A Resume that Sells
Debbie Morrison • September 22, 2021

A Resume that Sells


There’s something that distinguishes a good resume from a bad one (and can turn a good resume into a great one). While it’s fairly simple in theory, it can be difficult in practice because it involves thinking about your resume in a fundamentally different way than you may be used to.

 

The concept is this: your resume is a sales document, not a biography.

 

I’ll lay out what this means for your resume momentarily. But first – for the non-salespeople reading – let me give you a crash course in sales theory. (If you are in sales, bear with me and keep reading, because the most difficult product to sell is yourself, and this will help you do that.)

 

In sales, one can sell using the features of a product or service, or its benefits. While most people in sales would agree that the more important of the two is benefits, it’s not an either/or question. Both are important. It’s just that the features are only important to the extent that they give the buyer the benefit they’re looking for.

 

By way of example, think about the last time you bought a car. If you did your research, you probably looked at the features: seating and cargo capacity, safety features, fuel economy, comfort and convenience accessories. But was that really what you were buying? I’d bet not. You were interested in interior room... because you were thinking about the times you’d have passengers and stuff along for the ride. You were interested in safety... because if an accident happens, you want to protect yourself and the people with you. You’re interested in the ‘bells and whistles’... because they make long drives more comfortable (and sure, because some of them are just fun to have).

 

The same holds true for any major purchase. You want to know the specs of the smartphone you’re buying, but only because they allow you to do the things you need and want to do with that device. You may look at the picture and sound quality of a big screen TV, but what you’re really thinking about is the quality of the movie-night experiences you’ll have with friends and family.

 

Far too many people write their resumes as they’d write a spec sheet for a car, a phone, or a TV. Your work experiences, the responsibilities you’ve held in various roles; those are your ‘features’. Not that they’re not important – they are. But only to the extent that they demonstrate the benefits you’ll bring to a prospective employer. A comprehensive list of tasks and duties may accurately reflect what you did in your previous jobs, but it doesn’t do much to sell you as a potential new hire.

 

When writing or updating your resume, think first like a salesperson. What is the ‘customer’ (in this case, a potential employer) really looking for? What value are they hoping to get from bringing on someone new? What benefit will they be looking for you to provide? In some cases, the answer to these questions are fairly easy. Hiring a new salesperson should generate more revenue. Hiring a new manager for a team should mean better results from the people on that team, and perhaps less staff turnover.

 

Every part of your resume can be viewed through that lens. When you describe a previous job, you don’t have a ‘biographical responsibility’ to mention every single thing you did in that role. Selling yourself means focusing in on the aspects of your work that brought the most value to your previous employer and are of most relevance to your next employer; providing more detail about those, and less about things that are less directly related.

 

This also means that at a certain point in your career, you can start leaving some things off entirely. If you’ve been in your field for about ten years or more, for example, you no longer need to include much detail about jobs you held previously that aren’t related to your career, or even to include those jobs at all. (Of course, this doesn’t mean you can’t or shouldn’t include jobs you held years ago, it just means you should only include the details about them that help to sell you as a candidate, and the value you bring to a company.)

 

Your academic background – even if it’s not related to your current career – should usually be included because attaining a degree or a certification shows intelligence, commitment, and a willingness to work hard. That said, any additional continuing education courses only need to be included if they’re directly tied to the value you would bring to a new employer.

 

This shift to a sales mindset is also why tracking and listing specific achievements on your resume is so important. Unlike a list of responsibilities, accomplishments – particularly those that are quantifiable, expressed in percentages, dollar figures and the like – underscore how you benefited your previous employers. Which, in turn, helps a prospective employer see how you’d benefit them.

 

In the end, you may end up with a resume that has less quantity, but that’s fine: quality is what counts. Getting rid of less relevant content that doesn’t sell the benefit you’d offer as a new hire is decluttering. The reader is left with the content that really shows what you can do for them.

 

Does your resume read more like a biography, or like a sales pitch? If you’re not sure how to approach this, we’d be happy to provide some pointers. Send us your resume today, and let us help make sure it sells you as well as your experience deserves.


A group of business people are walking in front of a city skyline.

