Financially, emotionally, and spiritually, we are all still in the same month. My nervous system treats a Zoom meeting like a frontline event, every email I send says “Q1 Circle Back” and every response says “Hell No”, and my personality has temporarily become whatever small craft I decided would fix my life two weeks ago.

Right now it’s beaded embroidery. I’ve purchased all required tools, accessories, upgrades, storage containers, and a level of commitment that suggests I will absolutely abandon this by mid-February and rediscover the supplies in 2029.

In between short bursts of 11pm craft productivity and actual client work, I’ve been rewriting resumes all month for EAs and CoS, and the trends were quite clear.

Let’s discuss:

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Let’s start with the uncomfortable truth.

A resume has exactly one purpose: To convert an application into a phone call.

That’s pretty much it. That’s the whole job.

Not to express your personality. Not to fully document your professional journey. Not to serve as a LinkedIn backup file in case the internet goes down. It exists to get you past the first screening decision and into an actual conversation with a human.

It’s a conversion document. Basically a landing page… wearing a blazer (mine wears this one with an irresponsible price tag).

This month I rewrote a stack of Executive Assistant and Chief of Staff resumes. Different industries, different seniority levels, different personalities, but the same response-rate killers kept showing up. Once you see the patterns from the recruiter side, you can’t unsee them.

Here are the biggest ones (and what works better!).

Most people write resumes as if someone is going to sit down with a coffee and read it thoughtfully from top to bottom.

They are not.

First pass is a scan. Fast. Pattern-based. Slightly ruthless.

The reviewer is trying to answer a few questions almost immediately: who do you support, at what level, in what kind of environment, and with how much scope and complexity? If that picture doesn’t come into focus quickly, you don’t get the deeper read.

The strongest resumes I worked on this month made those answers obvious near the top. Not hidden in bullet four. Not implied. Not scattered across roles like breadcrumbs. Front-loaded and unmistakable.

If your best signal requires effort to find, most reviewers won’t make the effort. Not because they’re lazy…because they’re overloaded (AND TIRED!).

One of the most fixable problems I saw was missing context around career moves.

Short stint? Multiple transitions? Contract roles? Founder-led chaos company? If you don’t frame the environment and the reason, the reviewer fills in the story themselves…and they usually fill it in with risk.

Not because they’re cynical villains. Because screening is risk management.

Adding a few words of context changes the interpretation completely. “Founder-led scale phase.” “Post-acquisition transition.” “Contract build-out role.” “Interim executive support during restructure.” Now the move reads as intentional instead of unstable.

That’s not spin. That’s translation. You’re giving the reader the operating conditions so they don’t guess wrong.

Silence invites suspicion. Context lowers resistance.

This one catches high performers off guard.

I reviewed several resumes where the candidate had done a ton of impressive, high-level, external/coaching/consulting work. Truly strong backgrounds. But the resume read like a highlight reel with no position label.

From the reviewer side, that creates a very specific problem: uncertainty about lane.

If someone has to stop and think, “Wait…what role are they actually best for?” you’ve introduced friction into a process that demands clarity and speed.

We didn’t remove the impressive things. We organized them. Primary lane first, supporting capabilities second. Through-line visible. Supporting range clearly secondary.

Range is valuable, but only after positioning is crystal clear. Clarity gets you the interview. Nuance gets you the offer.

I simplified several visually designed resumes this month, and I know that can feel mildly offensive to people who spent hours making them pretty.

But here’s what happens in reality: visual complexity slows skim speed. Fancy structures break parsing systems. And when something is harder to process, it gets processed less generously.

Fancy formatting often reads like someone trying to stand out. Clean formatting reads like someone who is already in the room. One is asking for attention. The other assumes it. A clean format serves confident and senior because it doesn’t try to impress with layout, it lets scope and decisions do the talking.

The goal wasn’t to make these resumes less impressive. It was to make them impossible to misunderstand on a fast read.

White space isn’t boring. It’s functional. It gives your strongest proof room to breathe.

Most summaries are written like a career obituary. Backward-looking, comprehensive, and oddly lifeless.

A strong summary is directional. It helps the reviewer understand not just what you did, but what level and scope you’re positioned for next.

This is also the section that should be tailored most often, adjusted to reflect the role you’re targeting…strategic vs execution-heavy, advisory vs operational, startup vs enterprise, complexity level, stakeholder exposure.

If you want a simple way to tailor your summary to a specific job description, use this prompt:

“Rewrite my resume summary for this role by emphasizing the parts of my background that match the scope, environment, and decision level in this job description. De-emphasize anything that isn’t directly relevant.”

Then paste:

If your summary is identical across every application, there’s a good chance it’s too generic to convert.

Think of it less like a summary and more like a positioning statement.

When I rewrite resumes, every meaningful change has to pass one filter:

Would this make a hiring manager lean forward, or keep scrolling?

Not “does this sound impressive.” Not “does this sound polished.” Not “does this use the right buzzwords.”

Only: does this reduce doubt and increase the odds of an interview?

That recruiter lens is what most candidates never get access to and it’s why small wording shifts can create outsized response differences.

If you want me to apply that lens to your resume directly, I’m running a January rewrite special for $99 through the rest of the month…which, at this point, is basically the next 48 hours.

If you just want me to handle it for you, book me here: Resume Rewrite Intake

Let’s make your resume do its only real job: get you the call.

Stuck in your job search? Not sure how to handle a tricky interview question or navigate the hiring process? Submit your question anonymously, and I’ll answer it in an upcoming newsletter.

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