Last updated: 28th Oct 2025
You’re so close to the top job – you can smell it. You’ve worked your entire life to get here. Becoming CEO has been a dream. A mission. A purpose.
But the competition is stiff.
You’re up against corporate assassins who spent the past three decades leading high-performance teams to success.
As have you.
But only one of you will get the CEO job.
Did You Know?
It’s not always the most qualified person who lands the CEO job. It’s the one who sells themselves best.
Your humble resume can make the difference between landing the CEO role or suffering a fate worse than death.
Like, for example, becoming an executive coach. Or – worse – a management consultant.
What Do Top CEOs Put On Their Resumes?
To know how to construct your own resume it helps to see what a great example CEO resume looks like, and understand why it even matters that you have a polished resume.
The main sections a Board or hiring committee would expect to see in a CEO’s resume include:
- Header with your name, job title and contact details.
- Employment summary that spotlights the last 15 years of your working life.
- Key assets section outlining your “greatest hits” (remember to quantify!)
- Key skills section – to impress the Applicant Tracking Systems
- Employment history that explains your mandates, responsibilities and achievements.
- Education section – have you completed any executive education degrees?
Here’s an example of a CEO resume done well.
Page 1/4.
Here’s why this senior executive resume will impress Australian executive search firms and executive recruiters:
- Crisp design. Simple and minimalist, it uses understated graphics to guide the reader’s eye.
- Clear contact information. You only have to provide your Australian phone number, address, LinkedIn profile URL and personal email. (List of details not to provide).
- Captivating profile. Want to know a secret? Profiles of most executive resumes are rubbish. Make yours look good, and you’ll instantly set yourself apart.
- Sharp key skills. Also known as key assets, the key skills section showcases your hard and soft skills and helps your resume fight ATS programs.
Page 2/4.
Here are the most important takeaways from this page:
- Reverse chronological format. Ideal for a senior executive, the reverse-chronological resume format places your most relevant roles front and centre.
- Front-loaded, action verb-driven achievements. This is where you win or lose the job interview. As a senior executive, be sure to highlight achievements that are consistent with your level of seniority. (Don’t mention that CRM you implemented as a young operations manager).
Page 3/4.
The final page of your senior executive resume is just as important as the first.
Often an executive recruiter who isn’t 100% sold on the idea of interviewing you will use the information on this page to make up their mind:
Page 4/4.
- Length. The typical length of an Australian executive resume is between 3 and 5 pages. The resume example above is 3 pages in length, which is typical for a young Managing Director with 15-20 years of experience.
- Additional career history. Do you have roles that you finished more than 15 years ago? This is the place to put them.
- References. Simply write that references are available. Nothing else.
How To Write A Chief Executive Officer Resume.
Before you start, research the company you’re applying to so you can infuse your resume with language and examples that align to their industry, market, business model and values.
If you’re provided with a job description, you should also aim to address the criteria and mirror some of the terminology used, to demonstrate your affinity with the company’s stated requirements.
Follow my six steps below to create a noteworthy CEO resume:
1. Choose A CEO-Worthy Format And Design.
A trusted format is to present information about your work history in reverse chronological order—that is, most recent role to least recent. This will suit most CEO resumes.
But if your path to the top was less conventional, you might focus on skills and achievements rather than the details of roles you’ve held (a.k.a. a skills-based resume).
No matter how you structure the content, follow these formatting and design tips:
- Choose a modern template with clear heading hierarchies and plenty of white space.
- Avoid complex features that reduce scan-ability, like columns, boxes, tables and graphics.
- Pick a contemporary, easy-to-read typeface like Arial, Calibri or Helvetica.
- Add emphasis with the use of bullet points, bolding, lines and subtle splashes of colour.
Important!
It’s easier to preserve your formatting by saving your resume as a PDF, but some recruiters still prefer Word/text format. Make sure you choose a template that’s simple enough to work for either scenario.
[Insert example of header with clean text, colour, bold, lines]
2. Make The Most Of Your Resume Header.
Your name and desired job title should be the most prominent aspects of your header. You might also add in some keywords relevant to your career or industry expertise.
For example:
Technology | Clean Energy | Digital Transformation
Don’t overcomplicate your contact details. Your phone number, a professional-sounding email address, and LinkedIn profile is enough—hyperlink your profile so the recruiter can click through.
