Facilitation Guide for Resume Coaching

Why should you coach someone on their resume?

Putting together a resume is a deeply stressful exercise, especially for applicants doing a career transition, college students pursuing an internship or first professional role, or individuals putting themselves on the market for the first time in years.

Sitting down with someone during this life stage can have them make concrete progress in their professional goals. Your role as a facilitator will be to get critical information out of an applicant in a pressure-free atmosphere outside of the context of a job interview.

It is fundamental to create a psychologically safe atmosphere because these sessions require a lot of vulnerability from the applicant.

What kind of experience is needed to do this?

This is recommended for facilitators with prior facilitation experience, namely experience in facilitating candid conversations with diplomacy and grace.

For best results, it is ideal for the facilitator to be in the same industry as the applicant. If the applicant is in the same function as the applicant, even better, but having professional experience engaging with professionals in the same function as the applicant is valuable as well.

When should these sessions be done?

These exercises are most appropriate after the applicant is confident in the career direction they want to pursue and they are early in the process of applying to job openings.

Overview

At the first session, give them your background on resume coaching, what you’re here to accomplish together, and the role you will play in asking candid questions in a judgment-free zone.

Determine whether the applicant is ready to put a resume together or if they’re earlier in their career discovery journey.

Talk through stages of putting a resume together.

The biggest assumption that an applicant makes is that the case stories they’ve represented on their resume are the best ones. The advantage that collaborating with a facilitator can bring is in identifying additional strong, compelling, or relevant stories. This is dependent on the facilitator’s ability to ask open-ended questions in order to jog the applicant’s memory in identifying relevant case studies that might not have come to mind in prior drafts of their resume.

  • Session 1 

    • Facilitate a session to pull out relevant stories or accomplishments.

  • Homework assignment for the applicant

    • Resume Draft 1 - The applicant puts stories into resume format, ignoring length and copywriting.

  • Session 2

    • Resume Draft 2 - Help the applicant prioritize resume bullet points based on the needs of the job posting.

  • Session 3

    • Resume Draft 3 - Offer guidance to tighten wording, clarity, design of the resume.

      • Draft 3 is when friends, family, and professional peers will be most helpful for providing feedback.

    • This session is an optional session for the facilitator, but it’s important to define this stage so that the applicant is aware of how to solicit feedback and clear on the role that their network will play in refining their resume further.

Session 1

Share the agenda of what Session 1 will cover and encourage them to find their note-taking materials of choice for this session.

Get access to a copy of their resume that is somewhat up to date, if possible.

Get links to roles they are aiming for, open a job posting of their preference.

Read the job description aloud to assess what the employer is looking for and discuss how the applicant can best present their skillset at a high level.

  • Go through each bullet point of the job description and give your interpretation of what the job description is asking for. (This exercise is stronger the more background you have on the function of that role.) 

  • For each bullet point of the job description, ask the applicant for examples of how they did that bullet point. Examples can be from coursework, boot camp projects, or professional experiences. (This exercise is critical and does not require any background knowledge of the job description’s function.)

  • As they tell a story in response to the previous prompt, ask them why it matters that they did that thing for their organization, course, or team. This may require asking them to elaborate on the state of affairs before this story and after this story. Keep asking clarifying questions in order to identify the impact for each story.

Direct them to write down each of these stories or case studies as base materials for their new resume. Mention the following points:

  • It’s common to completely rebuild from scratch.

  • This can be overwhelming for them. Inform them that this is a normal reaction. Building a resume is a separate skillset from the role that the applicant is pursuing.

For their homework assignment, have them rewrite their resume with the new case studies.

Session 2

Follow up with a session to edit their resume with the new case studies.

  • Assess the prioritization of bullet points.

  • Offer feedback on clarity or quality of copy.

  • Identify any similar stories that are represented multiple times for multiple roles and recommend the removal of the redundant information.

Session 3

Follow up with a session in order to edit for length and fit the resume into 1 or 2 pages.

  • This session is optional for the facilitator.

  • Encourage them to share their resume draft with peers, former coworkers and bosses they’re on good terms with, etc, for feedback.

Christine Luc