10 Shifts to Improve Your Leadership Resume | Dr. Sharla's Tuesday Ten

As an organizational leader, I have reviewed hundreds of resumes over the last 20 years. A few were strong, but most were not. Why? Because most people use their resume to simply list their work history, not to tell their career story. Their resume speaks only to their past, not their professional future. Friends, your resume should offer a clear and compelling leadership narrative that positions you as the candidate of choice for the role of your dreams.

This week’s Tuesday Ten is for current and aspiring leaders who are ready for the next step in their leadership journey. Here are ten ways to improve your resume and quick shifts that will strengthen it immediately.

1. Clearly articulate your professional identity. Who are you professionally? What is your area of professional expertise? A reader should know that almost immediately. If you’re an executive, say that. If you’re an industry expert, say that. If you have a core area of impact, say that.

   Shift: Add a brief professional identity statement directly under your name.

   Example: Sharla Horton | Culture-Building People & Operations Nonprofit Executive 

2. Craft a complete professional story. Many resumes are just lists of roles and responsibilities. But leaders are expected to bring outcomes and transformation. What matters isn’t just what you’ve done in the past; it’s also about the results you delivered. Leaders drive results.

   Shift: Convert responsibilities into measurable impact statements.

   ❌ Led professional learning for accounting teams

   ✅ Developed, planned and executed 11 leadership seminars for mid-level accounting managers, resulting in a 40% increase in engagement scores among their teams and increasing retention from 18% to 65% over three years

3. Upgrade your skills.  A leadership resume has to communicate core leadership competencies and subject-matter expertise, not vague and generic skills.“Communication” is not a differentiator. Everyone communicates. Who do you know how to communicate with? How well? To what end? 

   Shift: Highlight leadership capabilities that actually drive results.

   ❌ Written and verbal communication

   ✅ Skilled communicator with expertise crafting clear, compelling, and values-aligned messaging for diverse internal and external stakeholders, including board members, executive team members, and community leaders with a track record of moving challenging conversations and decisions toward resolution

4. Remove unnecessary content. Keyword - unnecessary. I have a 20+ year career and I have three resumes that range from two to six pages. Length is not the goal; clarity and relevance are. If you have a resume that is more than one page, your first page has to grab the reader’s attention. 

   Shift: Focus on your future. Remove any roles or details that don’t reinforce your leadership impact and professional direction, and make sure that everything that matters most - what tells who you are and the impact of your leadership -  is on the first page.  

5. Strategically organize it. Hard-to-read resumes don’t get read. As a leader, your resume is the first opportunity you have to demonstrate your ability to prioritize, organize, and convey information – all things that leaders have to do frequently. How you organize your resume is a key indicator of this skillset.  

   Shift: Use a clear structure that flows from top to bottom and puts the most important content first. 

   Example structure: Heading → Professional Summary → Impact Highlights (3–4 bullets) → Key Skills & Strengths → Relevant Experience → Education and Certifications → Community Leadership (Optional)  

6. Represent the breadth and depth of your leadership. Many professionals list only official roles they were hired for, often overlooking valuable leadership experience. Even if you haven’t served in a paid executive role, include roles with executive-level responsibility. Think beyond your employer and include all dimensions of your leadership - positions or roles you created, volunteer leadership, interim leadership, church leadership, etc. 

   Shift: Include all meaningful leadership - regardless of where it occurred.

7. Simplify it. I see lots of resumes with too many fancy words and complicated language. Friend, big words do not mean big impact. What matters more than the words you use is the strength behind them. 

   Shift: Simplify your resume with concise bullets and strong action verbs.

   Examples: Led, designed, improved, developed, analyzed, created, achieved

8. Elevate it. It’s important that your resume looks like it belongs to a leader. Please close Canva. Your resume is not an art project. Resist the urge to use “pretty” templates and stick to clean, professional formatting.

   Shift: 

9. Say what you did, why you did it, and why it mattered. Leadership is about strategic decision-making. When highlighting your contributions, tell the thinking behind your actions, and the results that followed. 

   Shift: Tell your what and your why.

   ❌ Redesigned the interview protocol for incoming managers

   ✅ Engaged and led a cross-functional hiring task force to understand higher than average attrition trends among newly hired mid-level managers; developed and implemented a revised hiring strategy which resulted in a 55% reduction in voluntary resignations and an 71% retention rate over two years - up from 41%.

10. Align it to your future - not your past. If you’ve been in departmental leadership and you aspire to organizational leadership, or if you’ve been in a senior director role but you aspire to a C-suite role, your resume should show where you’re headed and signal your readiness. Use future-focused language. Demonstrate skills and competencies for your next move, not your last one. 

    Shift: Align every section to your future role.

    Hint: Use job descriptions to identify core leadership and role competencies and map your skills and experiences against that. 

Friend, a resume is not simply a record of your past roles and list of your previous responsibilities. It is a strategic story about your leadership, a demonstration of your impact, and tool for your future, and the best resumes make one thing unmistakably clear: This person knows who they are, what they do well, and why they belong in this role.

Reflection 

• What story is your resume currently telling about you?

• Does your resume clearly communicate your leadership impact?

• What one shift from this list could strengthen your resume immediately?

This week's bundle includes the full list and a printable mini-poster to help you level up your leadership resume immediately!

About Me | My name is Sharla Horton, and I am a speaker, strategist, and leadership expert. I help people work well, lead well, and live well. My work centers on one central conviction: when people expand their sense of possibility and lead with purpose, courage, and joy, meaningful and lasting transformation becomes not only achievable, but inevitable.

Through inspiring keynote addresses, thoughtful team retreats, and engaging professional learning experiences, I guide leaders, teams, and organizations across sectors and industries to reclaim their joy and take bold, transformative action in their personal and professional lives. With a career spanning education, nonprofit leadership, organizational strategy, and culture change, I bring deep expertise and strategic clarity to my work and blend it with emotional intelligence, humor, transparency, and an undeniable and contagious energy to create empowering and impactful experiences that audiences remember long after the moment ends.

If this week’s Tuesday Ten resonates, I’d love for you to share it with your team, organization, or community. Let’s connect!

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