Resume Tips: Expert Advice for Writing a Resume That Actually Gets Results

1. Content Over Design—Don't Let Visual Elements Hijack Your Message

Columns look pretty. Icons add visual interest. Graphics feel modern. But they all come at the expense of robust content—and they often can't be read by applicant tracking systems.

The problem with design-heavy resumes:

• ●Columns force you to fragment content unnaturally
• ●Icons and graphics waste valuable space that could showcase achievements
• ●Creative layouts often fail ATS parsing, meaning your resume never reaches human eyes
• ●Design becomes a crutch for weak content

The solution: Use a clean, simple format that lets your accomplishments speak for themselves. Professional doesn't mean boring—it means strategic.

How Paige helps: Paige uses one professional template optimized for both ATS and human readers. No decisions about columns or colors or icons—just clean formatting that puts your content front and center. You spend energy on what you say, not how it looks.

2. Protect Your Privacy—Skip Your Full Street Address

Including your full street address is outdated and unnecessary. Hiring managers only need to know your general location, and listing your complete address exposes you to identity theft risks.

What to include: City, State (e.g., "Washington, DC" or "Brooklyn, NY")

What to skip: Street address, ZIP code, other personal details

Also remove:

• ●Date of birth or age
• ●Marital status
• ●Photo (unless standard in your industry/region)
• ●Social Security number (never put this on a resume)

How Paige handles this: When you upload your resume, Paige automatically strips out full street addresses and flags any other personal information that shouldn't be there. Your privacy is protected by default.

3. Choose a Dominant Narrative—Your Resume Is a Marketing Device

The biggest mistake people make? Trying to include everything they've ever done. Your resume isn't a comprehensive career history—it's a targeted marketing document.

Ask yourself: Who is your audience? What do they need to see to bring you in for an interview?

If you're targeting senior operations roles, your resume should emphasize strategic leadership and process improvement. If you're pursuing data science positions, lead with technical skills and quantifiable analytical impact. Don't dilute your narrative by trying to be everything to everyone.

How Paige helps: When you upload your resume, Paige immediately identifies your dominant professional identity and helps you organize content around that narrative. Through the Paige Resume Builder, Paige asks targeted questions about what you're trying to accomplish with this resume, then helps you prioritize accordingly.

4. Use Your Professional Summary as Your Elevator Pitch

Your professional summary is the first—and sometimes only—thing hiring managers read. Don't waste it with generic platitudes like "results-driven professional seeking challenging opportunities."

Your summary should answer three questions:

• ●Who are you? (Your professional identity and level)
• ●What do you bring? (Your core competencies and experience)
• ●Why you? (What makes you particularly effective or valuable)

How Paige helps: Paige generates your professional summary based on your most impressive, most relevant accomplishments. It's also the easiest place to tailor when targeting a new role—just tell Paige: "Rewrite my summary for a Chief Operating Officer position in healthcare."

5. Add Company Context—Show Scale and Scope

One of the biggest mistakes people make is assuming hiring managers understand their work environment. They don't. You need to provide context about where you worked, not just what you did there.

The context tells hiring managers:

• ●The scale of your operation (12,000 clients, $3M budget, 6 sites)
• ●The complexity of your environment (40+ external partners)
• ●The type of organization (regional nonprofit focused on refugee services)

This information makes your accomplishments relatable and meaningful.

How Paige creates this automatically: When you upload your resume, Paige immediately adds company descriptions that include revenue, employee count, geographic scope, and core business. This context appears right under each company name, so hiring managers immediately understand the environment where you delivered results. You don't have to research this information—Paige pulls it automatically.

6. Own Your Achievements—Make Every Bullet Uniquely Yours

If the person who had your job before you or after you could use one of your bullet points on their resume, it's not specific enough.

The second version couldn't belong to anyone else—it has your specific metrics, your specific strategy, your specific impact.

How Paige helps: Paige puts placeholders exactly where you should add metrics and impact: "[Specific action] resulting in [measurable outcome] for [specific audience/stakeholder]." The Paige Resume Builder asks follow-up questions to help you flesh out vague bullets: "What were the specific results? How did this compare to previous performance? What made your approach different?"

