Writing prompts for when resume writing is hard

Sometimes writing a resume is hard because you haven’t written for a while. And, resume language is not easy, I call it “resuspeak” because the only place you see people writing in short choppy bullets is in resumes.

One way to ease the pain of resume writing is to come to it fictionally. Writing about yourself from a non-fiction place can feel limiting. It feels stale & like we need to be very serious. ⁣You’ll be caught up in the technical aspects of the resume before you even have content. If you hope to inspire interest in you and your work, you need to be interesting.

Try to Fictionalize Yourself

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Come to your career story as if it were fiction. Imagine yourself as a character and take pieces of your real career and bring it to a story. You can try it right now. Go grab a pen or pencil and some paper (handwritten is best because it helps it feel more like play). Set a timer for five minutes and write a story about someone who has ideal work, but in this story, let the ideal work be the actual job you want. Write about how they got to work. Write out the conversations they have with their co-workers. Or write out a list of them scheduling their month and what tasks and projects they’re involved with. Just play with it for five minutes, when the time is up stop writing.

This simple exercise helps you experience having fun on paper, which is what you need to write a resume.

More Story Prompts to Prep for Resume Writing

If that was enjoyable, try these story prompts too:

Write a scene with their manager, what does the manager say in their annual career conversation?
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Write a story about what your career would look like if you hadn’t made a change a few years ago? Imagine what your life would be like.
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Or, if you didn’t make a change years ago, write about where you’d think you’d be if you had. ⁣
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Move into resume writing

Once you have warmed up by writing a couple of pages of dreamy fiction., try to write a story that really happened at work that you’re proud of. Don’t worry about making it into an accomplishment bullet right now, just get it down on paper. You can alternatively look at a job ad you’re thinking of applying to and look at the experience they’re looking for in a candidate. Can you write a true story related to their ask? If you get the bones of a story down now, you can come back to edit it later. (If you want more guidance on how to write these stories as resume statements, check out resuMAY)

Resume writing has two phases:

1. Inspiration and creation
2. Editing and fine-tuning

Often it’s not that you can’t write your own resume or content. It’s that you haven’t worked your writing ✍️ muscles in a while. Fall in love with writing again & it all gets easier. ⁣