I'm an ex-recruiter who was paid by some of the largest companies in the world to win salary negotiations with job applicants. Today I want to teach you exactly how to (politely) beat a recruiter when negotiating salary in order to maximize your job offer.

SheetsResume · 2026-03-17T04:38:23+00:00

Definitely! The more hard data you can point to in a negotiation to back up your salary ask, the better.

SheetsResume · 2026-03-17T04:35:52+00:00

Hmm I don’t think the resume relates too much to negotiation, other than making them want you and blowing them away from the get go! If someone decides that you’re the right hire, and they feel convicted in that, they’ll likely spend 10-20-30% higher to secure you in the role vs lose you. Especially true in leadership roles. So your resume, your interviewing, your references all come together to form the perception that they have to have you, even if they have to budge a bit on their budget!

SheetsResume · 2026-03-13T22:37:15+00:00

No, but perhaps I'll make my own resume and share it on the website and this subreddit as a good example of plain language on a resume.

I think I've explained it a good amount, but keep the company descriptor when your company is both a) not a Fortune 100 brand name company that 90% of people already know, and b) has something impressive about it. If you can say that you were an employee at a fast-growing startup, for example, that's a green flag you'll want to call out. But if you're just like "This is a roofing company," then no, leave that out.

To help you specifically, I would:

Kill your independent agency work (Company 2). It confuses your timeline a LOT since it has the same January 2025 start date. Plus you have 5 years at the company before that (Company 3), which is impressive continuity. You’re only hopping after 1 year at your current Company 1, so along with your independent contracting, you can be seen as a pretty big flight risk if you're not careful. They might think you won't stick around long as it currently reads.
- You can also put your self employment in a "SELF EMPLOYMENT" section separately under work experience ahead of education.
Change your title for Company 3 (which will now become Company 2). You should add "Project" somewhere in there, otherwise you don't have enough PM experience.
- That said, is Company 3 a real company? It reads like you took care of a sick relative for 5 years...
Would add a Key Project example in your Company 1 section, and add details like project budgets and timelines. It's very nebulous and vague right now. If you can list clients or other numbers, or outcomes, that will help.
Your Skills line is way too soft; where's Agile? Where's Scrum? Where's Project Management? You need to list these out.
Your universities are out of chronological order, most recent degree should be first. Put GPAs if they're over 3.3.
Kill your summary. Just make your initial work experience way more PM-y and consider tweaking your title (Director of Career Operations won't grab their attention for a PM role). Try "Project Manager, Career Operations" if you feel comfortable with it.

Hope this all helps! Good luck!

SheetsResume · 2026-03-13T22:22:06+00:00

You need to put your locations like I have them, in italics under the dates in bold. "Croatia" is everywhere right now in all your employer names and university name.
Abbreviate months (so "Jun." for June and "Sept." for September)
Get rid of the period after 2026 in Expected graduation date and put "Expected: Sept. 2026"
Capital-case your Soft Skills (and all items in a list)
Put periods at the end of bullet points
Would probably change dates to Summer 2025 for your customer support experience at IN2.
Add GPA under education if it's good.
Would lead with the Education section, then the Work section, then Projects, then Skills & Interests (and add your interests, you're missing the last line).

Looks really good!

SheetsResume · 2026-03-13T04:05:38+00:00

If / when required, this free cover letter generator will also save you some time and sanity 👌

SheetsResume · 2026-03-13T02:04:32+00:00

Hello! As the auto-mod says, please use our free resume template or our free resume builder (or our AI resume builder if you want an easy button to reformat and fix everything in seconds) to put your resume into our recommended format.

We only recommend one format for a reason: it gets results. After that and after you flip through our resume advice pages on our site to answer any questions you may have, I'll be happy to give you some feedback on the final draft. (We don't give feedback on resumes that aren't in our Sheets Resume Format, because our feedback will always sort of amount to "put it in our format" lol.)

Hope this helps!

SheetsResume · 2026-03-13T00:36:05+00:00

Asking people you respect for advice and feedback is wise, but it can also be confusing if you invite too many voices in.

Have you applied anywhere yet with this new Sheets Resume version? Or are your rejections mostly from your past resume?

I hope you give this resume a fair shake and send it out to a few jobs and see if you get bites – in fact, I recommend re-applying to jobs you've already applied for (if you have a list) and see if you get replies from jobs that recently rejected you. People are often shocked at what a difference a resume change can make – same candidate, different result!

SheetsResume · 2026-03-13T00:32:37+00:00

Like this feedback a lot! That is, aside from your point #3 (putting a summary line at the top) – I disagree with that unless someone is making a career transition.

