Resume Craft

Resume Craft — Positioning, Not Recording

The academic CV records: every poster, every publication, every committee, every grant. It is exhaustive by design and reads as exhaustive by intent. The industry resume positions: it surfaces the work that proves the user can do the job they are applying for, in the vocabulary of the audience reading it. The conversion from CV to industry resume is the most-underestimated step in a clinical-to-operator transition.

This skill handles the craft: how to convert, what to lead with, how to write bullets that read as operator work, when to use one page vs two, and how to tailor without producing a different document for every job.

Key Concepts

CV vs Resume — The Core Distinction

The Anatomy of a Senior Industry Resume

For an MD targeting industry/venture, the canonical structure:

1. Header — Name, role+company, location, LinkedIn URL, email. No street address, no DOB, no headshot.
2. Positioning statement (2–3 lines) — Your thesis sentence + the single highest-stakes credibility marker. Functions as the headline. NOT an "objective" ("Seeking a role where I can grow"); that is amateur.
3. Experience (2–3 roles, 3–5 bullets each, outcome-led) — Each bullet starts with a strong verb, names the work, and ends with the quantified or qualitative outcome.
4. Education (1–2 lines per degree) — Degree, institution, year, honors if material. For an MD, list residency/fellowship under Education or in a separate Training section.
5. Selected Publications (3–5) — Top 3–5 most-relevant. Indicate role clearly (first author, senior author, contributing). Skip every poster.
6. Selected Speaking / Press (optional, 2–4 bullets) — If material to the trajectory.
7. Board / Advisory (if applicable) — Board observer, advisor roles. Important for board-targeting users.
8. Skills / Tools (optional, 1–2 lines) — Only if genuinely role-relevant. Avoid jargon soup.

The Outcome-Led Bullet Formula

[Strong verb] [scope] [outcome or stakes]

Bad: Managed clinical trials at Formation Bio. Better: Led the Phase 2 readout for [program], a 600-patient biomarker-stratified study, including the FDA Type C interaction on the endpoint package. Best: Owned the Phase 2 readout for [program] (600 patients, biomarker-stratified), including the Type C interaction that converted the endpoint package from accelerated to full approval pathway — informing the company's $80M Series B raise.

The Best version surfaces: scope (600 patients), specificity (biomarker stratification, Type C), stakes ($80M), and ownership ("owned," not "managed").

One Page vs Two Pages

If two pages, the first page must stand alone — the reader may not turn it. Front-load.

The JD-Tailoring Pass

For a specific application, do a tailoring pass — not a rewrite:

1. Read the JD twice. Highlight the 5–8 keywords that recur.
2. Audit your resume for keyword coverage. Are those keywords naturally in your bullets? If not, add them where they are truthfully applicable.
3. Reorder bullets per role to lead with the work most-relevant to the JD.
4. Update the positioning statement to align with the role.
5. Do NOT rewrite from scratch. The source-of-truth resume should change minimally per application.

Common Failure Modes

Self-Coaching Track

For your situation (MD → biotech VC/operator):

1. Pull your current CV. Note the page count and section structure.

2. Convert to one-page operator resume. Use the canonical structure above. Hardest part: cutting publications to 3–5. Pick by trajectory relevance, not by impact factor.

3. Rewrite every bullet through the matrix. For each, ask: scope? specificity? stakes? ownership? Rewrite until each bullet earns its line.

4. Draft a parallel two-page CMO-track resume. Same source, more clinical-depth bullets, more publications, full residency/fellowship detail.

5. Build the keyword library for your top 3 target role archetypes (VC associate, CMO, operating partner). Audit each resume variant for natural keyword coverage.

6. Per-application tailoring — when you have a specific JD, do the 4-step tailoring pass. Do not rewrite from scratch.

7. Quarterly hygiene. Re-read both variants every quarter. Update outcomes that have closed (a trial that read out, a paper that published, a promotion that landed).

Teach / Mentor-Others Track

When coaching a junior or peer through resume craft:

1. Lead with the CV-vs-resume distinction. Most mentees treat the resume as a shortened CV. It is not — different document, different goal, different audience. Show the table.

2. Force the outcome-led bullet rewrite on one bullet at a time. Take their current resume. Pick the weakest bullet. Walk through scope-specificity-stakes-ownership together. Then have them do the next bullet themselves. After 3 bullets, the pattern transfers.

3. One-page vs two-page is audience-driven, not personality-driven. Mentees argue length on personal preference. Reframe: it depends on the audience for the specific application.

4. Coach against the false-modesty failure. Many senior MDs under-claim ("supported," "assisted") even where they led. The clinical training emphasizes team credit; the resume must surface individual ownership. Address it explicitly.

5. Tailoring discipline is a habit, not a one-time decision. Coach a per-application 15-minute tailoring routine. Two minutes is the failure mode; an hour rewriting is also the failure mode. 15 minutes done well is the right scope.

6. Publication selection is a forcing function. Reducing publications to 3–5 forces the mentee to articulate which work matters for the trajectory. The reduction is the work; the resulting line items are the artifact.

When This Applies

• Starting a search
• After a narrative architecture session, to align the resume with the new through-line
• Per application, for tailoring pass
• Annual hygiene
• After major career milestones (promotion, trial readout, publication)

Cross-Domain Connections

• personal-positioning/narrative-architecture — Positioning statement is sourced here
• personal-positioning/credibility-translation — Bullets are translated work, audience-tuned
• personal-positioning/audience-tuning — Resume variants per audience archetype
• personal-positioning/linkedin-optimization — Resume bullets seed LinkedIn experience bullets
• personal-positioning/cover-letter-craft — Cover letter draws on resume bullets but does not repeat them
• writing/prose-editor — Final polish pass on every variant
• biotech-venture/asclepius — Source of clinical content being translated into bullets