2. Why Resumes Don't Sell
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A young executive was interviewing with the company president. The president remarked, "Your resume is quite impressive." Disarmingly, the young executive answered, "It ought to be, I wrote it."
A funny response, maybe. A cocky response, probably. A candid response that deals directly with an underlying problem with resumes, definitely. No one writes a resume that states: "Weak manager. Afraid to make decisions. Afraid to change. Can't get along with people. Canned in last five jobs." Even though that might be close to the truth for some managers, people write just the opposite. The resume is always biased to favor the candidate, and everyone knows it. Consequently, because it is inherently imbalanced no matter how skillfully crafted, the resume itself is a barrier that hirer and candidate must overcome.
Hirers expect resumes to represent one side of the candidate. Hirers expect embellishments in resumes. Hirers so expect an incomplete portrait that the resume is used only as a starting point in the interviewing and hiring process.
All resumes look alike. Regardless of the resume style - experience resume, chronological resume, functional resume - they all ultimately look the same. Selling yourself depends on getting noticed, standing apart, being different from everybody else. If at outset you are represented only by your resume and your resume looks like everybody else's resume, then you look like everybody else.
The resume - any resume, all resumes - always acquires a personality of its own, which is often different from that of the person it glorifies. Resume-writing rules, resume structure, and the resume development process work together to produce, in effect, a new shadow persona. The modest take credit. The spare are verbose. The humble become egocentric. The literate use arcane jargon. The confident get cautious. The creative get common.
Resumes are too often an exercise in self-validation. This is particularly true for the seasoned manager - someone who has spent most of his or her career in one place - who now is uncomfortably in search of a new job. These resumes resonate with associated accomplishments, nearly a mirror for every success of the former organization for which the candidate worked. After reading such a resume, one wonders why the person needs to seek a new job.
Many resumes are too long. This is a plague on college campuses. Prospective faculty candidates (for hire or promotion) submite eight-page resumes (which they pedantically call curricula vitae) listing every paper they ever wrote, but only two sentences on teaching.
Your resume has two purposes: 1) to be intruguing enough to get you an interview; and 2) to reaffirm in a tailored way, after your interview, how hiring you solves the hirer's problem.
During your potential employer's workday, your resume competes with memos, reports, to-do lists, luncheon meetings, other resumes. Take a lesson from the gunfighter. His resume fit on the business card, yet it worked: "Paladin. Have gun. Will travel."
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simi yi si?
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Originally posted by Cool-gal:
simi yi si?
yi si kio li resume mai sia kha tng , kio li sia pim-pom-kio! tioh e sai liao