[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":199},["ShallowReactive",2],{"blog-\u002Fblog\u002Fresume-examples":3},{"id":4,"title":5,"body":6,"date":184,"description":185,"draft":186,"extension":187,"image":188,"meta":189,"navigation":190,"path":191,"seo":192,"stem":193,"tags":194,"__hash__":198},"blog\u002Fblog\u002Fresume-examples.md","Resume Examples — Before and After, Side by Side",{"type":7,"value":8,"toc":175},"minimark",[9,18,21,26,34,37,40,44,51,54,57,61,68,71,74,78,85,88,91,94,98,101,110,113,166,169],[10,11,12,13,17],"p",{},"You will learn more about resumes from one honest before\u002Fafter than from a gallery of polished exemplars. The polished resume tells you what the finished product looks like. The before\u002Fafter tells you ",[14,15,16],"em",{},"what the writer changed",", which is the only thing you can act on.",[10,19,20],{},"This article walks through four pairs. In each one, it is the same candidate, the same role, the same dates and employers. The only thing that moves between the two sides is the writing. The contrast is the lesson.",[22,23,25],"h2",{"id":24},"_1-a-summary-that-says-something","1. A summary that says something",[27,28],"blog-resume-compare",{"lesson":29,"strong-caption":30,"strong-src":31,"weak-caption":32,"weak-src":33},"Summary that says something","Concrete scope, outcome-focused bullets","\u002Fimages\u002Fexamples\u002Fsummary-strong.svg","Vague aspiration, responsibility-focused bullets","\u002Fimages\u002Fexamples\u002Fsummary-weak.svg",[10,35,36],{},"The weak summary could belong to any engineer on any team in any decade. \"Passionate,\" \"proven track record,\" \"excited to contribute\" — each phrase is free. The strong version names systems, scale, and a decision the candidate drove: a monolith-to-services migration, the latency numbers before and after, the SLOs they own now. Every bullet below follows the same move — say what was shipped and what changed.",[10,38,39],{},"If your first line does not disqualify half the job postings in your inbox as not-a-fit, it is too generic.",[22,41,43],{"id":42},"_2-skills-curated","2. Skills, curated",[27,45],{"lesson":46,"strong-caption":47,"strong-src":48,"weak-caption":49,"weak-src":50},"Skills, curated","Four categories, role-relevant only","\u002Fimages\u002Fexamples\u002Fskills-strong.svg","Single wall of 40+ keywords, no grouping","\u002Fimages\u002Fexamples\u002Fskills-weak.svg",[10,52,53],{},"The weak skills list is a panic response to \"what if the ATS is looking for this?\" So everything goes in — clinical skills mixed with software, soft skills mixed with certifications, Spanish (basic) sitting next to Fall prevention. A recruiter reading this list learns nothing about which of these the candidate is actually good at.",[10,55,56],{},"The strong version groups skills by the category a hiring nurse manager would scan for: Clinical, Certifications, Systems, Languages. It also cuts the filler — \"Detail-oriented,\" \"Teamwork,\" \"Problem solving\" — that every candidate claims and no reader believes. What remains is a tighter signal: the candidate knows their EMR, they hold the right licenses, they have the clinical skills the role requires.",[22,58,60],{"id":59},"_3-cut-the-ancient-history","3. Cut the ancient history",[27,62],{"lesson":63,"strong-caption":64,"strong-src":65,"weak-caption":66,"weak-src":67},"Cut the ancient history","3 relevant roles + one \"Earlier roles\" line; reframes teaching for ops","\u002Fimages\u002Fexamples\u002Fhistory-strong.svg","10 jobs back to a paper route; buries the pivot","\u002Fimages\u002Fexamples\u002Fhistory-weak.svg",[10,69,70],{},"A career-changer's resume has to do two things at once: establish that the candidate has real professional experience, and reframe that experience for the role they actually want. The weak version does neither. It inflates a teaching career with high school retail jobs, and the bullets describe the work as a teacher rather than as operations.",[10,72,73],{},"The strong version keeps the three most relevant roles and collapses the earlier jobs into a single \"Earlier roles\" line — honest about the timeline without wasting space on a paper route from 2008. Just as important: the remaining bullets reframe teaching in operations terms. Curriculum review becomes process design. Classroom management becomes stakeholder coordination. Same work, read through the lens of the next job.",[22,75,77],{"id":76},"_4-one-pm-tailored-for-fintech","4. One PM, tailored for fintech",[27,79],{"lesson":80,"strong-caption":81,"strong-src":82,"weak-caption":83,"weak-src":84},"One PM, tailored for fintech","Same candidate, bullets pulled toward regulated fintech","\u002Fimages\u002Fexamples\u002Ftailoring-strong.svg","Generic \"cross-functional\" PM applying everywhere","\u002Fimages\u002Fexamples\u002Ftailoring-weak.svg",[10,86,87],{},"This pair is the same person on both sides. Same employers, same dates, same titles — and the same underlying work. The difference is which parts of that work show up in the resume.",[10,89,90],{},"The weak version is a generic product-manager resume. \"Led cross-functional teams.