Last Updated on December 30, 2025 by Fly High Coaching
Resume building is the art of transforming your career milestones into a clear, compelling narrative that captures both human reviewers and applicant-tracking systems. By structuring your resume with a targeted professional summary, strategic keyword placement, and concise achievement statements, you ensure that every section works together to showcase your value.
Crafting a resume that resonates means tailoring content to your industry’s expectations while highlighting transferable skills and key accomplishments drawn from performance reviews. Treat your resume as a living document, one that evolves with new certifications, projects, and leadership experiences.
If the resume writing process feels overwhelming, our host Porschia and guest Wynter Love offer strategies for breaking it into manageable steps and treating your resume as a “live” document that evolves with your career. Discover how to overcome common roadblocks and maintain momentum in your resume-building journey.
Wynter Love is a seasoned Career Services Manager and Lead Interview Coach with 15+ years in employment consulting and transition coaching. She holds multiple certifications in resume writing, career coaching, HR management, and adult education, and earned her B.F.C.S. from the University of Georgia and M.Ed. from Colorado State University.
What you’ll learn:
- How to organize your resume’s key sections, professional summary, skills, experience, and education for different audiences
- Tips for writing a compelling summary that appeals to both human readers and ATS scanners
- Important strategies for embedding industry and role-specific keywords to boost visibility
- Ways to incorporate transferable skills and performance review insights into your achievements
- How to streamline resume building into manageable steps and keep your document current
As a thank you for listening to this episode of the Career 101 Podcast, we are sharing our FREE master class – Career 911: Solving the Top 5 Challenges Executives and Professionals Have! It’s a training based on solving the common problems our clients have experienced to reach their goals. You can get access to the master class here!
Resources:
- Episode Transcript
Porschia: [00:00:00] Hello, I’m Portia Parker Griffin, and I wanna welcome you to the Career 1 0 1 Podcast, a place for ambitious professionals and seasoned executives who want an edge in their career. We’re talking about all of the things you were never taught or told when it comes to career growth, development, and change.
Now let’s get into it.
Today we are talking about resume building tips with Winter love. Winter Love is our career services manager and lead interview coach. She is a current member of the Professional Association of Resume Writers and Career coaches and a previous member of the National Resume Writers Association. In addition, winter holds certificates in human resources management, motivational interviewing, mediation, and teaching with [00:01:00] technology and distance learning.
She has 15 years of experience in employment consulting and transition coaching. Winter attained a Bachelor of Family and Consumer Science from the University of Georgia and a master of Education with a concentration in adult education and training from Colorado State University. Hi, winter. How are you today?
Wynter: Hello? Hello. Thank you for.
Porschia: Yes. We are always excited to have you with US Winter, and today we are discussing resume building tips. We have had you on this show quite a few times before, so for anyone who wants to know more about Winter’s background and her career, please check out episode two, which is Resumes 1 0 1, the basics and what your resume should look like.
But today we are gonna jump right in and talk [00:02:00] about resume building tips. So winter, I think it would be helpful for people to understand the resume framework first. So in your opinion, what are the key sections of a resume?
Wynter: Yeah, definitely think that the key sections of a resume has changed over the years, right?
We need to be aware of. A couple of things. When we’re taking a look at the documents, we can take a look at what’s trending, but then what’s also the information that is necessary for your location. ’cause international resumes have different formats too. But the standard American resume format should have some type of professional summary area for key skills.
Even technical skills, depending on your industry and your professional experience. So we wanna try to limit that. 10 and 20 years. We can go with a fluff there. And then of [00:03:00] course the education and training section. Depending on your experience, depending on the longevity of your career, actually, you would temper all of those things.
But you can also have sections like awards, additional leadership. I can go on and on, but those are the good chunks of the resume.
Porschia: Yes. Agreed. And I love your point about how the sections of resumes have changed. I was actually doing a review of a resume for one of our university partners today and the person had a very outdated sections for example, he used a section that I think a lot of people used to use which is like additional experience, but in his case, the additional experience was in alignment with what he was currently doing. So it wasn’t like just a placeholder for some random experience. And so it, it did come across as a bit dated.
So thank you for pointing that out. [00:04:00] So you told us about the summary, the key skills section, the experience, and then education and training. Which sections do you think are the most important for executives and professionals?
Wynter: I think that’s a hard question, but let me explain. I. The sections do different things for different audiences, right?
So I think personally for me, I generate or gravitate towards the professional summary the human wants to read more about You, wants to know about that story, wants to get to know you through more soft skills versus the a TS or the applicant tracking system. The computer is looking more for those keywords or those key phrases.
