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From Jodi · Career Advancement
Your resume has 6 seconds. How are you using them?
The patterns I see over and over — and the five fixes that actually change what lands in a recruiter's "yes" pile.
As a founder, advisor, and investor, I've read tons of resumes over the years. Over the last few months, I started to more intentionally notice the patterns. Patterns of feedback I was giving. Patterns of successful resumes. Patterns of resumes where folks have been looking for a while.
Most of the time, the resume has a ton of experience. Usually it's either buried, hard to read, in the wrong "language" of business, or just frankly overwhelming — so I give up.
Research shows that recruiters spend 7 to 10 seconds on your resume. It has one job: to get you the conversation. Its job is not to get you the job — its job is to move you forward in the process. Often times people get that confused.
I get asked all the time to review In Women's Health member resumes. We even have a #resumes channel in our In Women's Health Pro Community. I wanted to get on paper what I see most.
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Your resume's job is not to get you the job. Its job is to move you forward in the process.
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Below are the five patterns I see most often. In Wednesday's workshop, we'll talk through how to overcome these patterns and make sure you have a resume that is easy to scan, demonstrates impact, and signals women's health from the beginning.
1. They open with an objective instead of a memorable summary.
Most resumes still start with some version of "Seeking a role where I can apply my skills in a mission-driven organization." That sentence tells a recruiter nothing they don't already know (you want a job), and it uses up the most valuable real estate on the page.
Your opener should do two things: name your career throughline (the value you've delivered across every role) and your "only you" statement (what makes you different from every other qualified candidate). If a recruiter only reads your first four lines, those four lines should already be making the case for why they should have a conversation with you.
2. They describe responsibilities. You should lead with wins.
I see this one constantly — a paragraph at the top that reads like a job description. "Responsible for managing a team and overseeing campaigns." Okay, but so is everyone else who had that title.
Pull your biggest career wins up front and aggregate them across roles. Raised $100M+ in capital. Launched 12 brands across 99 markets. Grew revenue 40% in 18 months. Big numbers at the top signal credibility before a recruiter even gets to your work history. You've done impressive things. Stop making recruiters hunt for them.
3. They hide their women's health tie. You should put it in lights.
This is the single biggest miss I see in our space. Someone has genuine connection to women's health — a fertility journey that turned into advocacy work, a founded ERG, a side project educating patients — and it's either buried in a "volunteer" section at the bottom, missing entirely, or buried inside past roles.
We work with Mastermind participants to craft a Women's Health Experience section, high on the page. If you don't have direct professional experience yet, translate your personal ties into business language. "Navigated my own fertility journey and became a patient educator, reaching 5,000+ families." "Co-founded an ERG and grew it to 300 members across three regions." Hiring managers in our industry are looking for your tie to this work. If it's hidden, they'll assume it isn't there.
4. They write paragraphs. You should quantify everything.
Every bullet on your resume should answer the question "So what?" Metrics are what stop the eye, make your work real, and give a recruiter something concrete to remember you by.
"Managed social media strategy" is forgettable. "Managed social strategy across 3 markets, grew engagement 40%, drove $2M in attributed revenue" is not. And if you're sitting there thinking "but I don't have numbers for my role" — you do. You have team sizes, budgets, timelines, audiences, growth rates, retention rates, NPS scores. We help you find them and put them in.
5. They use weak language. You should use active, confident language.
"Responsible for," "assisted with," "helped support," "involved in" — these are the words of someone narrating what happened around them. They position you as a participant, not a leader.
Swap them for strong verbs that own the outcome. "Responsible for fundraising" becomes "Raised $100M." "Helped with campaigns" becomes "Directed digital campaigns reaching 1M+ impressions." Same work. Completely different read. Confident language doesn't mean arrogant language — it means language that matches what you actually did.
I see this most with women I work with — we often hesitate to take credit for our accomplishments (trust me, I struggled with this too). But there are others out there doing it, so you should too.
Join me Wednesday — and send me your resume
I'll go through all 10 rules — including the five I didn't get to here — at our 10 Rules for Writing a Resume That Gets You Hired in Women's Health webinar on Wednesday, April 22 at 3pm ET.
Want your resume reviewed live on Wednesday? Send it to [email protected] by Tuesday, April 21 at 5pm ET and we'll pull a few to workshop together during the session. Real resumes, real feedback, real fixes you can make that afternoon.
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So What
Most resumes I see aren't failing because the person isn't qualified. They're failing because the resume is working against them — the structure, the readability, the weak language that could be applied to anyone.
You've done a LOT. Take credit for it. Don't bury your best parts — let them shine. Most importantly, make that women's health connection and passion clear from the start. You've done the work. Let the page show it.
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See you Wednesday,
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