After 20 or more years in the job market, you’ve picked up a lot of skills. One recent contact told me that she had worked in sales, management, website development, marketing, bookkeeping and purchasing at various companies over 30 years. How, she wondered, would she ever fit all that experience into one resume?
She was asking the wrong question. She should be asking, “What job do I want?”
If you have a multitude of skills and experiences, narrow them down to the ones that excite you most, that you’ve achieved the most in, that you can see yourself performing for the next 10, 15 or 20 years—and that employers and recruiters are looking for. Your resume should focus on those areas of expertise.
You may decide that you have two passions and need two resumes. For example, one resume might focus on your sales and management experience; the other might focus on marketing experience, including website development.
But a single resume that qualifies you for every position in every department in every company only serves to convince future employers that you’re a Jack of all trades and master of none. And nobody hires Jack.