7. Organize Important Roles Under Core Competencies

Instead of just listing bullet points chronologically under each job, organize your most important roles by core competencies. This demonstrates your expertise more effectively and makes it easier for hiring managers to see your strengths.

This structure makes your capabilities immediately clear and provides natural interview talking points.

How Paige does this automatically: When you use the Paige Resume Builder on a role, Paige asks questions to identify your main areas of impact, then organizes your bullets under competency headers. You don't have to figure out the structure—Paige creates it based on what you accomplished.

8. Humanize Yourself—Include Volunteering, Interests, and Special Skills

Your professional accomplishments get you in the door, but personal touches make you memorable and relatable. Don't skip sections that show who you are beyond your job title.

What to include:

• ●Volunteer leadership: Especially board positions, significant fundraising, or sustained commitments
• ●Special skills: Languages, technical certifications, unique expertise
• ●Relevant interests: Particularly those that demonstrate discipline, leadership, or teamwork (competitive athletics, serious hobbies)

What this achieves:

• ●Provides conversation starters in interviews
• ●Demonstrates values and priorities
• ●Shows you're a well-rounded person, not just a resume
• ●Can reveal shared interests with interviewers

Example from a real resume: "Former member of Team USA (1997 & 2001 World Squash Championships). Current member of defending champions in DC's premier squash league."

This signals discipline, competitive drive, sustained excellence, and teamwork—all professionally relevant qualities communicated through personal interests.

How Paige helps: Paige includes sections for Professional Affiliations, Volunteer Leadership, and Interests/Skills. The Paige Resume Builder prompts you to think about what humanizing details are worth including and helps you frame them professionally.

9. Streamline Older Work—Don't Let Your Resume Pile On

Nothing screams "I haven't edited this in years" like a resume where every role gets equal treatment, regardless of relevance or recency.

Your resume shouldn't look like you just kept adding content without ever removing or condensing anything. Work from 15+ years ago doesn't deserve the same space as your current position. Don't make hiring managers do the work of figuring out what matters.

The fix: Recent, relevant roles get full treatment with multiple detailed bullets. Older roles get condensed to 1-3 lines unless they're particularly relevant to your target position.

How Paige helps: Paige automatically applies this hierarchy, giving more space to recent experience and condensing older work. You're not starting from scratch trying to figure out what to cut—Paige shows you the strategic structure, and you refine from there.

10. Match Space to Interview Focus

Here's a simple test: Look at your resume and estimate how much interview time you'd want to spend discussing each section.

If your current role is the most directly relevant—in seniority, skills, and scope—it shouldn't occupy just 1/8 of your resume while 1/4 is dedicated to your college education and extracurriculars from 15 years ago. The space you dedicate to content signals what you consider most important.

Strategic space allocation means:

• ●Your most recent, most relevant role gets the most detailed treatment
• ●Sections you want to discuss in interviews get proportional space
• ●Content from 10+ years ago gets minimal space unless highly relevant
• ●Education moves to the bottom once you have 5+ years of professional experience

How Paige helps: Through the Paige Resume Builder, Paige walks you through each section and asks: "How important is this experience for the roles you're targeting?" Then Paige helps you allocate space accordingly, ensuring your resume reflects your actual priorities.

❌ Using Objective Statements

These waste valuable space telling employers what you want. Professional summaries demonstrate what you offer to them. The only time to include a sentence about your career goals is when you're making a major career pivot; this short sentence should be at the end of your Summary.

❌ Listing "References Available Upon Request"

This is outdated. Employers assume you have references and will ask when needed.

❌ Neglecting Your LinkedIn Profile

Your resume and LinkedIn should tell the same professional story. An outdated LinkedIn profile (or worse, one that contradicts your resume) raises red flags. Update both simultaneously.

❌ Using Buzzwords Without Evidence

"Innovative," "strategic," "results-driven" mean nothing without proof. Show what you led and what resulted.

❌ Spending Too Much Time or Money on Your Resume

In compressed job markets, networking is critical. Spending weeks perfecting your resume (or thousands on professional services) pulls energy away from the relationships and conversations that actually land jobs. Your resume needs to be strong enough to support your network—not perfect enough to replace it.