Fear of rejection. Fear of interviews. Fear of change. There’s a lot of reasons writing resumes and job searching is terrifying for most people, especially early in their career. I have spent a lot of time interviewing, being interviewed, and workshopping resumes for many people in my network, so I hope the guidance below can help you through the process. Take a deep breath, we can figure this out together.

How to Make Your Experience Sound Impressive (Even if You Don’t Have Much)

A skills section with a long list of tools/technologies/certifications is fine for getting buzzwords in, but this should only be a line or two. Anyone can copy/paste a list, it’s the Experience section that proves competence. Don’t worry if you don’t have a long job history or internships, the experience you describe is less important than how you describe it.

How do we demonstrate competence? By being specific. The most common mistake I see people make on resumes is being very general or vague. Let me show you why being specific makes a big difference.

Bad: “Trained new hires.”

Good: “Standardized and led new hire training to ensure consistent quality of work, and documented processes so new joiners were more productive in less time.”

Can you see how the second version conveys more capability than the first? There’s an example of leadership, documenting how things are done, and increasing efficiency. It’s specific. And if you’ve ever written a Post-It note with instructions over a confusing printer or shown a newbie through how to fry french fries in the most efficient way, then copy and paste that bad boy into your resume. It describes what you did! This is great because even if you don’t think your experiences were impressive, describing them in specific ways shows that you’re detail oriented, thoughtful, and hard working. Demonstrating those qualities is way more important than what you actually did at each job.

Another cheatcode is to use smart people words. I straight up do a Google search for “resume verbs” every time I work on someone’s resume, there’s tons of lists and it makes a big difference. 

• “Coordinated” is better than “told idiots what to do.” 
• “Expedited” is better than “yelled at idiots when they were screwing around.” 
• You already knew this but “facilitated” is better than “helped idiots find that one thing I already showed them ten times but if they don’t have it they will never finish their stupid work and I need it yesterday.” 

Lastly, “participated” is a sad, weak little word and shouldn’t be on your resume. I’m serious. Don’t make me come over there.

Value Added Language

One formula you need to have on your resume is the Value Added formula, it looks like this:

“Made X process better by Y metric after implementing Y change.”

There might be 10 different candidates who can do the job, but we want to paint the picture that not only will you get the job done, the workplace will be better off because you were there. This can be a ton of different things: you found a more efficient way, you did it cheaper, you brought in more sales, you automated something that used to happen manually, etc. Once again it doesn’t matter if you were helping out at your church bake sale or selling Corvette’s to executives. You can phrase anything as “I found a way to do things better.” Here’s another example:

Bad: “Cataloged and stocked inventory”

Good: “Eliminated 10 man hours of work per week after developing a better system for organizing and cataloging resources and inventory.”

Imagine you’re a manager trying to hire someone. The second version is telling them “stuff gets done faster and my whole team will run smoother if I hire this person.” It might be hard to think of examples like that off the top of your head, but I promise you can find some. When I coach people on resumes, I craft bullets like these by asking the following question: 

“Where there any inefficient/sloppy/redundant/disorganized processes or tasks that you found a better way to do?” 

Their eyes always light up and they talk about a stockroom that used to be a disaster, or a spreadsheet they made to better organize things, or a way of cleaning up at the end of the day that was twice as fast, or how they just acted more friendly towards customers and got more sales because of it. Every job has annoying parts, and it’s human nature to find a better way so our lives are easier. Take credit for it!

Once you think of something like that, the next step is to quantify it. Estimates are totally okay, here’s a few examples.

• Setting up displays used to take 1 hour, but it took 15 minutes after you organized the stockroom. That happens about 5 times a week, so 45 min savings * 20 times a month = 15 hours saved each month!
• Most gas station cashiers sell $500 worth of stuff on a given day. You are friendly and customers like you, so you sell around $750 on a typical day. That’s 50% more!
• You realized your company wasn’t using a service they still paid for, and canceled the $200 monthly contract. Maybe that was a 30% cost savings! Eyeball it and use the number that sounds the most impressive.

Don’t split hairs over the exact amount, just make it sound good and be believable. These quantifiable metrics are amazing talking points, by the way. People like data and it’s an easy thing for them to ask (“50% savings is impressive, how did you do that?”). This is great because it gives you a chance to tell your story and sell yourself.

Grammar and Structure

A few rules of thumb can go a long way:

• Consistent verb tense. I start every bullet with a past tense verb (“Coordinated,” “Led,” “Documented”). You can use present tense if you want, but be consistent so it’s smoother reading.
• Consistent punctuation. Either all bullets end in a period or none do. This is kind of nitpicky, but then again so are some interviewers. Don’t give them a reason to throw away your resume.
• One page. Make it compact and remove unnecessary words until it is one page. If your resume is hard to read, people won’t read it. Make it easy for them so they’ll give you an interview. You also want to make sure they see the most impressive parts, which they might not find if it’s too long.
• Prefer bulleted lists to long paragraphs. Once again, making it easy to read means more people will read it. D on’t you see I’m following my own advice right now? It’s because it works!

Practice and Persistence

• Be prepared to tell the story of each bullet on your resume.

• Practice answering questions they might ask out loud. 
• Do mock interviews with friends, teachers, or family.
• Apply to a lot of jobs. Practice will make the process easier, and you can negotiate better when you have multiple opportunities.

I know the process is scary. I know being rejected isn’t fun and it’s especially hard when you’re younger and you don’t have much experience to speak of. But the only way to get that experience is to shoot your shot, learn from each attempt, and improve as you go. It’s okay if you don’t feel ready, I’ve done this tons and I still get nervous. Honestly we’ll never feel ready for many of the biggest and most important things in life, but what’s important is that we do them. Trying to open a lot of locked doors is exhausting, but in the end all you’ll see is where you ended up when a door finally opened. 

Thank you for reading and I hope this was helpful for you.