So the differences depends on who you’re targeting here. I think it’s important to note that as well. Some industries like nonprofits. They don’t typically use as much applicant tracking system, so it’s more people oriented. So [00:05:00] that format could resonate with more of the human eye. And talk more about the content in regards to, I guess you would say the structure, different scenarios versus someone who is in finance who is applying to corporations.
We wanna make sure that those keywords are infiltrated in the resume in multiple ways, in just the good chunk of keyword sections.
Porschia: Yeah, absolutely. And we talked about this on a previous podcast episode about resumes, but you are so right and when it comes to multiple audiences, right? So we’ve got the human audience.
And in that human audience, I generally tell people that you’ve got the first usually. You’ve got the first level kind of recruiter or reviewer who might be, if it’s a large organization, a more junior level person. So that’s one of the human reviewers. And then at some point you’ll have a human reviewer that is the [00:06:00] actual hiring manager who usually is a completely different person.
And then to your point, you’ve got the software technology the applicant tracking system or a TS, which is really looking for those key words. So yes, human reviewers could think something is more important than the software and all of that. So winter, what are some tips for building those important sections of a resume?
Wynter: When you build your sections of the resume, I think it’s really important for you to reflect on your experience, to have a good idea. Of what your experience looks like objectively. So a lot of times when we talk about the different scenarios that we’ve been through, or even sometimes I have some clients preparing for the behavioral interview questions, and those questions have those key words that are usually in the job postings.
If you have no way to [00:07:00] relate your experience to those key words, you may struggle a little bit. So it’s important for you to identify what are examples that fit inside of those keywords that the job postings have for you. And that can, I know that’s oh my gosh, depending on your experience, you’re like, how long that list of keywords is.
But yes, that is all a part of the process. And honestly why conversations is so important throughout the trajectory of your career and keeping track of all the things. That is definitely key when you’re building your resume from that component. And then taking a look at what some other resumes look like just in general in your industry.
Comparison is a thief of joy, as they say, but. It can provide a foundation. You take a closer look at, maybe you have a mentor who is on the same career track and they have a resume that’s already completed. Take a look at what they’ve done and get some [00:08:00] insight from them.
Porschia: Yes. And then, something that I think you were alluding to that I really wanna highlight for the listeners is that also the sections that you build out for your resume can also change depending on your industry, right? We have a lot of clients that are in it, for example, and they might have different sections than.
Other clients who aren’t in it. And then we have, winter knows this, she is definitely one of the leads on a lot of our academic cvs. We know that they have a lot of different sections too great points there. Winter as a professional resume writer, how do you create compelling content to include on clients’ resumes?
Wynter: Me personally. Me? Yes. I’m nosy. You, I’m so nosy. I’m always reading about someone’s [00:09:00] promotion, someone’s something. I like to take a look at, which usually goes in hand with my writing process. I like to take a look at what’s going on in the industry. If any companies your current company or companies that you’re interested have news that’s going on that you would wanna highlight.
So I almost act as if I’m going through the interview process as the person or for the roles so that I can just understand what. They’re looking for and put myself in that position. I think that helps me curate multiple versions of professional summaries for a client. So a lot of times some clients come to us for that resume summary, that LinkedIn summary, that professional bio.
And you don’t wanna be repetitive. So it’s important that you are able to. Weave your way through those grainy squares to make a comforting quilt if you’ll
Porschia: Yes. Love the [00:10:00] analogy. And putting together a resume is like quilting to your point, winter, because it’s drawing upon those different experiences from the past and weaving them together in a nice kind of cohesive.
Fashion. So from your perspective, what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve seen professionals or executives have with writing their own resumes?
Wynter: Oh, the whole process of identifying your experiences with the keywords. We joke about it and we, gloss over it, but that’s a lengthy process that can be difficult to really pinpoint what’s going on and what I’ve also been seeing, when you go through your performance evaluations, sometimes there’s a little bit of anxiety there. Maybe you had a bad experience and you don’t wanna go through what happened in 2021 so that you can pull some accomplishments sometimes that is daunting in itself and could be a reason why you are [00:11:00] lagging on certain parts of creating your resume.
So creating content is usually the hardest part for our executives and connecting it to the market today. I think it’s important to note that sometimes I. When people say they’re transferring and they’re trying to transition out of industries or into new roles you can’t necessarily just use the experience, the resume or position, the experience how you have been previously.
You want to reposition your experience and be open to new ways of discussing how your transferable skills can be highlighted.
Porschia: Woo. You said a lot there Winter. I wanna piggyback on one of the areas that you touched on because I hear this a lot when I am talking to our clients before they get to you.
I hear a lot of, I’ve just done so much. I don’t [00:12:00] know what should be on my resume. And I think that’s to your point about when you were talking about different experiences and I generally, have, our kind of formulaic way of getting to what I call the gold in someone’s background and getting that on their resume, but.