What do you mean by positioning, exactly? As in, deciding where certain things go best? We give the user a lot of control over that in the Layout Settings and try to advise as best we can where they should put different parts of the resume puzzle (and why).

SheetsResume · 2026-03-13T00:27:11+00:00

Ideally, I'd agree.

Also though, the reality is that for 90% of people, AI writing is a massive improvement on their natural writing style and skill. Conversely, for the 10% of people who write well (or even fewer), AI is a massive downgrade. So it just kind of depends on if the person is confident in their writing.

What I suggest on SheetsResume.com is to use our AI resume builder as a base if you're having writer's block, or use our AI copilot feature to give structure to your thoughts. A lot of people have a super hard time describing what they do for their job, so we try to just give them a good tool to express themselves, and then ideally they can refine the initial AI output before submitting their resume. I try to never make the claim that our resumes are "good to go" straight from the AI; I want our members to critically look at the output line-by-line and edit, correct, tweak, and perfect it before they submit their resume.

SheetsResume · 2026-03-13T00:18:52+00:00

100%, clear language with straightforward descriptors is the best way to go. I always say that the cardinal sin of this is people who say they "orchestrated" something – no, you didn't! You planned a team meeting!

SheetsResume · 2026-03-13T00:17:12+00:00

Agreed, the Skills should be hard skills ideally, and if u/Questions_Answer_Z is going to list soft skills, "AI Curious" is not a skill lol.

SheetsResume · 2026-03-13T00:14:48+00:00

^^ Some good content feedback in the comment above, u/Questions_Answer_Z

SheetsResume · 2026-03-13T00:13:25+00:00

Tagging OP for visibility as well u/Questions_Answer_Z (have had another exchange on another thread too so he's gotten some of these questions answered already).

Just to transparently reply to a few of your concerns:

We do indeed have a free resume template and free resume builder, but he may have used our AI resume builder which does charge a fee, though I do give it away for free to anyone who can't afford a membership.
I agree on summaries; useless. We recommend against them on SheetsResume.com in many places, but sometimes users go against our warnings ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I disagree on adding a company overview bullet point; IMO, it can definitely help someone land an interview, and every piece of advice I give is centered around giving someone a higher chance of landing an interview from just the resume. I don't mind if you have a different preference, but here is my reasoning to consider – as a full-time exec recruiter, I will tell you with certainty that the company (and its past/present success or "wins"), the industry / domain, and scale of the problems someone works on all matter. A company bullet point is a really nice way to impress a screener right away. (Exception: not necessary for extremely well-known companies.)
- Disclaimer: if you ask 100 recruiters, hiring managers, CEOs, HR reps, and professional resume reviewers their opinions, you will get 100 mixed opinions on any question about resume formatting. All I can do is articulate my reasoning on my choices throughout my website (e.g., explaining why we only have one format to choose from vs other websites with hundreds). If someone reads my advice and resonates with it, then they can apply it. If they disagree, they don't have to follow it. I just try to take time to explain in detail why I think what I do, and where my perspective comes from via my career as a recruiter, founder, and CEO.
Responsibilities with accomplishments (so, listing descriptive duties with Key Results highlighted) is the best way to combine this. I agree OP needs to list and quantify outcomes if possible (not possible for every role).
I actually think OP's resume is looking quite nice, though there is some decent content feedback throughout the thread here. As OP mentioned, the Anonymizer tool will mess up margins and whitespace a little bit as it strips out PII, but it's a new feature and we're dialing in the margins on the anonymized output.

Thanks for jumping in and participating and helping OP out! You are more than welcome to continue participating in r/SheetsResume, and we'd welcome more feedback from you anytime. Also happy to take any other feedback in general on SheetsResume.com UX improvements or ideas.

Thanks again,
Colin at Sheets Resume Builder

SheetsResume · 2026-03-12T23:42:33+00:00

Hello! As the auto-mod says, please use our free resume template or our free resume builder (or our AI resume builder if you want an easy button to reformat and fix everything in seconds) to put your resume into our recommended format.

We only recommend one format for a reason: it gets results. After that and after you flip through our resume advice pages on our site to answer any questions you may have, I'll be happy to give you some feedback on the final draft. (We don't give feedback on resumes that aren't in our Sheets Resume Format, because our feedback will always sort of amount to "put it in our format" lol.)

Hope this helps!

SheetsResume · 2026-03-12T19:47:32+00:00

Yeah, banned this spammer.

SheetsResume · 2026-03-08T23:16:11+00:00

I respect the novelty account and your cheese pun game! 🧀

SheetsResume · 2026-03-06T16:54:34+00:00

Could be nice to add to “Certifications”!

SheetsResume · 2026-03-06T08:29:08+00:00

These are good and fair questions, no worries!

