Rant: My resume rewrite took 3 weeks because I kept finding contradictions

I spent three weeks trying to fix my resume because every time I looked at my job history, I found two lines that basically said the opposite thing. One bullet said I led a team of 5, another said I worked independently on projects. How do you explain being a manager and a solo worker on the same resume without sounding fake? I must have deleted and rewrote the whole thing 4 times. Has anyone else hit this wall where your own experience just doesn't line up?

3 comments

3 Comments

shane_wilson21d ago

Rose nailed it with the context fix - that's exactly how you make both parts true without sounding like you're making stuff up. A few words to show when you were doing each thing makes all the difference.

rose_grant7825d ago

...but here's the thing, you're not wrong about that contradiction, but I think you're overthinking it a little. Those two things aren't really opposites, they're just different parts of the same job. When you say you led a team of 5, that means you managed people on certain projects or tasks, but no manager works 100% of the time with their team breathing down their neck. There's always solo work like reporting, planning, or handling your own assignments. Most job descriptions have both supervisory and independent duties, it's normal. If you take out the part about leading the team or working alone, you're just hiding the real picture of your job. Keep both bullets but explain the context, like "managed a team of 5 on weekly deliverables while handling my own project deadlines solo." That way it flows better and doesn't sound fake at all.

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mark_cooper25d ago

30 years in HR and I've seen resumes where people try to cram every possible task into one bullet point, and it always comes off as fake. @rose_grant78, you're really overthinking this whole thing. It's a resume, not a legal document. Nobody is gonna audit your job description for "contradictions" like that. Most managers I know spend half their day doing solo work anyway, so it's not even a contradiction, it's just how jobs work. Relax a little, write what you did, and move on.