Ladders 2019 Resume Guide

Best Practices & Advice from the Leaders in $100K-$500K jobs (Ladders 2019 Guide, Book 1)

By: Marc Cenedella

Narrated by: Marc Cenedella

In this 2019 updated edition to the Amazon best seller, the author of America’s largest career-advice newsletter shares best practices and expert advice for writing a great resume, without the drama or agony, in a quick three-hour listen.

Based on more than 15 years of experience, with millions of resumes, from the leader in $100K-$500K careers, Ladders 2019 Resume Guide provides easy and effective advice for fast-rising and mid-career professionals.

In about 90 minutes, Cenedella shares the best insights and hand-picked advice from his decades-long experience.

Here’s what you’ll learn in Ladders 2019 Resume Guide:

The four gatekeepers who can block your resume from success: Cenedella walks you through the four critical gatekeepers you need to please with your effective resume. Each of these audiences is looking for something different, and his expert insight into the nuances makes it easy for you to master these tricky subtleties.

How to avoid resume writing anxiety: Most of us don’t write resumes for a living, but we need a resume to make a living. That creates unneeded anxiety for you. A resume can be so important to your career success, and yet you likely have very limited personal experience in writing resumes. This lack of understanding about how resumes work - what makes one effective and another a flop - causes resume anxiety. Cenedella dispatches common misconceptions that cause you to worry too much and highlights for you the tricky areas you do need to watch out for.

The right way to craft a resume that will make you successful: Cenedella shares the principles behind making a successful resume. How and why successful resumes work and pitfalls to avoid where you unintentionally shoot yourself in the foot. By teaching you the simple rules behind what makes resumes successful, Cenedella prepares you to craft your own professional resume.

©2018, 2019 Marc Cenedella (P)2019 Marc Cenedella

Best guide out there for $100K-$500K earning professionals

This one is an on-point, valuable and effective guide. A few notches above everything else available. Combined with the material referred to in the book, and the Ladders Interview Guide, one gets an up to date, complete picture and tools needed to prepare for a job search in 2019.
Narration by the author, Marc Cenedella, conveys perfectly his honest, stripped and direct approach.

My old resume is now so apparently horrendous

My new resume is sublime. You’d hire this person. Now I’ll move on to reading a cover letter book. Then an interview book. I’ll be a machine, I tell you. A MACHINE.

Great resource

Straight forward no nonsense advice mixed with humor. Best resource if you are struggling with how to write a modern resume.

Wish I would’ve listened sooner

Concise steps on how to better communicate your own work experience into a viable marketing message to your next boss/opportunity
Well worth the time

7 seconds

Confident and ready!
I see it with a different lens. I will recommend this to anyone looking to take on the resume challenge.
Loved it and looking forward to see what the author introduces next.

Contradicts itself, poor example materials

Questions and Comments for the author:

The example documents referred to in the book (at Ladders' website https://www.theladders.com/resume-examples) DO have modified margins with a weirdly smaller 0.75" on the right, despite his statement of opening a brand new document and not changing any of the defaults before writing.

The example materials also have both 1.14, 1.15 and single line spacing all within the same document, which is not default or consistent, and have other formatting inconsistencies.

BUT the worst part is the inconsistent, incomplete content that ignores context.

My questions for the author:

What is an "OPTIONAL PERSONAL, AWARDS, TECHNOLOGIES, KEYWORDS" section actually supposed to be titled? What if I work in a highly technical field?

Why do you say have only ONE VERSION of your resume no matter what? I thought this was a "marketing document". If I work in 50 different IT security regulations and programming languages, why would I omit certain ones and include others if they are irrelevant to the particular job I am applying for? Same with experiences, achievements and competencies. You can't fit them all in to one document that somehow works for all potential jobs. Duh.

In my opinion, the guidance in this book is lazy and does not provide anything impressive that you should follow as a reader. The written materials and examples are weak, without even one complete sentence provided (true claim).

I believe the business behind the book does not add value to the industry.

In my opinion, the writer over-generalizes, is highly presumptuous and seems to like hearing himself say the same thing no matter what. In my opinion, he makes promises and conclusions all at once with little backing for it. The Ladders has been criticized for its generalization of "$100K-$500K" jobs/candidates and their lack of delivery on promises. I believe this is valid criticism.