- Henry Wang's 2013 resume landed him interviews with Goldman Sachs, Deloitte, and Google.
- In hindsight, Mr. Wang would have added summary and results-oriented phrases to his resume.
- Wang spent four years at Google, first in policy and then in marketing.
Henry Wang graduated from the University of California, Irvine, and in his first year of college, he received a proposal from his boss.
Mr. Wang's manager in New York City advised him to try a career in law before applying to law school. He agreed, and he worked as a litigation paralegal at a law firm for a year.
“That's when I realized I hated being a lawyer. I didn't want to be a lawyer,” Wang told Business Insider on a video call.
Looking for a more business-related career, Wang picked up books on consulting and investment banking. He also created a resume that ultimately led to interviews with Deloitte, Goldman Sachs, and Google.
At Google, Wang said he had seven interviews.
“When I did the Google Hangouts interview, I dressed up. I thought there was no room for error,” he said. “I also wore slacks and dress shoes in case I was asked to tilt the camera down.”
It worked, and in 2013, Wang was offered a job in Google's policy department.
At the time, Mr. Wang's resume followed a format familiar to college students and policy circles, being one page long and written in the Times New Roman. It started with a section on education and had a larger section dedicated to his two job experiences.
Here's the resume that got him the job:
Reopening the mistakes made by Mr. Wang
But nearly a decade later, Wang says he's revisiting that resume and would do some things differently.
“Looking back, I think a resume needs to tell a story.Right now, I just list where I went to school and what kind of experience I had, but I don’t know what story I want to tell. We don't communicate that much,” Wang said. His 2013 resume.
Here's what he would change:
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Organize: “When I look at this, it kind of hurts my eyes. There's a lot of text and everything is very packed together. You could also use a cleaner font that's easier to read, like Arial, Open Sans, or Lato.” Wang said.
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Minimize work for recruiters. “Have a written introduction about yourself so the recruiter or interviewer doesn't have to read everything,” Wang said. “You start by summarizing your experience in her two or three sentences, so it's like a mini cover letter.”
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Lead with something new: “At this point I had already been working for two years, so I was able to move down in education and gain experience and teaching. ”
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Show me your accomplishments, not your work. Wang said he focuses less on listing tasks and more on explaining how his tasks turned into results. “For example, for a litigation paralegal, you might write a short blurb that says, 'Manage and own the legal workflow of high-profile family law cases, from discovery to trial,'” he said.
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Customize it to what you want: ““Pick your battles. Not all careers are created equal,” Wang said. Since he was applying for a policy position at his Google, he says he should have focused on his policy experience in social service.
However, it's not all negative. “One of the things I appreciate about this resume is that even though it has a lot of information, it doesn't under-communicate, it over-communicates,” he said. Ta.
Wang worked in Google's policy department and later served as a product marketing manager. He left his company in 2017 and currently runs his own business consulting his AI and cryptocurrency startups.
BI confirmed Mr. Wang's employment history.