Your resume and your job search

I was a little testy yesterday. My old boss, a man I genuinely like and greatly respect sent me his friend’s resume. He said his friend had been just laid off from a major company and wanted to know if I could help him.

As I read the resume, I started to feel myself getting agitated. I wasn’t sure why, but the more I read it, the more agitated I became. It took me a few minutes to figure out why, but I did.

The reason I became testy was that I didn’t like the resume I was reading. It was obvious to me that this man was most likely a brilliant executive with a great career, but his resume read like something an average student would write to minimally satisfy the requirements of his teacher or professor. It had mixed word tenses, did not clearly explain what his profession was, or what he wanted to do. He spent important “real estate” talking about his former employer instead of himself. And then it dawned on me.

As I said, this man was probably a brilliant executive. He might even have a genius IQ, and a long, successful career, but he has probably written a handful of resumes in his entire life. He had no experience writing resumes. He probably bought a book, or went to a website to figure out what to do, or maybe he just tried to wing it, but in all candor he was terrible at it.

Is that a reason not to hire him? No, but unfortunately, HR people are using a resume to figure out if you are worthy of a phone call, and then an interview. They read so many resumes each day, they can’t help but to become callous and quickly dismissive of poorly written resumes. If your resume, which is nothing less than a product brochure selling you, isn’t professionally done, then your customer (the HR guy) isn’t buying.

Here is my advice. If you are a successful executive looking for work,. outsource the writing of your resume to a pro. I am not soliciting work. I do it for free as a hobby. But, if you think you are going to land a six figure job with a $2 free resume, think again.

I have more to say, but its Saturday and beautiful outside. If you want more information or have questions, email me at michael_e_anderson@yahoo.com

Mike