We all have up-to-date resumes since we are working professionals. At some point, we all created our resumes following the divine standards of a job market. To create an astounding resume gets us the most desired job that we dreamed of. It's quite normal up till here.
But in 2016 a technocrat's resume went viral and broke the internet. We are talking about the tech geek Marissa Mayer's resume. When her resume surfaced it instantly became a hit and millions of job seekers, across the world copied the resume design of Marissa Mayer to create a look-alike for themselves.
Mixed Opinion About the Authenticity of Marissa Mayer's Resume
A popular phrase says - the grass is not greener on the other side. When Marissa Mayer's resume was published it was critically assessed by industry experts. There were mixed opinions about the authenticity. For millions of job seekers, it was an eternal blessing and contradictorily a hoax for recruitment experts.
However, it turned out to be a marketing gimmick by a tech startup enhancv.com to promote their resume template design. It turned out to work in favor of the tech startup since the internet was going ga-ga over Marissa Mayer's resume.
For a while let's consider Marissa Mayer's resume to be authentic. As soon as you do this it opens endless opportunities. Let's discuss the pros and cons of Marissa Mayer's resume. But before that here's an image of the resume that went viral in 2016.
Marissa Mayer's Resume
The Anatomy of Marissa Mayer's Resume
A CV or a resume is an important career document for all levels of applicants whether it is for a CEO position, sales and services, or for an associate. Moreover, this document must be only a single page by default as per industry norms.
Furthermore, the layout and structure must be correctly optimized so that the pre-programmed applicant tracking system selects your CV in the primary phase of the hiring procedure.
Yes, you need to align your CV not only for a recruiter but also for the application tracking system because the AI program is the first one to scan and read the CV. Those are hard times when you wait for an interview call and your CV is lying beneath thousands of others.
Okay now, let's talk about Marissa Mayer's resume individual sections. Also, you will read a comparison of her resume with normal ones.
Header
The general template of a resume contains contact information that is pretty basic and straightforward. Marissa's resume also does a decent job to contain personal contact details that are limited to a few of them.
Here's an example of a generic header in a professional resume and then we will go through the header section of Marissa's resume.
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Full name
Job title
Location
Mobile number
Email address
Linkedin Profile link
That's the information a job seeker gives to potential employers in a resume as per current industry standards. Now let's look at what Marissa's resume header looks like.
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Marissa Mayer
Business Woman & Proud Geek
Sunnyvale, CA
mmayer@yahoo-inc.com
http://marissamayr.tumblr.com/
The mobile number is missing here may be due to privacy reasons since Marissa is quite a famous name in silicon valley. Moreover, she has included her Tumblr link instead of her Linkedin profile link. That's a perk of being famous. You dictate your terms and you play by your rules.
Experience
A job experience in a normal resume is written keeping two essential things in mind. The first one is the order. In modern resumes, the experience section is written using a reverse chronological order. The reverse chronological is a resume format followed by nine out of ten resumes existing on this planet.
In the reverse chronological resume format the latest job experience is described first followed by the past job history. It goes in a reverse order starting with the current job and ending with the previous jobs.
The second essential element is that the experience section contains eye-catching bullet points. Each statement is tagged by a bullet point containing achievements and skills. To understand the concept of reverse order and bullet points process refer to the template below.
Job title
Company name
Location
Duration
Details of current employment are backed by figures and numbers.
Skills, accomplishments, and hard work are mentioned in 4-5 sentences.
Ideas, messages, services, values, processes, and examples of past jobs.
This is a general process to write experience in a professional resume. Now let's see what Marissa Mayer resume contains.
If you look at the image of the experience section extracted from Marissa's resume then you will find that it has reverse chronological order and bullet list. Moreover, there's a job title, name of the company, location, and duration of the employment.
All in all, it follows modern resume writing standards.
Education
The resume states that Marissa Mayer was the youngest CEO personality among female employee mentioned by Fortune's list. The impressive credentials support this statement as well. For example, education at Stanford University and thereafter worked with tech giants like Yahoo and Google.
This is likely to happen if you have excellent academics on your resume and Marissa does have them. So what does an education section look like in a resume? Does Marissa's resume have an education section like a professional resume? Let's check out.
Education section in a general resume.
Name of the degree or course
Awarding college or university
Location
Year of graduation
GPA
Major subjects
Surprisingly Marissa's resume contains similar kinds of details excluding - major subjects, GPA, and location. Other details are as usual and in the right place. Scroll up and go through the image of Marissa Mayer's resume.
Skills (Strengths)
The skill section example in professional resumes is listed under separate headings. For instance, soft, hard, interpersonal, technical, and job-related other skills might help the applicant to give a boost to the resume.
Here's a list of skills in a professional resume.
Communication
Leadership
IT literacy
Time management
Problem-solving
Filing and documentation
Eye for detail
Company law
Taxation
Project management
Hard-working
Self-motivated
Artificial intelligence
These are just a handful of skills out of an ocean of expertise that a job applicant possesses. Now over to Marissa Mayer's resume.
