Having completed a job search, in one of the most difficult job markets in the country (SE Michigan), as recently as last winter, I would like to give the other side of the coin to Mr. Say Uncle’s provocative yet useful list of Resume Pet Peeves. Just to let you all know that there are two sides to every coin.
Yours is not the only job I’m applying for.
And not by a long shot. Sure I would love to take the time and effort to personalize every resume I send based on the wealth of information I have about the position you are offering (like there is any to be had because you don’t want to be deluged with job seekers sniffing around). But the fact is that looking for a job is numbers game, it’s just like sales. The time I spend trying to figure out what you are looking for is time that could be spent applying for other jobs.
I spent whole 8 hour days doing nothing but filling out truck loads of forms, creating user names and passwords on job search websites, and taking calls from recruiters wanting to know if I am qualified for a job that even a cursory reading of my resume would tell them not even close. So please excuse me if I don’t customize my resume four you individually. The days are long gone when I could afford to consider each job application in earnest, we are in a different job market then the days of old and I can’t afford to spend much more time considering then you do considering 50 job applicants.
Don’t be a fashionesta
Resume writing is faddish by nature, things that are considered essential one year are very much out of vogue the next. Ask 5 people how your resume should be set up you will get 7 different answers. Mr. Uncle tells us that your resumes should be one page unless you are management. Well sure if you want to have no idea of the width and breathe of my experience. As a contractor I can’t even list the employers I have had in the last five years in that space. I would love to give you a one page skills based resume that concisely detailed my experience, but 85% of the recruiters and hiring managers don’t want that, they want chronological resumes with details under each job listing.
Also elements like an objective, where to put your educational experience (and other “skills”), and so forth are all over the map according to “resume expertsâ€. I have had a human resource person at a company tell me one thing and their career development department tell me the exact opposite. I don’t know if I should shit or go sailing.
Don’t even get me started on formats; I have heard people say that will reject resumes out of hand if it is sent in almost any of the common data formats including PDF and plan text. I got into a habit of sending it in word, plan text and PDF, just to make sure. If you request a one page resume, in a PDF I’ll be glad to comply, but if you don’t give me anything other then an email address and instructions to send or fax my resume, you will get a all-purpose resume with a form cover letter, don’t ding me for it, I can’t read your mind and I don’t know what your personal resume standards are no one does because there are no set in stone resume standards.
BTW never ask resumes to be faxed, I never know if you got it or if it got caught up in a pile of spam faxes, if I don’t hear from you, I’ll assume you didn’t get it and resend, then you will get mad at me and not hire me simply because I am trying to be conscientious. If your company can’t even navigate the “internets” I don’t really want to work for you.
Screw you! How is that for an “Action†verb!
This is the most trite resume advice ever given. Come on, don’t make it a word puzzle, do you want to know what I did or are you just looking for more arbitrary crap to ding me for … seriously. On second thought no, if yours is the kind of company that would not hire a quality individual for lack of “Action Verbs†on their resume, I don’t think I would care to work for you. The problem is that the company might be great, they simply have a pedantic jerk reading resumes and that would be sad for everyone. But you go ahead, hire the candidate with all the “action verbs†just don’t call me to clean up the mess when you find out they are great at resumes and interviews, but can’t do the job.
I’m trying to get an interview not high-level security clearance.
Geez, I filled out your twelve page application, sent you my resume, filled out an on-line reference form (and gave you their phone number and permission to badger them at work). I gave you more information then I gave my mortgage broker just to get an interview? WTF? Do you really need anything more then some EEO information and my resume to tell me that you have decided to hire the bosses niece? Get over yourself, it’s a job, not an election for the Pope.
Don’t nit-pick
So I don’t use the accent marks when spelling resume, so what? I’m a systems administrator and frankly if you use accent makes some jerk will toss it because he thinks I’m too French. They also screw up web based resume aggregators and scanners (Update: apparently wordpress doesn’t even handle them correctly). The goal here is consistency, yes bad spelling should be considered, inconsistency should be considered, but not using accent marks? That’s downright un-American.
Bottom line the whole notion of the resume is deeply flawed at best. The resume has only one purpose, to get an interview, in fact I have only gotten two jobs in my life where my resume was anything other then a bureaucratic afterthought. While I understand that employers have to make decisions based on something it seems to me that that something should be content, experience, or at the very least grades (for recent grads). I can guarantee that worrying about accent marks and action verbs will never increase your likelihood of getting better job candidates, but it does have the advantage of being easier. And when your manager come to you and asks why the new hire can’t do their frigging job, you can always tell them …
Well they did know where the accents go in the word “resumeâ€.
[...] More advice but for those of us that read them. And he tells me to get over myself. [...]
[...] In response to SayUncle’s résumé nit-pick fest, we find this: Screw you! How is that for an “Action†verb! This is the most trite resume advice ever given. Come on, don’t make it a word puzzle, do you want to know what I did or are you just looking for more arbitrary crap to ding me for … seriously. On second thought no, if yours is that kind of company that would not hire a quality individual for lack of “Action Verbs†on their resume, I don’t think I would care to work for you. The problem is that the company might be great, they simply have a pedantic jerk reading resumes and that would be sad for everyone. But you go ahead, hire the candidate with all the “action verbs†just don’t call me to clean up the mess when you find out they are great at resumes and interviews, but can’t do the job. [...]
Thank god I’m one of the few remaining Americans who’s managed to hold the same job for more than twenty years. Does that mean I’m unmotivated? You’re damn toot’n it does. Oh ya, and happy where I’m at. I guess that counts for something too.
The funniest thing I’ve ever read on a resume was an objective written by a gentleman applying to be a draftsman at my step dad’s company. The dude wrote that his objective was, “To serve God and my country.” HA! How fab if you want a job in the military or ministry. But what a lofty, horrifyingly personal, completely irrelevant goal to slap on your application to work in the automotive industry. Very funny. As long as your proofread, clean, honest and not vomiting up embarrassing objectives, I think you’ve got the resume under control.
“The dude wrote that his objective was, “To serve God and my country.†“
You may laugh, but that shit goes down very well with a significant portion of the American population. Makes me wonder if the guy meant it or was just playing the odds.
I was a manager at a bookstore chain for a year, and had one prospective employee turn in her pink, perfumed resume. I don’t know how I kept a straight face, especially after reading that her last position was a “topless entertainer”…
The last time I applied for a job, my resume languished in HR. They had not forwarded it to the hiring department. On the day I made my online application, I also emailed the CFO to let him know that I had applied for a job. I had worked for the CFO years earlier and he had always been pleased with my performance. When he heard that my resume had not been received by the CAO, he asked me to email him another copy. By no small coinicidence, at about the same time, HR also released my resume.
Your results may vary.
Great read.
“To serve God and my country”, if you had to choose between him and a Amera hating Satanist, who would you pick?
I bet topless dancers would make great salespeople.
“To serve God and my countryâ€, if you had to choose between him and a Amera hating Satanist, who would you pick?
Whomever could do the best job, of course.
I bet topless dancers would make great salespeople.
They ARE salespeople.
My objective ????
How quaint!!!
Listen up…
My Objective…
Is to make the most amount of money, for the least amount of effort, plain and simple.
Employers objective is to get the most amount production at the least cost to the business.
Any deviation from this and you live in a fantasy world.
Also work is not fun.
Fun is fun and work is work…Period..
Wake up..