How to Write a Winning Resume, with Ramit Sethi

There are two big mistakes I see when people try to craft their resumes. The first is that people don't have a narrative. They just have a bunch of boring facts. The second is that they don't make every word earn its place onto their resume. Now, I'm going to explain both of these, and then I'm actually going to show you something. It's actually my old resume from college. Probably the thing I'm most proud of in my entire life. My family, Forget it. My friends don't give a damn. My resume that I spent over 100 man hours on. Let's talk. So first, let me tell you what I mean by a narrative. If you simply come at me with a bunch of facts, I honestly don't care. One of the things that I did with my resume, and I'll show you, as well as other top performers do with their resume, is they craft a narrative. So for me, it was tech entrepreneur, right? Guy who knows persuasion, psychology, and entrepreneurship. And I'll show you exactly how I did that. So when people walk away from reading the resume after 20 seconds, that's about all you get. Charitably, it's probably more like 15. What do they say about you? How do they describe you? For me, they would say, oh, it's the technology and psychology guy. Very strategic in what I did. I wanted them to think that about me. And of course, I use my experience to do that. Most people, by contrast, simply just jot down a bunch of BS facts. Really? Do you really think it's interesting to me that you attended this college from this year to that year? That's irrelevant. That should be one of the least emphasized things at all. I want you to tell me what you studied there. What did you do at your last company? Tell me about your accomplishments. Tell me about something surprising. Otherwise you end up looking like everybody else, and that's not what you want to do. The second mistake people do is they fail to make every word earn its way on the page. When I'm working with my friends or my students and I'm analyzing their resumes, something like 50 to 60% of the words do not need to be on that page. And ironically, because they have all this filler, all this bs, they can't put the stuff that's actually remarkable. Now, I was in a class, an STS class at Stanford, and we had this really interesting assignment. The first assignment we got, I believe the guy, the professor said to us, analyze this document and write up a response paper. And it was something like three pages. Then he Said, okay, now make that paper one from three pages to one page. And actually, people were freaked out because many people got Cs on this assignment, which at Stanford is like unheard of. Like, oh, my God, are you kidding me? I got a C? I've never got a C in my life. So what the point of this assignment was is cut the fluff, cut all the fat, as Professor McGinn said, and leave only the filet mignon. Leave only the best. Well, in your resume, every single word has to earn its way onto that page because typically your resume is one, maybe two pages. So when I see people adding all kinds of nonsense, I know that either they don't know how to write a resume, that's for sure. Second, maybe they don't have anything better to put on that resume. So let me show you what I did with my resume and I want to walk you through a little analysis. Now, this resume is from over five years ago. So I've learned a lot since then, but I want to show you some of the insights that I discovered back then. Would I do things a little differently now? Of course. But let me show you what I did back then which ended up getting me several jobs, several job offers at very good companies like Google and Intuit and things like that. So let's take a look. So on this resume, the first thing you notice is that just at a high level, the formatting is not particularly unique or amazing. It's just clean, right? So I use bold and italic strategically, but there's no fancy graphics, no nothing. The paper, it's irrelevant, it doesn't matter. Those are things that novices worry about, okay? They worry about the pound of paper they use, whereas a resume like hiring manager doesn't give a damn, okay? So the second thing you'll notice is that Stanford is right at the top. Now, your education can be at the top or the bottom, but if you have a very strong educational background, doesn't hurt to put it at the top. The first thing they think when they see this within one second is, oh, this guy went to Stanford. I better read on. Now, you may not have gone to Stanford, but if you have an educational background that is going to get them to read on, then put that at the top. Now let's look, because here's where some of the real insights begin. Most people, they literally just put X University this year. Major Psychology. What? You're wasting all this amazing opportunity. Here's what I did. I said BA in Science, Technology, Society and a minor in Psychology. Now, here's where it begins. Coursework included persuasion, entrepreneurship, computer science, human computer interaction, research and design, psychology and policy analysis. Holy shit. They're like, who is this guy? What? What did he do? What does he know? I want to read on. Do you see how I actually crafted what I want them to think of me using my own coursework? This