You’re a business owner with a legacy to your name. You have enjoyed the privilege of building viable businesses from scratch. You have developed strategies and business plans that have seen the light of day and basked in the glory of success. And now, you have sat down to draft a resume but you don’t know where to begin.
If this is your story, and you’re struggling to write a resume, then read on to learn what you can do to revolutionize your resume for business owners and entrepreneurs.
1. Use Numbers to Showcase Your Entrepreneurship Skills
Being a business owner is no cakewalk. Everyone knows that. This is why only a handful of people end up getting into the business of starting and running a business.
As a thriving entrepreneur and business owner, what are the skills that make you unique?
You probably know how to start a business, how to run it, how to handle the budget, how to acquire clients, and how to market and sell your products/services.
These are the hallmarks of an entrepreneur and need to be correctly reflected in your resume to make it stand out like a dash of paint on white walls.
Here’s an example of how you can structure your role & responsibilities to illustrate your entrepreneur skills.
- Acquired ~200 clientele in a short period of 5 years
- Spearheaded the sales team of 10 leading to an annual turnover of $ 50 million
- Executed the marketing strategy leading to increased brand visibility by 80%
- Scrutinized the competitive landscape as part of leading 10 marketers to define & achieve marketing goals.
You will notice that in the above points, we have quoted figures.
Quantifying your achievements can make a big difference to your job application as it shows that your skills have fetched the desired outcomes or results.
Stating that you are “result-driven” does not actually prove anything. But, showcasing that you are result-driven using achievement figures (as illustrated in the points above) can revolutionize your resume as it shows that you’re all about getting outcomes.
2. Make A Separate Section to Illustrate Your Skills
An ideal resume is one that meaningfully illustrates the details of your career. Your skills assume the center-stage in all this as it shows your professional capabilities.
To make the most of your resume, make a separate key skills section. This will enhance the visibility of your skills and it will also help you easily demonstrate the areas that you’re proficient in.
You can further divide your skills into two parts:
- Your core skills
- Your technical skills
This will help distinguish the two and make your resume pop like dye on a freshly fallen snow.
For example, in your case, your key skills should look something like this. This is a snapshot of a resume that we have built with Hiration’s Online Resume Builder.
3. Choose the Right Template
First impressions are everything and this applies to business owners too. Having triumphed in the highly challenging world of business solutions, you need to write a resume that best presents your achievements. This is why you need to choose the right template.
A great template can help deliver maximum impact as it will help your resume look its best, and quite frankly, that matters.
4. Use the Reverse-Chronological Format
The right resume format helps you organize your resume most optimally. For instance, you should use the reverse chronological resume format to give structure to your resume.
What this format does is, it displays your most recent work experience first, followed by the next most recent work experience, and so on and so forth.
Since your most recent work experience is the most relevant work experience of your career, by displaying it first, the reverse-chronological format helps you write a highly meaningful and relevant resume.
5. Customize Your Profile Title
Your profile title is your professional identity on a piece of paper. Instead of writing something as generic as “Entrepreneur” or “Business Owner” it will not make as much impact as customizing it.
For example, writing “Ex-Bain & Founder of Xyz services” will enhance the effectiveness and impact of your resume. By customizing your profile title in this manner, not only are you demonstrating your present professional prowess but you’re also capitalizing on the glory of past employers.
For example, just knowing that you have worked as a leading manager in Bain will attract people and help you enhance your personal brand through your resume.
6. Write A Reader-Friendly Resume
No one will tell you this but using paragraphs in your resume will definitely do more harm than good. They tend to make your resume look cluttered and are difficult to read. This discourages a reader from evaluating your resume in its entirety.
There is no point in having a lifetime’s worth of achievements if no one will know about it. This is why you should use one-liner points instead of paragraphs in your resume. It sees to it that your resume does the bare minimum of getting read.
7. Write A Relevant Summary
Your resume summary is not just a place where you put everything down. It is an opportunity to demonstrate your professional expertise in 3-5 lines.
To make it more meaningful and relevant, write a resume summary that is conversational and achievements-centric. Doing this makes your resume a living breathing thing with the ability to actively communicate your professional capabilities.
To further enhance the relevance of your summary, talk about how your professional expertise has benefited past projects.
