Henry Wang was in his first year out of college, having graduated from the University of California, Irvine, when his boss gave him a suggestion.
Wang’s manager at the City of New York advised him to try his hand at legal work before applying to law school. He agreed and worked as a litigation paralegal at a law firm for a year.
“That’s when I realized I hate what lawyers do. I don’t want to be a lawyer,” Wang told Business Insider in a video call.
Looking for a more business-related career, Wang picked up consulting and investment banking books. He also created a resume that ended up getting him interviews at Deloitte, Goldman Sachs, and Google.
At Google, Wang says he went through seven rounds of interviews.
“When I did the Google Hangout interview, I dressed up. I was like: I am not going to leave any room for error,” he said. “I even had my slacks and my dress shoes on, just in case they told me to tilt the camera down.”
It paid off: In 2013, Wang got an offer to work in Google’s policy division.
Wang’s resume at the time followed a format well-known amongst college students and those in policy: It was one page long, and written in Times New Roman. It began with a section on education and a larger one dedicated to his two work experiences.
Here’s the resume that got him the job:
Henry Wang
Resume mistakes Wang made
But now, roughly 10 years on, Wang reexamined that resume — and he says he’d do some things differently.
“Looking back, I think there needs to be a story to my resume. Right now, I’m just listing where I went to school, what my experiences were without really conveying what’s the story that I want to tell,” Wang said about his 2013 resume.
Here’s what he would change:
-
Declutter: “When I look at this, my eyes kind of hurt. There’s a lot of text and its all very packed together. I could use a more clean font that is easy to read, like Arial, Open Sans or Lato,” Wang said.
-
Minimize the work for the recruiter: “I would have an introduction blurb about myself so the recruiter or interviewer does not have to read through everything,” Wang said. “I would summarize my experience into two to three sentences at the very beginning, so it’s almost like a mini cover letter.”
-
Lead with the new: “At this time, I had already been working two years, which means I could move education below and lead with experience.”
-
Show your accomplishments, not your work: Wang said he’d focus less on listing tasks, and more on explaining how his tasks became accomplishments. “For example, for litigation paralegal, I would have a short blurb saying, ‘Managed and owned legal workflow for high profile family law cases from discovery to trial,'” he said.
-
Tailor for what you want: “Pick your battles — not every single work experience is going to be equal,” Wang said. Because he was applying for a policy role at Google, he says he should have emphasized his policy experience over his time in community service.
It’s not all negative, though. “One thing I appreciate about this resume is that even though there’s a lot of information, I over communicated rather than under-communicated,” he said.
Wang worked at Google’s policy division and later as a product marketing manager. He left the company in 2017 and now runs his own business consulting AI and crypto startups.
BI verified Wang’s employment history.