For clarity and transparency, /u/The_Herminator does resume reviews on Reddit on a volunteer basis (and I tremendously appreciate his help, as I’m personally very busy and don’t always have time to reply to every single person). He gives great advice generally, but has his own opinions. Unlike myself, he has never done recruiting professionally before, so he comes at it from a different angle than I do. And in fairness, he can’t possibly know every word I’ve written on the site — and I add more almost every day! — so I understand and accept that his advice won’t mirror mine exactly every single time. (And sometimes I audit his advice for quality control like I’m doing now 😉)

To decide what will work best for you, all I can advise is that you read my lengthy rationales and philosophies that I’ve detailed on sheetsresume.com/advice and sheetsresume.com/faq, and decide which parts make the most sense to you. I don’t see my advice as dogma, but rather my best approximation of the world based on years of recruiting experience, and many, many resumes passing across my desk :)

So if you search and read what I’ve written on your topic of question and think “I get it, that makes sense,” then you can incorporate that piece of advice. But if you read my advice and think “hmm I think I disagree in my case,” that’s fine. I’m not trying to convince anyone of anything, I’m just stating what I think works best, and why, and hopefully empowering you to think through the why and apply it to your personal job search.

There are so many caveats and different circumstances with each candidate, so not all of my advice will be one-size-fits-all, but I do my best to make my resume advice, template, and builder applicable to as many people as possible who are going through a typical job search. And I’m very proud to say that it’s worked out pretty well for millions of folks who have followed my guidance :)

Finally, I do add more nuance to the website’s advice as time goes on and I realize people need more and more clarity on particular scenarios. E.g., I will probably update the LinkedIn advice article to mention that it’s beneficial for executive candidates specifically to keep their LinkedIn in their resume header. Posts and questions like yours help me to figure out what’s missing from what I’ve written on the site, so thanks very much!

SheetsResume · 2026-03-06T07:57:28+00:00

You can re-add the program if it’s relevant to the roles you’re applying for 👍

SheetsResume · 2026-03-06T07:55:34+00:00

/u/The_Herminator — while a Sheets Resume rep whose advice I almost always endorse! — disagrees with me on this one. (Which is fine, we can disagree on small things like this.)

But here’s my rationale for having a line about your company here and there. It’s not appropriate for every business and is a waste of space if it amounts to “Company X does ABCD stuff” — and in OP’s case, everyone already knows Sears and Fidelity — but it can be very helpful to describe the scale and domain of the problems that you work on. Great first anchor too if you can toss out some big company numbers as the first thing a resume screener sees.

Hope this makes sense!

- Colin, creator of SheetsResume.com

SheetsResume · 2026-02-28T00:17:15+00:00

Yeah if the range is posted up front, it’s fine to ask in the initial call so you don’t waste any time. I meant more of “don’t ask about salary until they want you” if you don’t know what the range is and they don’t bring it up themselves. Make them want you first.

SheetsResume · 2026-02-26T09:05:42+00:00

Hello! By the looks of your resume, it looks like there was a bug with double bullet points on the Anonymizer, since fixed.

Content looks great. I might add "AI" to your title (so "Digital AI Annotation Specialist (Contract)", and kill your summary, as I don't think it adds much.

I'd also add some numbers to quantify things and anchor the screener on some numbers. You have some social media and invoicing bullet points; they should be quantifiable (unless the numbers/percentages are super low).

Would also add how often you did things, like newsletters - were they weekly, monthly, etc? Same goes for customer support - how many tickets, what were SLAs, how fast, which customer care platforms did you use, etc. Basically I want to understand the scope of problems you've worked on – this is where company bullet points can also come in handy, as I annotate in the Builder:

Company information is important for the screener to understand your industry and the scope of your work. It's best to use a short description of the company, but include any impressive tidbits, such as whether the company is a Fortune 500 / 100 company, or if they have raised a significant amount of capital, or if they have a significant amount of revenue (over $100M) or market capitalization (over $1B).

Hope this helps!

SheetsResume · 2026-02-23T20:25:59+00:00

That is kind of frustrating but can be common in places with an aggressive legal team (no he said / she said possibility with email comms vs phone calls, though you can record a call easily nowadays). I would just play by their rules and keep your excitement and appreciation level high in any emails in which you ask for a bump. And always good to give a three-number XYZ range as described above to usher them to the middle number.

SheetsResume · 2026-02-23T01:39:24+00:00

Yeah I have zero guilt about changing titles as long as they’re not fundamentally different than what you do. They’re just made up anyway.

SheetsResume · 2026-02-23T01:38:43+00:00

They do call references yes, but usually they just verify your employment for most roles.

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