is an insight that you can use so many times. The things you take for granted are actually fascinating to other people. You just have to understand that and then you have to message that. So I could have just said, you know, majored in STS and minored in psychology, but look at how rich and how richly layered I come across. When I say coursework includes persuasion, entrepreneurship, computer science, etc. Think of that. I'm actually creating my own brand in two to three lines here. Now let's look at the next one. Oh, by the way, papers and research available on my website. Now this was a little unusual when I graduated. I mean, people had websites, but it was a little unusual for people to be putting their URL on their resume. So that was a little unusual. Master's in department of sociology. I didn't put much there because pretty much it duplicated what I had done undergrad. However, let's look at this. When I studied at Oxford, I conducted an in depth tutorial on social influence and persuasion. Again, I'm reinforcing. This guy's a psychology guy. Interesting. And it's like in depth. It's persuasion, not just psychology. It's a big difference. Okay, so now moving on. When I talk about PBWiki, a company that I co founded, so notice I put these credibility triggers. The world's largest personal wiki farm. Okay, now PBWiki was extremely large even back then, but notice that you can qualify things. So personal wikifarm. Are there perhaps wikifarms that are larger for business? I don't remember back then if there were or not, but I know that we were the largest personal. So you can always qualify how you describe your credibility markers. Then notice that I put not only manage marketing, but what did I do? Blog outreach, strategic deals, all of these things. Why am I putting these? Because if you're applying for a marketing job, the marketing person wants to know, what did you actually do? So I'm actually just already answering their question before they even have it. I'm saying I did blog outreach, I did strategic deals. I did prior to see that I'm thinking about their concerns before they even have them. And then of course I have these things that show my results. So, created marketing strategies to launch to tens of thousands of users with viral growth. Wow, viral growth. What is that? That sounds very interesting. I better pick up the phone and interview this guy. Okay, a couple other things. You'll notice that I will teach you to be rich.com, which is just in its infancy in these days. Let me tell you how I represented it back then. Now, notice I did not have hundreds of thousands of viewers back then or whatever have now. I didn't have 80,000 email subscribers. So how do you represent something that's not as big? Well, let me show you how I did it. I designed a curriculum. Instead of saying made presentations, I designed curriculum. Curriculum isn't that much more official. Yeah, it's interesting. And by the way, you'll notice how rudimentary this was because look at the things that I talk about back then. Banking, budgeting, saving and investing. I fucking hate budgeting. Yet back then, that was how I started my infancy before I got more sophisticated. Next, I taught it to over 2,500 students. Anytime you can use numbers, especially impressive numbers back then, to me, 2500 was impressive. Now 2,500 people visit my site probably in about an hour. Okay, so everything's impressive, but it's relative. Notice these other credibility markers I use. Mit, Stanford. See that? And by the way, why did I put Bay Area high schools and corporations. The only reason I put that was that I had some empty space on that line. If that had flowed to the next line, it would not have earned its way onto the resume. So keep that in mind. Let's see here. I also use this other credibility marker, Wall Street Journal. Now, not all of us have been in the Wall Street Journal, let's be honest. However, if you haven't, maybe you should be thinking about what you can be doing to get credibility markers if you. It doesn't have to be the Wall Street Journal. It could be. I improved conversion rates by 30%. I raised sales by 15%. I improved the number of phone calls made by 14%. Think about what things you can quantify in your resume. Anyone can write about what they did. Very few can write about the results they achieved. Moving on. Auction drop. I used Viral Marketing Architect. Why? Well, first of all, I could create my own title back then because I knew the CEO. So if you can do that, definitely make a strategic title. As recently as two weeks ago, I had someone and they were like, I got them a job at a place and then they put it on their resume and their title was intern. I'm like, I'm going to kill you right now. Your title is intern. Why not technology intern or whatever? Anything Intern. Intern is not a position. Okay? Think about it. Every word earns its way onto your resume, and every word is strategic. So Viral Marketing Architect is very different than summer intern, don't you think? The big thing that I'll add here is the credibility marker. Direct report to the CEO. That's pretty impressive for a summer intern. Moving on, you'll see. When I worked with Seth Godin, I describe what I did. Worked one on one with Mr. Godin to