Crafting the perfect resume for independent consultants: Tips from a seasoned recruiter

Even if your past work experience is glittering with achievements and top-tier skills, translating that experience over to a resume isn’t always easy. To help independent consultants create resumes that shine, Talent Acquisition Specialist Jana Loh spoke at an Outsized community event about how to strengthen, customise, and tailor a resume while avoiding common mistakes. With over a decade of experience at top-tier companies across APAC, including Meta and booking.com, Jana has seen her share of great and not-so-great resumes. Below, we’ve summarised some of the highlights and key messages from the talk.

Three areas independent consultants should highlight

As the nature of an independent consultant’s work is different from that of a full-timer, there are certain aspects to their resumes that require a bit more of a boost. The first thing to look out for is versatility. Does your resume showcase the range of niches, industries, markets, and departments you’ve worked in? This leads into the second key area, which is adaptability. Emphasise how you’ve been able to seamlessly move in and out of these different areas, and quickly gained the skills required to succeed. Lastly, take a careful look at the job posting, then comb through your resume to highlight the projects and achievements that are the most relevant to the job at hand.  

The five building blocks of a resume

Your resume should be structured as five clearly defined sections: contact information, profile summary, relevant skills, educational background, and experience and past projects.

First, keep your contact details accurate and up-to-date, including a phone number with a country code and, if applicable, a URL for any online portfolios. “One too many times, I’ve sent an email to a candidate and it bounced back because there’s a typo, or I called someone and it’s the wrong number,” says Jana. Next, create a profile summary — a short paragraph (about 5-6 lines) highlighting your top skills, ambitions, and objectives. Not only will this help bring all the important information front and centre, but it will also help you prioritise information as you revise the rest of your resume.

In the “Skills” section, focus on the skills relevant to both your expertise and the job that you’re applying for. You can break down the section into different categories, such as Language, Skills, and Tools. When listing your educational experience, be sure to add any certifications or training programs you’ve completed in addition to your traditional university education. Double check that your dates here are accurate, as some countries run education checks on candidate resumes. 

Lastly, there’s the longest section: projects and past experience. Jana recommends 4-5 bullet points per job, and to include as many quantifiable results as possible. When you scan your resume, are you seeing lots of numbers, percentages? Recruiters want to see hard evidence that your past work made an impact, as illustrated in the examples below: 

Basic Resume Point:
Improved customer agent productivity 

Improved Resume Point:
Revamped 5 trainings for customer support agents and rewrote 10 call center scripts used to serve 100K customers annually. Length of customer interactions decreased by 10% (phone) and 15% (online chat) and post-call survey indicated a 24% increase in customer satisfaction. 

Basic Resume Point:
Launched new product feature

Improved Resume Point:
Developed, A/B tested, and launched "X" feature in 3 international markets. Feature achieved a 76% adoption rate in 3 months. Feature interaction led to increased average basket value of 12%. 

Basic Resume Point:
Handled multiple projects simultaneously

Improved Resume Point:
Directed cross-functional teams to deliver five high-impact projects ahead of schedule, saving $100,000 in operational costs.

Tailoring your resume for each opportunity

When you customise your resume for the job, you’re proving that beyond just being a stellar worker, you’re the right fit for the role. This creates a big impact on the recruiter, who sees that you have a real interest in the role as well as a strong attention to detail. 

Remember that recruiters use keyword searches to parse through resumes. To increase your chances of success, review the job posting for potential keywords, then include those words as you describe your projects, achievements, and skills, and as you craft your profile summary. Jana gives the example of a job description that included, among its list of responsibilities, Develop and implement processes, policies, and procedures to facilitate effective operations and decision-making. In a sample candidate’s resume, a bullet point under a Cost Savings project reads: Developed process improvement strategies that led to a 40% increase in operational efficiency. This bullet point speaks directly to a responsibility on the job description, making it easy for both the recruiter and the keyword search program she’s using to find and highlight this candidate. Plus, it includes a metric, which showcases the candidate’s impact. 

Another way to make your resume stand out is to include the role you’re applying for in your profile summary. Let’s say a candidate is looking at a job posting to work in the CEO’s office in Mumbai. In a sample resume Jana shares, the last line of the profile summary reads: Ready to bring strong communication, problem solving, and adaptability skills to drive operational excellence in the CEO’s office of a leading NBFC in Mumbai. Reading this line, the recruiter automatically knows that the resume has been carefully tailored for the position, which is a huge plus. 

Common pitfalls to avoid

When crafting a resume, people tend to over-elaborate. However, more information just makes it harder to get to the point. Stick to only what’s important, remembering that recruiters have a lot of resumes to go through, and not that much time. Make sure the critical information is easily accessible and readable, and delete any lines that don’t showcase your skills or impact. Also, a lot of resumes are unfortunately out of date. It’s good practice to review and revise your resume from time to time, even when you’re not looking for your next role.

Remember to pay particular attention to relevance. You may have done some incredible work, but it could be that those achievements and the skills required to reach them have nothing to do with the role you’re applying for. Remove anything that won’t help the recruiter see that you’re the best person for this particular job. Lastly, try to keep your resume to one, max two pages.

Put your best foot forward

Hopefully these tips highlighted the importance of tailoring your resume, focusing on quantitative over qualitative data, and making sure everything on the page is relevant and impactful. Now’s the perfect time to review your resume, which Jana also recommends sending to friends and your network for feedback. After all, a resume is the first impression of your level of professionalism, attention to detail, and commitment to the role. To learn more about how to elevate your resume, you can watch Jana’s full presentation on our community page.