Your Resume Sucks

What started as providing a few suggestions on a friend of a friend’s resume the other day turned into a soapbox rant about the worthlessness of the resume.  While I typically don’t write about resumes and finding jobs, I’m posting this so I can save myself time and refer people to this post rather than re-rant every time.

Resumes have become the dark suit, white shirt and ‘sincere’ tie of IBM’s days of yore.

If the goal is to stand out, why do we keep following the same boring template?  And following it poorly, at that.  We are not all the same so let’s get ourselves onto that meaningless invaluable piece of paper.

photo by bardinjw

A few thoughts on the traditional resume:

1. Results, not responsibilities. Presumably you are a bad ass.  Provide evidence of that.  The person hiring you doesn’t want a warm body to fill the space and merely complete tasks.  They want someone bright who will go beyond the job description, solve problems and accomplish great things.  You’ve done that in the past.  Talk about it.
2. Every bullet counts. Space is limited.  Make sure every line on the page counts toward promoting you.  This is derivative of the above but just as describing the job doesn’t do you any favors neither does a line or two describing the company you last worked for.  Who cares?  If they do exactly the same thing as the company to which you’re applying the new company should know all about them.  If not, why would they care anyway?
3. Unquantified successes. Another derivative, but you so often hear about providing metrics that quantify success (a good thing) that I wanted to point out other ways to do that.  Did you turn a low-performer into a high-performer that got promoted or won an award?  Unquantified success.  Did you talk others into doing something differently?  Unquantified success.  Sometimes just implementing change is enough.
4. Brevity. Unless you’re 147 years old or hold more patents than Ben Franklin there probably isn’t any reason to go beyond two pages.  You’re resume will be sitting in a stack of dozens.  Would you want to read a novella about yourself, not to mention someone you’ve never met?  It’s just going to piss someone off.
5. Objective, really? Isn’t everyone’s objective to land the job?  Don’t say you want a job at [flattering description of hiring company X].  If that’s all you’ve got, kill it.  What do you want to be doing in the next couple years?  In other words, why do you want the job?  Or better yet, incorporate #1 below.
6. Whitespace. This is short attention span theater at its worst.  Somebody will decide how comprehensively to read your resume within a second and based solely on looks.  If there is a massive block of text it’ll get skipped.  Having the right content doesn’t matter much if it won’t get read.  Indents and paragraph breaks are your friend, use them liberally.

And a few thoughts to improve the resume:

1. Know yourself. Describe the environment in which you work best.  If you don’t pass the screen, that’s a good thing.  Your odds of succeeding when you’re out of your element are low.  Outline your strengths.  What are you inherently good at?  What do you enjoy doing?  How do you work with others?  Focus on what you bring that is truly unique.  You’ll be competing against people as smart and with similar successes as you.  Our differences often come out in how we work.
2. Get personal. Lots of people don’t like the ‘personal’ section on a resume.  It may violate point number two above for some.  But I disagree.  Clearing that first hurdle and doing well in the interview means you pass the likability screen.  People often get offered jobs because they were well-liked.  So offer up some bullets that can help you make a connection.  What have you done that’s interesting and conversation-worthy?  What makes you smile?
3. Lose some history. Stop with the blow by blow of your professional career. In fact, ditch your early career.  You’re not applying for an entry level position, so why is that relevant?  Identify the highlights only (see: brevity) and focus on who you are, how you work and what you have to offer that’s unique (see: knowing yourself).
4. Get creative. If you’re not afraid of standing out, design something that looks totally different than all the other resumes out there.  Mix font sizes, put your name vertically instead of horizontal, whatever.  You want to give someone pause and pique their interest.  Unless you’re a Realtor though, please don’t put your picture on your resume.
5. Don’t rely on your resume at all. They are worthless.  The 21st century’s buggy whip.  Relentlessly tap your network to get in front of the right people.  But that’s a different post.

Your thoughts?

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