as a candidate, something that was impossible in Steve's original résumé.

Speaking of differentiating, one of the biggest ways in which I differentiated Steve was through his qualifications summary. Introducing this summary with a mission statement, I immediately set the tone for not only who Steve was but also what he was passionate about, being sure the elements introduced spoke directly to his target employer-the YMCA. Through a paragraph overview of his key qualifications along with a bulleted core skills list-which again was very targeted toward the YMCA and its core values-he emerged as a highly qualified candidate who was committed to returning to his roots with the Y.

To reinforce how Steve wanted to be seen, I created a very clean, balanced, and professional résumé design, using YMCA colors to again reinforce his career objective. This uncluttered design ensured the content on Steve's résumé would be the star, while providing the aesthetic to facilitate ease of readability.

What did Steve Think?

Steve was so funny and wrote, WOW!!! I am still waiting to get MY resume. The one you sent me...Wait, is this me?! Again, WOW! Thank You! Not an uncommon reaction, I really love receiving comments like this as it tells me that the candidate now has a renewed sense of confidence in their credentials and know that everything on their new résumé is a completely accurate representation of who they are. It is situations like this that make my job so incredibly rewarding.

Employee