Nov 21, 2022
Making a resume can be stressful! You may ask yourself “What should I show? What are important objectives and critical results that a company recruiter wants to see?” There are certainly things that I look for in resumes and like to see emphasized. Always remember, resumes aren’t everything, but they are a way to open a recruiter’s eyes and get the ball rolling with a potential partner. So, here are some of the key things to highlight that can lead to the creation of a strong resume.
First off, when you are making a resume, make sure that you have qualified knowledge and experience in the role that you are applying for. With the majority of experience, agile recruiters do not want to see you reiterate the job description of a role – we want to see you talk about your unique experiences and how your experiences have led to strong contributions to your impact at an engagement.
When making a professional resume, make sure that it is written in the third person and uses the proper tenses based on the elaboration of an engagement. For example, if you are writing about a role you did from 2010 to 2013, this is going to be written in the past tense about the impact you made in that opportunity. Also, when writing about the impact you made on an opportunity, do not write about what the organization did – directly get to the point of what impact you made.
If you are a technical coach or a consultant, showing your hands-on experience with your skills set is paramount. Your specific skill set and knowledge of agile tools is one of the most important ways to show impactful assets that would drive and help in a new organizational transformation.
Applying for more than one agile role can take more time and organization. You might ask yourself “How do I show all my experience and knowledge if I can play many roles in an Agile & SAFe® environment?” A simple way to highlight all of your roles and experiences is to have different versions of your resume. Consider dedicating time to dividing your experience to better develop your opportunities. For example: if you are a SAFe Team Coach and you have the skills and enjoyment of being a Senior Scrum Master, you should have one resume that represents your “Senior Scrum Master” skills and experience and another version of your resume that represents “SAFe Team Coach” skills and experience. Swiss Army Knife Coaches need to be able to show that they have “been there, done that” within different versions of their resume.
I hope that these tricks and rule of thumbs that I have provided can help you get a better grasp on what highlights your resume. Like I said earlier, resumes aren’t everything, but they are a great representation of you and should reflect the first impression you wish to convey.
If you have what it takes to be an ICON Coach, please send your resume to Blake Lawson at Blake.Lawson@iconagility.com and I would be more than happy to talk with you about your resume!
ICON partners with clients in their Business and IT Transformations to produce collaborative outcomes that have proven vital in many industries. Since 1992, our highly experienced coaches and practitioners have been collaborating with companies to solve their most complex challenges using SAFe® methodology, Business Agility best practices, advanced OKRs, DevSecOps at the team level, and the Lean-Agile mindset