Sometimes I just tell people, we’ll do that for you. And to your point about performance reviews, I ask them if they have any performance reviews from the past. And I tell ’em to just send it over. And I know you’ve gone through some of those for our but we can. Dig through what might be minutiae to you and find out what are some of those experiences to highlight as well, so you don’t have to feel like you’re, doing that all on your own.
So winter or
Wynter: even asking the different types of questions sometimes you don’t consider yourself as someone who does negotiations, but. You talk about different terms [00:13:00] excuse me, and processes with clients. Those are not negotiations in terms of numerical value, but it is negotiating terms in impacting the contract and workflow and the efficiency of the business.
It’s really also reframing questions so that they fit the experience and the goals moving forward.
Porschia: Absolutely. Absolutely. So how long do you think the resume building process takes?
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Show notes.
Wynter: Forever. It’s ongoing, it never ends. So it is one of those [00:15:00] I consider a resume, a live document. I personally think that you should have like your own personal version of a cv, where you are maybe 10, 15 pages in of your job roles, your accomplishments, your tasks.
The dates that it changed. Any special projects, certifications, trainings, publications In some ways, a lot of times people help with publications for newsletters and different things published online, but they don’t really consider that can go on your resume and definitely can be in your job search toolkit.
I would say resume building is ongoing, the entirety of your career. And even afterwards, if you’ve retired and you’re interested in board work, you need a resume for that too. It always definitely is impactful to have it. Now, how long does it take to write a resume going through everything?
I don’t, it depends me, my personal process. It takes about four to [00:16:00] five days, especially if I want to know more about what’s going on. If you’re an executive in the company or if you’re looking for more tailored type of roles. It takes time to really understand what the needs are so that you can specify the language to fit a myriad of scenarios.
Myriad. How do you say that word? Yes.
Porschia: You said it. You said it and I agree. I agree. And I think to winter’s point it takes days and, if somebody, I guess if you were to calculate it all, it’s quite a few hours of time if you were to, consolidate that. But it takes a good bit of time to build a resume.
Yeah. So how do you think keywords that are specific to the job and the industry someone is targeting, can be used in resume building?
Wynter: The keywords are so [00:17:00] important and it’s. Even more important to understand how different keywords can be to your detriment. And let me explain that, ’cause that sounds so so bad in the grand scheme of things, but so safer and.
Sense you refer to your easy low hanging one is referring to your clients as clients rather than referring to them as suppliers. So maybe if you’re switching industries the industry standard is to call their customers their clients suppliers. Is that to say that you don’t have.
Supplier relations if you’ve just been having client relations. Not necessarily, it’s just a different type of relationship building that you wanna make sure that is transferred over when you are building your resume. But it’s also important to know that certain certifications and training can be translated and can be highlighted during your resume building as [00:18:00] well.
Some companies, especially like in supply chain, they really value certifications. So you can move that up on your resume, the formatting isn’t stagnant. All these things can move and ebb and flow depending on what you’re looking for. And the goals of the company, especially if they have like the preferred qualifications down at the bottom, that is like gold information.
It tells you exactly what you’re looking for, put that up at the top. So it’s the first thing that they see.
Porschia: And I think winter you’re making a larger point too. And I want to make this more general and broad for other people. Winter’s talking about how important those industry and job specific skills are, and this is to another point.
And winter we will probably need to have a whole episode on this too. But, the days of a just. General resume are long gone [00:19:00] and we still hear clients say that just give me a general resume that I can use for any job. And not as many people say that as they did five years ago. ’cause I think more people are understanding keywords and there’s technology and ai, but there are some people who still believe that just having one resume that’s general that they can use to apply for everything.
Is gonna be helpful. And I have to tell those people that it is not, that’s not effective today. Really hasn’t been effective for some time and 10 years, but definitely today. And it’s different than it was, 15 years ago, 20 years ago, when that was common. It’s very important to be specific as you are building a resume.
Yes. So in episode 61, we talked about important skills for a resume. How can transferable skills be incorporated into the resume building process? [00:20:00]
Wynter: Oh yes. Good old transferable skills. What I’ve been seeing recently is like a section transferable skills. As I’m looking through what the resume world is doing people are just bumping out transferable skills so that they’re easy to find.
And I guess I can get with that as a way of method. Depending on the format of your resume and your intention going forward, but those transferable skills, first, you need to identify them, it’s important to know how you are going to market yourself in the new industry. It is important to know.
And when you say new industry, it’s also important to illustrate that it doesn’t also, it doesn’t have to mean that you’re switching. Industry completely. So maybe I shouldn’t say industry or roles rather, because sometimes when you’re taking a step down I have seen a couple of managers who just will, I just wanna work [00:21:00] remotely.