First of all, the skill section is labeled as strengths, that's not bad but the applicant tracking system doesn't understand this language. This is the spot where Marissa's resume start fumbling. Look at the number of skills in the resume. A total of only six skills.
Do you think the person who is reading the resume will entertain it?
Your expertise in a type of work defines your personality, dedication, and enthusiasm to deliver results. These traits are potential employers looking for while reading your resume.
Therefore, if you follow Marissa Mayer's resume skill section your resume will end up with others and will never see the light again.
Languages
Language in resumes comes under an additional section. It shows how proficient the applicant is in a particular language. The language details are listed with names and there's nothing fancy about it to decorate.
However, Marissa's resume does a decent job of applying graphic elements to this section. For example, in her resume sample if you observe closely the languages are denoted by dots. There are various graphic elements to display languages in a resume.
Some templates denote using horizontal bars. It gives a personal touch to the resume or CV and draws the attention of potential employers. A CV created using such intuitive elements seems to attract viewers' eyeballs easily compared to a pale and simple list.
Thus, Marissa Mayer's resume has smartly integrated the graphical element feature, and it's advisable to do the same.
Non-Traditional Elements in the Resume
There's always not enough in terms of person, page, or services. On account of writing career documents, this applies even more. No doubt that although our Google vice president and Yahoo CEO - Marissa Mayer's resume is unreal still certain features could help you land an interview call.
Let's discuss how these non-traditional resume sections have been created in our Google vice president and Yahoo CEO - Marissa Mayer's resume.
A Day of My Life
Tell us what you recall when you read a day of my life. It sounds familiar like a television show with a celebrity. Marissa has done good business here, not literally with a company but by including a pie chart denoting her entire day's activity. That's intelligent!
A new job seeker would find these symbolic systems more amazing than plain text. But our Google vice president and Yahoo CEO - Marissa Mayer's dared to do this. It eventually worked and went viral online.
Life Philosophy
When you are applying to a company for a job you don't write your life philosophy because neither recruiters are interested and nor the application tracking system understands it.
So what's the focus of writing a philosophical statement when it doesn't benefits? Moreover, why would the co-founder of lumi labs do that in her resume?
Yahoo CEO and the one who led the Verizon acquisition - Marissa Mayer's resume becoming an internet sensation is the answer to why this worked.
Most Proud of
We all have moments of pride in our personal lives, career, business, and other stuff. Even Marissa Mayer had them when she led the Verizon acquisition of Yahoo!
Mentioning moments of pride in a resume is healthy it shows the positive side and career achievements especially if you are a female employee like our Google and Yahoo head honcho Marissa Mayer. This kind of information attracts the recruiter's attention and sets you apart from other applicants.
Traditional Resume Sections NOT Present in Marissa's Resume
Marissa Mayer's resume has skipped the resume summary and additional details. The resume summary is altogether not present whereas only language is included in the additional detail segment.
Other resumes contain classic details in the extra information section like an internship, apprenticeship, awards, blog links, website, portfolio details, a book published, or journal publications. But in our youngest CEO resume, we don't see this info.
A summary statement is an opening introduction for potential employers. This is the position where they begin reading and a nicely drafted summary statement pushes a recruiter to continue reading further. Hence, this could be a drawback of our Google vice president and Yahoo CEO - Marissa Mayer's resume.
Should You be Using the Marissa Mayer's Resume as a Template?
No, you should not be using Marissa's resume as a template when you are planning to apply for a dream job in your career. Nowadays professional and business resumes are modern and creative. They are created keeping in mind the algorithms of applicant tracking systems.
The non-traditional sections in Marissa Mayer's resume are a sign that it's not for you. Traditional templates for a resume has the necessary features, keywords, optimization, and all those elements necessary to push you to the next round of interview.
In that case, our Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer's resume is not an ideal fit for you. Use templates that grab you an interview call instead of performing otherwise. Remember these tips.
Words that Made Marissa Mayer's Resume Viral
Before we conclude our celebrity Marissa Mayer's resume we would like to share a list of terms that made her resume go viral on the internet. You too can follow this by reading the job description published by the employer carefully before writing your resume.
By doing this you will get keywords using which the ATS system will scan your resume copy positively. Here's the list.
Vice president
Computer science
Google's growth
Verizon acquisition
Youngest CEO
Stanford university
Product manager
Sinking ship
Google maps
Google
Search products
Sales
Yahoo
Fortune's list
Female employee
Artificial intelligence
FAQs about Marissa Mayer's Resume
Why is Marissa Mayer's resume not perfect in the current scenario?
Hiring managers and employers today use sophisticated and complex systems to sort out the most eligible job application that fits the job description. Read it again - your resume must fit the job description. Now if you don't optimize a resume as per current hiring standards then you won't stand a chance immaterial of how eye-catching the resume is. The applicant sorting system doesn't differentiate between a celebrity and a common person.
What is a professional resume?
Marissa Mayer's resume is not professional if we measure it according to the current hiring standards of the recruitment industry. A professional resume contains a header, summary, experience, education, list of skills, language, certificates, courses, awards, and a lot of up-to-date details to convince the hiring manager. On the contrary, her resume lacks a lot of information.
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