Alvah Parker is publisher of Road to Success and Parker's Points, e-newsletters providing strategies to advance your business and career goals. Click here to subscribe. Alvah is a Work/life coach, who can be reached at asparker@asparker.com, or visited on the web at www.asparker.com.

By Jewel Bracy DeMaio, CPRW, CEIP

"General resume" is a phrase that, as an executive-level candidate, you need to completely eliminate from your career management strategy. Have you held multiple senior positions over the course of your career? CEO? CFO? CIO? While you are undoubtedly expert in all these areas, plus more, let’s present your next potential employer with an easily digestible resume. Digestible means the content is something the reader can quickly absorb, because the message is unambiguous and the resume is not the length of a doctoral dissertation. This can be accomplished with laser-beam focus.

To be clear, building focus into a resume means selecting an area of specialty to emphasize, and incorporating other competencies in a supplementary manner. You don’t need to choose one element of your professional history and allow the remainder to fall by the wayside. All of your areas of expertise will be presented, but the laser beam will focus on one key concept ... one area of specialization.

It can often be difficult to select just one area on which to focus. Stop and think about what you are most passionate about. Evaluate your career, and identify the tasks you were leading in which you truly thrived. What were you happiest doing? Where did you deliver the absolute best results? On what subjects do other senior leaders consider you to be expert? In reviewing your history, if you see a theme emerging, you’ve arrived at your focus.

Once you've identified your primary area of expertise, do it again and identify your second strongest competency. One point to keep in mind is that limiting yourself to two of your strongest areas is going to be critical in guiding your career path. Before you can present a resume with focus, you need to limit your focus to two areas in which you’d like to specialize. If you truly have three or four core competencies and are unable to decide, consider professional career counseling to help you further clarify your goals.

We’ve already determined that executives should avoid presenting a resume emphasizing several areas of expertise. Executives in particular should also avoid the trap of crafting two entirely different resumes. The second resume will undoubtedly be the weaker of the two, and could very likely end up being a document that does not truly honor who you are and all that you bring to the table.

The strategy that works best for executives with more than one area of expertise is to develop two different versions of your resume (each with a different focus and summary section) and write two different cover letters. This technique is quite effective in drawing the reader’s attention to those skills you wish to highlight in each case.

For example, let’s say your two key roles have been CFO and CIO. In the first case, you are targeting a position as CFO. Your cover letter should highlight the achievements you wish to emphasize that showcase your financial leadership, strategic planning and turnaround ability. The cover letter guides the reader to what you are most proud of and passionate about. Most likely, you are proud of a different set of achievements from your CFO roles, than during your CIO work. Simply, one letter focuses on CFO; the second focuses on CIO.

The profile or summary at the top of the resume continues the theme from the cover letter. This section is your opportunity to emphasize those assets which are most relevant to that particular career tracks; for the first resume, the focus is finance; for the second resume, the focus is on IT. By writing different summaries, you can totally change how you are perceived by prospective employers.

After that, the remainder of your resume for both versions is exactly the same. This approach is far superior to presenting two resumes, because your history is your history; it's a point in the past and it's over. Every initiative you led and achievement you delivered can not and should not be written differently based on the position you’re targeting today. Doing so would weaken the writing throughout your entire resume. Instead, present your accomplishments in the strongest, most dynamic language possible, and use the alternate cover letter and profile to orient the reader's thinking to the perception of yourself that you want to create.

It’s important to not dilute your message, so remember the laser-beam approach. After all, you’re not going to be a CFO and CIO in the same company at the same time. Right? A singular, focused, spot-on message is infinitely superior to a "general" message and a laundry list of skills.

This approach has proven to be a sound one, and many executive job seekers pursue their career management goals armed with an alternate cover letter and profile. Doing so will position you to go forth confidently and with a crystal clear message of who you are, the value you bring to an organization and the type of opportunity you are currently pursuing.

Jewel Bracy DeMaio is a Certified Professional Resume Writer and Certified Employment Interview Professional (CEIP) whose resume work has been featured in numerous books over the past 10 years. Her expertise lies in her ability to communicate each job seeker's "authentic story" so that employers take notice.

View Previous Issues