Google exec’s resume recommendations: do they apply to in-house lawyers?

I read with interest the resume tips of Jenny Wood, a former Google director of media operations, to see if the three resume red flags she calls out apply to in-house lawyers. And yes they do. The first two I see lawyers doing all the time.

1. Don’t use too many bullets. Yes, I agree. Too many bullets makes the resume hard to skim. It also signals you are bad at communicating (can you be concise?) and prioritizing (can you separate the important from the unimportant?). Limit bullets to five per role, and make each one count. Each bullet can definitely be longer than one line!
2. Don’t clutter your resume with too much text. Yes. Lawyers are often guilty of cramming in too much content. Instead, your resume should have some white space, e.g., with a reasonably-sized header, footer, sides, and white space between sections, to enable the reader to take in what you’ve done. Wood says “If your resume just has chunks of long prose, I’m already visualizing how hard it’s going to be to read an email that you send me as your boss.”
3. Don’t hyperlink too often. I agree, but lawyers generally don’t overuse hyperlinks anyway. A few links, e.g., to press releases of big deals/product launches/successful outcomes or publications makes sense, but too much makes the resume hard to read.

When you craft your resume, think about the story you want the reader to take away about you. Don’t include everything you have ever done, Instead, make sure the key experiences and successes line up to the story, and delete anything that doesn’t.