\" \"Managed product lifecycle.\" It would be equivalent if the candidate were applying at a fintech, a gaming studio, or a recipe app. The strong version surfaces the specific fintech experience that was always there: SOC 2, KYC, BSA\u002FAML, payment rails, chargeback reduction, OCC chartering. Nothing was fabricated — the candidate simply refused to bury the parts that matter to the hiring team.",[10,92,93],{},"Tailoring is not about rewriting your history. It is about which parts of your history you let the reader see first.",[22,95,97],{"id":96},"layout-sins-to-avoid","Layout sins to avoid",[10,99,100],{},"Those four pairs are all about writing. Format matters too — and the wrong format can get a strong resume thrown out before anyone reads it.",[10,102,103],{},[104,105],"img",{"alt":106,"height":107,"src":108,"width":109},"A resume with many layout anti-patterns — two-column layout, profile photo, skill bar graphs, emoji headers, clashing colors, and a table for work history",1056,"\u002Fimages\u002Fexamples\u002Flayout-sins.png",816,[10,111,112],{},"A brief tour of what to avoid, and why:",[114,115,116,124,130,136,142,148,154,160],"ul",{},[117,118,119,123],"li",{},[120,121,122],"strong",{},"A profile photo."," US employers are trained to avoid photos on resumes — they create discrimination risk. Many will discard the resume rather than read it.",[117,125,126,129],{},[120,127,128],{},"Two-column layouts with a sidebar."," Most ATS parsers read left-to-right across the whole page. Columns get scrambled. Your skills end up interleaved with your work history.",[117,131,132,135],{},[120,133,134],{},"Tables for work experience."," Same problem — parsers often extract tables as a single cell or skip them entirely. Use plain text rows.",[117,137,138,141],{},[120,139,140],{},"Emoji section headers."," ATS systems strip non-ASCII characters. \"🚀 Skills\" becomes \" Skills\" in the parsed output. More importantly, recruiters read them as unserious.",[117,143,144,147],{},[120,145,146],{},"Skill bar graphs."," A 95% bar next to \"Leadership\" is not information — it is a design flourish that the recruiter will mentally discount and the parser will ignore entirely.",[117,149,150,153],{},[120,151,152],{},"Decorative fonts."," Comic Sans or a handwritten font in one section wrecks the credibility of the whole document. Stay with one professional serif or sans.",[117,155,156,159],{},[120,157,158],{},"Clashing color blocks."," Teal header, purple sidebar, yellow highlights. Even setting aside readability, it signals that the candidate spent their energy on visual design instead of writing. Recruiters notice.",[117,161,162,165],{},[120,163,164],{},"Invisible keyword stuffing."," White text at 1px in the header, trying to game ATS keyword matching. Modern ATS systems flag it. Recruiters can see it if they paste the resume into any text editor. It is the resume equivalent of hiding something under your seat at the interview.",[10,167,168],{},"The resumes in the four pairs above work because they get out of the way — single column, clean section headings, plain text, consistent type. Every decision on the page is in service of making the writing easy to read.",[170,171],"blog-cta",{":glow":172,"body":173,"heading":174},"true","Build a resume that reads like the 'after' versions above. Resume Notebook handles the formatting — you focus on the writing.","Your turn.",{"title":176,"searchDepth":177,"depth":177,"links":178},"",2,[179,180,181,182,183],{"id":24,"depth":177,"text":25},{"id":42,"depth":177,"text":43},{"id":59,"depth":177,"text":60},{"id":76,"depth":177,"text":77},{"id":96,"depth":177,"text":97},"2026-04-14","Four before\u002Fafter resume pairs showing what separates a weak resume from a strong one, plus a quick tour of layout sins to avoid.",false,"md",null,{},true,"\u002Fblog\u002Fresume-examples",{"title":5,"description":185},"blog\u002Fresume-examples",[195,196,197],"resume-tips","formatting","examples","ZFzQDvgLgNKudL1a8p1cQJ2fRFt0653NMBDKKq6mx6g",1776210899091]