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The Quiet Collapse of Australian Vegetable Farming

By John Elliott • June 26, 2025
You don’t hear about it on the nightly news. There’s no breaking story. No panic. No protests. Just rows of vegetables being pulled out of the ground with no plan to replant. Just farmers who no longer believe there’s a future for them here. Just quiet decisions — to sell, to walk away, to stop. And if you ask around the industry, they’ll tell you the same thing: It’s not just one bad season. It’s a slow death by a thousand margins. 1 in 3 growers are preparing to leaveIn September 2024, AUSVEG released a national sentiment report with a statistic that should have set off alarms in every capital city: 34% of Australian vegetable growers were considering exiting the industry in the next 12 months. Another one-third said they’d leave if offered a fair price for their farm. Source: AUSVEG Industry Sentiment Report 2024 (PDF) These aren’t abstract hypotheticals. These are real decisions, already in motion. For many, it’s not about profitability anymore, it’s about survival. This isn’t burnout. It’s entrapment. Behind the numbers are people whose entire identity is tied to a profession that no longer feeds them. Many are asset-rich but cash-poor. They own the land. But the land owns them back. Selling means walking away from decades of history. Staying means bleeding capital, month by month, in a system where working harder delivers less. Every year, input costs rise, fuel, fertiliser, compliance. But the farmgate price doesn’t move. Or worse, it drops. Retail World Magazine reports that even though national vegetable production increased 3% in 2023–24, the total farmgate value fell by $140 million. Growers produced more and earned less. That’s not a market. That’s a trap. What no one wants to say aloud The truth is this: many growers are only staying because they can’t leave. If you’re deep in debt, if your farm is tied to multi-generational ownership, if you’ve invested everything in equipment, infrastructure, or land access, walking away isn’t easy. It’s a last resort. So instead, you stay. You cut your hours. Delay maintenance. Avoid upgrades. Cancel the next round of planting. You wait for something to shift, interest rates, weather, prices and you pretend that waiting is strategy. According to the latest fruitnet.com survey, over 50% of vegetable growers say they’re financially worse off than a year ago. And nearly 40% expect conditions to deteriorate further. This isn’t about optimism or resilience. It’s about dignity and the quiet erosion of it. Supermarkets won’t save them, and they never planned to In the current model, supermarket pricing doesn’t reflect real-world farm economics. Retailers demand year-round consistency, aesthetic perfection, and lower prices. They don’t absorb rising input costs, they externalise them. They offer promotions funded not by their marketing budgets, but by the growers’ margins. Farmers take the risk. Retailers take the profit. And because the power imbalance is so deeply entrenched, there’s no real negotiation, just quiet coercion dressed up as "category planning." Let’s talk about what’s actually broken This isn’t just a market failure. It’s a policy failure. Australia’s horticulture system has been built on: Decades of deregulated wholesale markets Lack of collective bargaining power for growers Retailer consolidation that has created a virtual duopoly Export-focused incentives that bypass smaller domestic producers There’s no meaningful floor price for key produce lines. No national enforcement of fair dealing. No public database that links supermarket shelf price to farmgate return. Which means growers, like James, can be driven into loss-making supply contracts without ever seeing the true economics of their product downstream. But the real silence? It’s from consumers. Here’s what no one wants to admit: We say we care about “buying local.” We say we value the farmer’s role. We share those viral posts about strawberries going unsold or milk prices being unfair. And then we complain about a $4 lettuce. We opt for the cheapest bag of carrots. We walk past the "imperfect" produce bin. We frown at the cost of organic and click “Add to Cart” on whatever’s half price. We’re not just bystanders. We’re part of the equation. What happens when the growers go? At first, very little. Supermarkets will find substitutes. Importers will fill gaps. Large agribusinesses will expand into spaces vacated by smaller players. Prices will stay low, until they don’t. But over time, we’ll notice: Produce that travels further and lasts less. Fewer independent growers at farmer’s markets. Entire regions losing their growing identity. National food security becoming a campaign promise instead of a reality. And when the climate throws something serious at us, drought, flood, global supply shock, we’ll realise how little resilience we’ve preserved. So what do we do? We start by telling the truth. Australia is not food secure. Not if 1 in 3 growers are planning to exit. The market isn’t working. Not when prices rise at the shelf and fall at the farmgate. The solution isn’t scale. It’s fairness, visibility, and rebalancing power. That means: Mandating cost-reflective contracts between retailers and suppliers Enabling collective bargaining rights for growers Building transparent data systems linking production costs to consumer prices Introducing transition finance for smaller producers navigating reform and climate pressure And holding supermarkets publicly accountable for margin extraction But more than anything, it means recognising what we’re losing, before it's gone. Final word If you ate a vegetable today, it likely came from someone who’s considered giving up in the past year. Not because they don’t care. But because caring doesn’t pay. This isn’t about nostalgia. It’s about sovereignty, over what we eat, how we grow it, and who gets to stay in the system.  Because the next time you see rows of green stretching to the horizon, you might want to ask: How many of these fields are already planning their last harvest?