In their book “Made to Stick,” authors Chip and Dan Heath put forth a guide that is intended to transform the way we communicate ideas and make our messages stick. Under their first principle of keeping things Simple, they discuss a concept that can be applied to writing your résumé.
In many ways, writing your résumé is analogous to a news reporter writing a story for tomorrow’s edition. News reporters are taught to start their stories with the most important information. The first sentence, called the lead, contains the most essential elements of the story. A well-written lead can convey a lot of information. After the lead, information is presented in decreasing order of importance. Journalists call this the inverted pyramid structure – the most important information (the widest part of the pyramid) is at the top.
The inverted pyramid is great for readers. No matter what the reader’s attention span – and in the case of your résumé, it may be no more than 15-25 seconds – the inverted pyramid maximizes what matters. Picture the alternative. If news stories were written like mysteries, with a dramatic payoff at the end, then readers who broke off in mid-story would miss the point.
Journalists constantly obsess about their leads because it’s the most important investment they can make in their story. Typically, after crafting a good lead, the rest of the story flows easily. This is no different from writing your résumé. Creating a compelling lead that leaves your reader wanting more should be the main focus of your attention as you build your career story.
If writing a good lead makes everything else easy, why would a journalist fail to come up with one? It’s like getting caught not seeing the forest for the trees. It’s getting so steeped in the details that they fail to convey the core message. This problem of losing direction is so common that it has its’ own name: “Burying the lead.” Burying the lead happens when the journalist lets the most important element of the story get lost somewhere else in the story structure.
The process of writing a lead is a great metaphor for the process of writing your résumé. Your résumé should follow the inverted pyramid model and start with a well-written, riveting introduction or what I call the “Branding Summary.” A successful branding summary contains the essence of who you are, what makes you different and demonstrates the value you can deliver. It helps separate you from your competitors.
As you develop your résumé, concentrate on delivering your core message. Invest your time in creating a memorable branding summary that doesn’t bury the lead, but puts it front and center.
