Latest / The Resume Room with Fexingo: Resume Writing, Cover Letters, and Application Strategy / Why Your Resume Gets Stuck In The Middle
Transcript
- Lucas: We have all seen it. The candidate sends over a document that is essentially a biography of their entire working life, stretching out to six or seven pages. They think they are showing thoroughness, but what the recruiter sees is a lack of editorial judgment. Luna: It is like they are trying to prove they have been busy for ten years instead of proving they have been effective. Lucas: Exactly. And the problem is not just the total length. It is where the fluff lives. The first page usually has your summary and recent role, which is strong. But then you hit page two, and suddenly every single responsibility from a job you held five years ago gets listed in bullet points. That is where the signal dies. Luna: So the middle of the resume becomes a graveyard of tasks rather than a showcase of results? Lucas: Precisely. I call it the 'middle drag.' When you are mid-career, maybe you have had four or five roles. You want to show stability and growth, so you keep writing about each one equally. But recruiters spend about six seconds on the initial scan. By the time they get to the third role back, their attention span has completely evaporated. Luna: I remember reviewing applications for a director-level opening once. One candidate had three full pages of older history. I literally stopped reading after the second role because there was nothing new to learn. Lucas: That is a perfect example of the waste. The candidate thought those older details were important context, but they were actually noise. The trick is realizing that your past experiences do not all carry equal weight. Some are foundational, some are transitional, and only a few are relevant to where you are going next. Luna: Right. So how do you decide what stays and what gets cut? Is there a rule of thumb? Lucas: I use the relevance test. If a bullet point does not directly support the core competencies of the job you are applying for, it goes. Even if it was a massive achievement. If you are applying for a product management role, the fact that you organized a charity gala in 2018 is irrelevant, no matter how many people attended. Luna: But people love talking about their achievements. It feels like throwing away part of your identity to delete those lines. Lucas: It feels like loss, but it is actually curation. Think of your resume as a sales pitch, not an autobiography. You are selling your ability to solve the company's current problems. Anything that distracts from that sale is dead weight. Let me give you a concrete example from a client I worked with recently. Luna: Oh yes, please. Give us the numbers. Lucas: This was a senior marketing manager named Sarah. She had worked in tech for twelve years. Her original resume was four pages long. She had detailed responsibilities for every role, including her early days as a junior coordinator. She was getting rejected from vp level roles. Luna: Because she looked like she was still doing junior work? Lucas: Partly. But mostly because the volume of text made her achievements hard to find. We stripped her resume down to two pages. We removed her first two roles entirely, listing them only by title, company, and dates. We condensed her middle roles into single paragraphs focusing only on revenue impact. Suddenly, her most recent strategic wins were impossible to miss. Luna: Did she lose any credibility by removing those earlier years? Lucas: No. In fact, her credibility increased. By removing the noise, she looked more confident. She signaled that she knew what mattered. The hiring managers saw a leader who could distill complex history into clear value, rather than someone hiding behind a wall of words. Luna: That makes sense. It shifts the focus from tenure to impact. Lucas: It does. And this brings up another common mistake. People often pad the middle of their resumes with soft skills or generic phrases. Things like 'team player' or 'strong communicator.' Those take up valuable space without proving anything. Luna: Yeah, I see that a lot. Someone will write 'collaborated cross-functionally' for three bullets when one sentence would suffice. Lucas: Exactly. Cross-functional collaboration is expected. You demonstrate it by describing the project, not by stating the adjective. Instead of saying you collaborated, describe the stakeholder meeting where you aligned engineering and sales on a new feature launch. Show the action, don't label it. Luna: So the edit is really about replacing description with evidence. Lucas: Yes. Evidence is concise. Description is fluffy. If you can prove you led a team that reduced churn by fifteen percent in one line, you do not need a whole paragraph explaining your leadership style. Luna: What about the skills section? Does that contribute to the middle drag? Lucas: It can. I see people list twenty technical tools and languages in the middle of the document. This is especially common in tech. But if you are applying for a senior role, listing 'Microsoft Excel' or 'Python' as basic skills is wasteful unless it is critical to the specific job. Luna: Should those go at the bottom? Lucas: Usually. Keep the top half of the first page for your narrative arc. Who you are, what you have done recently, and the results you delivered. Put the keyword-heavy skills section at the very end. Recruiters can scan it quickly if they need to check a box, but it should not interrupt your story. Luna: That helps. It keeps the narrative flow intact. Lucas: It does. And here is the hardest part for many people. You have to be willing to let go of your ego. You spent three years building that skill or completing that project. It feels wrong to erase it. But the market does not care about your effort. It cares about your output. Luna: It is a shift from documenting your journey to marketing your value. Lucas: Spot on. And if you are listening to this and you feel like your resume is too long, try this exercise. Print it out. Take a red pen. Draw a line under every bullet point that does not include a number, a percentage, or a specific outcome. If it is still there, cut it. Luna: That sounds painful but effective. Lucas: It is. But the relief you feel when you finally get it to two clean pages is worth it. Your interviewer will thank you. Their attention is a limited resource. Do not force them to hunt for your best moments. Luna: Before we move on, I want to pause for a moment. We deliberately do not run ads on these shows because we believe the conversation should stand on its own merit. Lucas: If you enjoy the deep dives and practical strategies we share here, the link is buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo — that's F. E. X. I. N. G. O. Your support helps keep the network independent and ad-free. Luna: Thanks for keeping this running. Now, back to the editing table. Lucas: Let’s talk about the format of those remaining bullets. Once you have cut the fat, how do you structure the lean meat? Luna: Action verb, context, result. Is that the standard? Lucas: Yes, but make sure the result is tied to business value. Not just 'increased efficiency,' but 'reduced processing time by forty percent, saving two hundred hours per quarter.' Specificity builds trust. Luna: It moves it from subjective claim to objective fact. Lucas: Exactly. And avoid passive voice. 'Responsibilities included' is the weakest phrase in professional writing. Start with the verb. 'Managed,' 'Built,' 'Negotiated.' Active verbs imply agency. Luna: Agency is key for senior roles. They want to know you drive things, not just watch them happen. Lucas: Right. And one final tip on the middle section. If you have gaps in employment, do not hide them with vague dates or dense text. Address them clearly. A simple one-line note about freelance consulting or sabbatical is better than trying to fill space with filler roles. Luna: Transparency saves time for everyone. Lucas: It does. Hiring managers respect clarity. They do not respect obfuscation. So, summarize the lesson. Curate ruthlessly. Focus on outcomes. Keep it tight. Luna: Make every word earn its place on the page. Lucas: Precisely. Your resume is not a archive of your past. It is a proposal for your future. Make sure the proposal is compelling. Luna: And if you are unsure, ask yourself if a stranger reading it in six seconds would know exactly what you bring to the table. Lucas: If the answer is no, go back to the red pen. There is almost always room to cut.