Every year around this time, I have some version of the same conversation with clients. They tell me they’re waiting until Fall hiring “actually picks up” before they touch their resume. I understand the instinct. August feels slow. Inboxes are quiet. It doesn’t feel like the moment to be job hunting.
Here’s what I’ve seen over the years working with professionals: hiring doesn’t ease into Fall. It arrives. Budgets reset, new headcount opens, and hiring managers move quickly because they’re trying to fill roles before the holiday season and market week calendars take over. If your resume isn’t ready when that happens, you’re not applying at the same pace as everyone else. You’re playing catch-up.
So, before September gets busy, let’s fix the 3 things I see most often when I open a client’s resume for the first time.
Fix 1: Stop describing duties. Start proving impact.
“Managed the product line” is a duty. It tells a hiring manager what you were responsible for, not what happened because you were the one doing it. Compare that to “Grew the [product/ line] from [X number of offerings/percentage increase] to [X number of offerings/percentage increase] in [time frame]”. The second version answers the question every hiring manager is silently asking: what changed because you were there?
Go through your resume line by line and ask yourself what result each bullet point is actually pointing to. If you can’t answer that, the bullet needs to be rewritten.
Fix 2: Write for the role you want next, not the one you had 2 years ago.
I regularly see resumes where the top third is dedicated to a role the person left 2 jobs ago, simply because that role had the most impressive title. But hiring managers scan for relevance first and impressiveness second. If your target role is Senior Merchandiser and your resume opens with detail from an lower level role, you’re burying the lead.
Reorganize so that the experience most relevant to your 2026 target sits at the top, even if it means trimming detail from earlier roles that no longer serve the story you’re telling.
Fix 3: Lead with your strongest, most recent accomplishment.
Your most recent role should carry your strongest bullet point, not your most generic one. This is the section a recruiter reads first and remembers longest. If the first “accomplishment” bullet under your current title reads like a job description rather than a highlight, it’s costing you attention you won’t get back.
A resume is a marketing document, not a history report.
Every bullet point on the page should be doing 1 job: qualifying you for what’s next. Not documenting what already happened. Once you start editing with that lens, the fixes above tend to reveal themselves.
Coaches Tip:
Run this exercise before you apply anywhere new: read your resume as if you’re the hiring manager, not the person who lived it. Where does your attention drop? That’s where the rewrite needs to happen.
Free Download:
Grab the Fall Resume Refresh Checklist, a 15-minute self-audit that walks you through these 3 fixes and more before you send your resume out this Fall.
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