So can I find an analyst role? A role I was supervising these people engineering role and you really need to make sure that you are translating your experience in ways that they understand that you can do the work. Outside of managing the word. So it’s important to, to have that distinction and understand what they’re looking for so you can mirror that same language.
So transferable skills are important to notate the origin of, so what is it that you have the skill in? You have technical documentation on your resume. What else can that be referred to as? Take a look at that and go from there. Create a little web, sometimes it’s helpful to see it visually.
Porschia: Yeah. Love it. So what would you say to someone who, maybe they’ve been listening to this episode, or they’ve just been trying to build their resume, themselves. What would you say to [00:22:00] someone who’s overwhelmed by the resume building process?
Wynter: You are not alone. I am here with you.
Oh, really? Truly it. It can be frustrating. It is so hard to see yourself objectively. I know I sound like a broken record, but it really is hard to. Sit back and see what you want to highlight or pinpoint, or you feel like you’re reducing yourself to two pages. Seems like such a daunting task. Or honestly in some regards, trying to fill up one page seems like a daunting task.
Or our newer employees, our newer clients who are entering the workforce who may just have a lot of internship experience and they don’t know how to make sure that’s translating well to. Some of our private sector jobs that are requiring five years of experience or else. And call us girl.
You listening?
Porschia: Yeah. That’s the simple, [00:23:00] that’s definitely the simple thing. We can definitely help you out with any overwhelm in the resume building process. And to your point, winter, I think most of the clients we have, where I hear that is our clients. I should say it’s, it is a couple of groups of clients, but really the ones that have, they’re either mid-career or late career and they have a lot of experience and they don’t know what to include and what to cut out. And then also are career changers. Because they’re in that same. Scenario in terms of they don’t know what to include, what to take out, what to highlight. And I think that those groups of people tend to have the most overwhelm.
Yeah. When it comes to resume building.
Wynter: I agree. I agree. And it’s tough. I acknowledge that it’s tough. I tried to write my own. I know. That is so ridiculous to say. I don’t write my own [00:24:00] resume. Even I asked someone else to write my resume because, it’s. I look at ’em every day, I don’t wanna look at mine and think about it.
But it can be hard to get through, to get over that hump to get to the next step. And we can definitely help you and assist with that process. So don’t suffer. I say if your base resume, especially if your base resume is five or six pages just go ahead and call us.
Porschia: Yes. And to. I have to tell people all the time not to beat themselves up about trying to write their own resume.
I don’t think I’ve shared this story on the podcast, but I’ve told you about it before winter a while, a long time ago now, but we had a client who spent a year. Not only working on his own resume, but applying for jobs and he was a high [00:25:00] achiever. He, told me he got a 4.0 in his MBA program at this prestigious university, and he was beating himself up because he said, I can’t write a freaking resume.
And I had to tell him that it is nothing to do with his intelligence. When it comes to resume writing, there are so many things to consider that. Really, unless you’re a nerdy resume writer, career coach who’s looking at resumes all the time, really knows, you know what Winter’s talking about in terms of keywords and writing for software technology screenings, and highlighting your accomplishments and building on the right sections. There’s no way you would know this exactly. So if anyone out there is feeling that way I definitely wanna tell you to take the pressure off.
Wynter: Yes, please. It’s not as easy as it seems, and I’m just like, [00:26:00] employment is all I know.
I started in employment in hr. I’ve been looking at resumes for 20 years. So you know, it’s second nature for a sit and talk about these things and spit out. So don’t feel like, don’t feel ashamed for trying come up, we can do it.
Porschia: Yeah. Absolutely. So winter, my last question for you. How do you think executives or professionals can get a positive edge with resume building?
Wynter: Oh my goodness. You want a positive edge to come from a place. Of sincerity. You wanna make sure that you are including your most relevant and recent accomplishments as you build, but also think about how you impacted people and the relationships that you cultivated along the way. Resume building does not have to be a isolated process, so if you do need help, feel free to reach out.
[00:27:00] We are more than happy to always have a conversation and make sure you’re on the right track.
Porschia: Winter, as always, you have shared a lot of great tips with us today. I’m sure that our listeners can use it to be more confident with their resumes. We appreciate you being with us.
Wynter: Thank you so much. I hope I come back again soon.
Porschia: This episode was brought to you by the Brave Bird Career Alliance, the go-to membership designed for seasoned executives and ambitious professionals with everything you need for career planning, strategy, training, and support. Thank you again for listening to the Career 1 0 1 podcast. I hope you have at least one key takeaway that you.
Can use in your own career. [00:28:00] If you enjoyed hanging out with us, please rate, subscribe, and share this podcast. Until next time, here’s to your success.
