You’ve accomplished a lot in your career so far, but somehow, your great career story isn’t shining through on your resume. So...what gives? Like many of my clients, chances are you feel like your resume is underselling you and you can’t figure out why. Aside from the fact that writing a resume can be a painfully awkward exercise in professional self-reflection, it is also impacted by unseen or even unconscious internal and external factors that can influence how [well] you tell your story.
Below we will explore 5 key reasons why you might be writing a resume that undersells you and how to shift your mindset to overcome them.
5 Reasons Why Your Resume is Underselling You
I’d like to start by considering who we are as people. There are nature and nurture factors that influence how we present ourselves to and interact with the world, and a resume is not immune to this influence. These issues are likely unconscious while you are writing your resume, but I’ve seen them get in the way of many clients, so I know they are real.
Internal Factors
1. Modesty based on Personality, Culture, or Gender
Personality: Believe it or not, your personality can influence how you speak about yourself in your resume. If you naturally prefer to work behind the scenes rather than being in the spotlight, writing a resume can be very uncomfortable because you are intentionally placing the spotlight on yourself. This personal preference can result in you crafting a resume that downplays your achievements, allowing you to avoid the limelight, even in your own resume.
Culture: Depending on your cultural upbringing, personal achievement can either be celebrated or muted. In the American context, defined by individualism, self-promotion is the norm. In more collectivist cultures such as many African, Asian, and Latinx cultures, the norm is to elevate the group above the individual. If you grew up in such a culture or family, your inclination may go against making yourself stand out from the group in the way that is necessary in your resume.
Gender: In many societies, patriarchal norms mean that men are socialized to boldly proclaim their achievements, whereas women are expected to be demure, both by nature and nurture. While neither are true of all women or men, we must recognize that this is a powerful societal expectation that can deflate how a woman might describe her achievements in her resume. This might look like downplaying impact or sharing credit in a way a man is neither taught nor expected to do.
MIND-SHIFT: Your achievements are the direct result of your work. Give yourself permission to own those achievements as part of your story. Additionally, this story is also about how your work helped others -- your company, colleagues, clients, etc. Refocusing in this way may help you stay true to your personality and culture and push back against gender socialization.
2. Attitude: “Just doing my job” Syndrome/Aversion to Bragging
“Just doing my job”: If this sounds familiar, you might be like some of my clients I’ve spoken to who simply avoid work-related praise and view career accomplishments as, “just doing my job.” Whether you rescued a troubled project or completed a key strategic initiative, you see it as an expected part of your job, and therefore not worth highlighting. This attitude often leads to matter-of-fact reporting of otherwise amazing stories.
MIND-SHIFT: In writing a resume, if you don’t think your achievements are special, then why would or should anyone else? “Doing your job” contributed value -- report on that value/impact.
Aversion to Bragging: Some of you might feel like any discussion of achievements is tantamount to bragging. If your general attitude is anti-bragging, you may try not to do it anywhere in life, including your resume. This can result in writing a resume that looks like a job description -- a list of responsibilities devoid of any accomplishments.
MIND-SHIFT: Bragging is often context-dependent. A resume is one of the few places in life you are supposed to discuss achievements. Bottom line, you are simply reporting the facts about how your work made a difference to your company or clients. If these facts happen to make you look good, that’s ok.
3. Subjectivity -- You are Too Close to Your Own Work
Writing objectively about yourself is a tough ask because we, by default, have a subjective view. This can be a double-edged sword. In resume writing, there are two challenges on the negative edge that can cause you to undersell yourself: A) You can get too far down in the weeds describing the minutiae of your job and fail to connect to the bigger picture; B) You may give what I call, “descriptions at the 30,000ft-level,” where your reader can’t see the details on the ground and understand your impact. Due to your proximity to your work, there are often details or connections about the context and/or impact of your work that you might take for granted, simply because they are like breathing air for you -- just natural. Those omissions can be the difference between your target audience, seeing or not seeing your value.
MIND-SHIFT: Operate by the rule, “if it’s not on your resume, your audience doesn’t know it.” Think about what an outsider would ask or need to know to fully appreciate your impact in your current work context.
External Factors
4. “I can’t quantify my achievements!”
While it’s true that not every job comes with easily identifiable numbers or its own metrics/KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) that govern your performance, it doesn’t mean that they don’t exist. A coach/friend of mine, Renita Kalhorn, once told me that she’s, “never met a job that she couldn’t quantify,” and I believe it’s true. Quantifying is one of the most common pieces of resume advice, and if you’re in a job that is typically more qualitative in nature, this can be frustrating -- so you skip it. Whether you agree or not, to most target audiences, a resume without numbers feels far less concrete. Leaving them out is simply a missed opportunity to tell a richer story.
MIND-SHIFT: We live in a concrete world, so you can begin by quantifying your nouns (team members, programs, caseload, etc.). Numbers are amazing descriptors that can tell stories about change, volume, scale, speed, and more. Get creative and see how they apply to you.
5. External/Company Factors Clouding Your Vision
Resumes aren’t written in a vacuum. As humans, we are influenced by what’s happening around us and this can also impact our resume writing. If your company is handling difficult market conditions, facing restructuring/downsizing, or other challenges, this can have a negative halo effect extending to how you perceive your own performance and achievements. It’s like looking at the world through dirty glasses, things don’t look good. In this case, your emotions about company turmoil can lead to a tarnished view of your work. This can result in a dim reporting of your achievements or even feeling like you don’t have any at all.
MIND-SHIFT: While you can’t change your current circumstances, you can use your context to frame and/or elevate your achievements. Think about how you have adapted, been creative, or even [over]achieved in spite of your circumstances. That’s a powerful story in the making.
Writing a resume is hard and it’s complicated by the fact that we often, unknowingly, get in our own way. I hope this discussion will help you identify and overcome some of your challenges in resume writing and tell a career story on paper that matches the one you are living.
In the next post in this two-part series, I’ll show you the most common ways underselling appears in resumes and how to fix them.
Let me know in the comments which writing challenges above resonated with you and why!
If you would like to discuss how you can better tell your true career story in your resume, I’d love to support you! BOOK NOW for a free resume consultation.
niiato@avenircareers.com | Call/text 917-740-3048