3. Craft A Powerful CEO Resume Summary.
Often called a Summary or Objective Statement, this introductory paragraph is critical for framing the conversation you’re having with a hypothetical recruiter.
We prefer to call it a Professional Profile. Regardless of the title, the goal is to provide a pithy pitch about why you’re the best person to lead the company forward.
Summarise your most impressive skills, career wins and desirable personal attributes. For a CEO resume, you might also touch on the leadership or people management philosophies that underpin your approach.
Here’s an example of a compelling CEO resume summary:
[Example graphic of a CEO profile]
4. Effectively Describe Your Work Experience.
Your professional experience gives you an opportunity to quantify why you should be a recruiter’s first choice for the CEO position.
Before you write about each role:
- Brainstorm multiple examples of your best achievements.
- Refine examples to showcase specific results (e.g., data, sales) or outcome of your actions.
- Refer back to the job ad or job description to identify relevant achievements to include.
Important!
Punchy language can lift your achievements and make recruiters take notice. Focus on the action you took and use verbs like: enabled, influenced, delivered, boosted and delegated.
[Example graphic of a CEO achievements]
Your most recent experiences should come first, and also include the most detail about your responsibilities and the outcomes you delivered. Go back at least 10 years, but gradually include fewer and fewer details.
When formatting work experience, include:
- Your job title,
- The company name,
- The time period your held the role.
- A brief explanation of the company’s purpose and scope.
Expert tip.
If you invest yourself in this process, you’ll likely generate more ideas for achievements than you’ll need. Create a separate document to record these for future applications.
5. Include A Section For Your CEO-Related Skills.
As a CEO its important to bring some sophistication to how to describe your skills. Leadership, management, and communication skills are a given.
A list of terms isn’t convincing enough—you need to expand upon your competencies in a sentence and provide evidence.
Here’s an example of a how we’d present a list of skills for a CEO candidate:
[Example graphic of a CEO key assets]
6. Don’t Neglect Education, Awards And Memberships.
It’s expected at the CEO level that you’ll have committed to professional and personal development throughout your career, which could include formal qualifications, informal training, certifications, competitions and awards, memberships of industry groups or professional volunteering.
Include only the most essential and relevant professional development, with the following details:
- Title of qualification/award or position
- Title of issuing organisation or membership body
- Year or date range.
Don’t Forget To Write An Aligned CEO Cover Letter.
The beauty of a cover letter is that it lets you expand on your resume in a more nuanced and expressive way. As a CEO, a well-written cover letter enables you to:
- Reveal more of your personality and ability to engage.
- Provide context about how your career has unfolded and where it’s headed.
- Allude to your vision for the company when you take the reins as CEO.
Important!
Make sure the details and dates in your CEO cover letter are consistent with the details in your resume.
Frequently Asked Questions About CEO Resumes.
Here are some additional things that are helpful to know before writing your CEO resume.
What’s The Purpose Of A CEO Resume?
You might be wondering, “do people at the CEO level need a resume?”
Even if you’re referred to a company or approached directly by an executive recruiter in what’s often described as the ‘hidden’ job market—you’ll need a persuasive resume.
It’s a marketing tool that decision-makers will refer back to multiple times throughout the recruitment process. As such, it reinforces their understanding of your value, communication style and professionalism.
What’s The Right Length For A CEO Resume?
Your CEO resume should be somewhere between 2-4 pages long. Focus on making your resume as short as possible without leaving out anything relevant.
If you’ve had a long and complex career, your resume might need 4-5 pages. But remember, you can simply list your earliest jobs without going into detail.
What Makes A CEO Resume Stand Out?
The factor that distinguishes you from other candidates for a CEO role is your personal brand. It’s vital to understand your unique selling point—which extends from the unique combination of experiences, characteristics and specialised knowledge you’ve gained or applied as an executive.
Once you pinpoint what you’re best known for or how you want to be perceived, then it’s a matter of imbuing all of your communications—including your CEO resume—to reflect this more clearly.
Keep Your CEO Resume As Sharp As A Well-Dressed CEO.
Every role is different, and each recruiter will have different priorities. For your CEO resume to provide you with an advantage, you’ll need to review and update it every time you engage in a new company’s hiring process.
You probably won’t need to touch the format and design for a few years, but you will need to make regular tweaks to the language used, your skills and your achievements.
Irene