research, blah, blah, blah, met and interviewed Fortune 500 CEOs. So what are they thinking? Now remember, always ask yourself, what is the reader thinking? And what do I want them to think? This is critical. When I help people with their resumes or with their college applications, they often will write stuff. And I say, what is the reader thinking right now? And like, for example, for high school kids who are typically like horrible writers, and yet they write like they want to write, like the most sophisticated writers of all. So they end up sending really overwrought and just terrible. I'm like, what is the reader thinking? And often the answer for this typical high school application or college application is like, they think you're a dick. Like, the way you're writing makes me not like you because you're using all these flowery words that you don't actually know how to use. You just seem fake. So when you re craft it, you ask yourself, what is the reader thinking? What do I want them to think? So here. Met and interviewed Fortune 500 CEOs. Well, what do I want them to think? I want them to think that I'm professional and mature, even though I'm at this point something like 21 or 22 years old. So keep that in mind. That's why I put Fortune 500 CEOs. I want them to know that I can represent them in meetings. Okay, I am that mature. Notice that I put the word strategy here. Member of strategy team. That's because hiring managers want someone who's not just tactical in others, who can execute. They want someone who can think broadly. They want someone strategic. Now, to tell you the truth, when I wrote this, I was not that strategic. It's taken me years to get strategic. But in truth, I was part of a strategy team. And the word strategy is important. So you never want to be deceptive, but you do want to understand. What does the reader see? What do they want to see? I was a member of a strategy team. In truth, you know, I was this young punk and I needed to learn how strategy worked. It took me years to learn, and I'm still learning. But it's important to whatever you've got in your tool belt, put it on the resume if it's credible and truthful and also if it will resonate. Okay, a couple other things I'm going to go into. So, Sun Microsystems, this is the job I told you about where I beat out a bunch of Stanford MBAs as like a young little sophomore in college. The big thing here to notice is used statistical analysis to identify insights and conclusions from complex data. There's a reason I put this on my resume. Most of the rest of this resume is relatively soft. It's a lot of qualitative stuff. It's a lot of marketing stuff. So what if a marketing manager is more quantitative and they look at it and they're like, this guy doesn't know shit. He doesn't know any math. He's never done anything quantitative. Well, guess what? There's your answer. I used statistical analysis to identify insights and conclusions from complex data. That's pretty impressive. And that answers and dispenses with the credibility question about being quantitative. Okay, now, as for the additional information, I'll just skip down to this. The main things to know here are that each of these bullet points is chosen for a reason, a very strategic reason. So the second one, how I was a comedy columnist for the Stanford Daily, that basically means fun. This guy's fun to be around. He's funny. He's going to be like a normal cool guy. He's not some uptight jackass who all he does is care about his textbooks. Fun. That's the main name of the game for that bullet point. The next one gives back. So I talk about my volunteering service and I talk about, you know, some serious stuff that I've done. Notice, by the way, that I slipped in some keywords. Look at this here. Personal finance, applied bargaining and negotiation, and technology and privacy issues. Even in my volunteering section, I got those words in there. Pretty good. Pretty good. I'm complimenting myself from like 6 years ago. I love it. Good job, Ramit. You're so great. Finally, the last couple ones are more entrepreneurial. So when you look at this resume, you ask yourself, number one, what's the narrative here? What kind of person is this? And it should not be hard to see even a dated resume like this. You say, like, wow, this resume is the resume of someone who's into psychology and entrepreneurship. This guy's got some great experience. He's got some big names. He's got Seth Godin on there. He's got all these people. Those are details. What's the main narrative? After I've looked at 200 resumes in a day, who do I remember? I want to get that psychology entrepreneurial guy. Let's get him on the phone. That's the power of a narrative. The second part, the deeper part, is making every word earn its place on your resume. So whenever you look at a sentence, I mean, down to the level of every word, is it really conveying what you want the reader to convey? Is it conveying part of your narrative? If you have no narrative, that's why people will just write random words. But if you say, all right, I want to be remembered in 15 seconds as the psychology entrepreneurship guy, then. Then it becomes very clear that every word on this resume should earn its way on there. And that's how you craft a winning resume. Sam.