***Resume´***

Posted: August 7th, 2009 | 1 Comment »

As a hiring manager, I thought I would share some advice for those of you who are job-seeking.  That way, hopefully, I won’t ever get a incredibly shitty resume like the one I got today.  This thing is so bad I thought it was a joke until my boss confirmed someone dropped it off.  It all starts with the cover page.  No, not cover letter, cover page.  As if I needed a sheet of paper to tell me what the rest of this shit attached is.  It looks something like this:

*   *   *
RESUME
*   *   *

What the hell is that?  Pretty fucking fancy!  Flipping through it briefly brings me to my first question and also my first point.  What the hell position is this person applying for?  Its pretty obvious that this person has sent out resumes to anyone with an address and has no idea of what sort of position she might want to apply for.  Of course its written “To Whom It May Concern.”  Well, it doesn’t seem to concern me much so I guess I’ll just shred it.  If you want to get your resume more than a glance and a shred, address the cover letter to a real person.  Most advertised positions have a contact person listed.  If not, call and ask who you can send a resume to for the advertised position.  If all else fails, write Dear Hiring Manager or something similar.  If you are applying for a specific position, write the position you are applying for in the first damn paragraph of the cover letter! If you are sending out blind resumes for unadvertised positions, at least write what sort of position you are looking for, IE sales, support, management, etc.

Let’s look at the cover letter:

I have over 30 years in Sales and Marketing, which has consisted of management, customer service, telemarketing, retail not to mention general office duties.

What the fuck kind of run on bullshit sentence is that?  Why are sales and marketing capitalized?  Why should I keep reading?

A few achievements I have credited myself with are:

Did you do it or just credit yourself with it?

I do have an eye for design, interior and exterior[...]  I also have several entrepreneur projects in mind.

I could tell about your “eye for design” based on your fancy cover page.

But for now, I’m very eager to start a new career[...]

Did you just start a paragraph with “but for now?” Do yourself a favor and proof read your resume and cover letter for typos, grammatical mistakes, and to make sure you don’t look like a friggin’ idiot.  If you are an idiot, have someone else look at it to help you to not give it away in the first paragraph.

Ok, whatever.  Let’s just move on to the resume.  It looks fairly straight forward.  With Education and Experience.  Under education it gets a little confusing (some parts omitted to protect the innocent)

The Customer Program

Par Sales

Community College Animal Lab Technician Certified in 1976

Modeling Agency Graduated in 1973

What the hell are the customer program or par sales?  Modeling didn’t work out so you became a vet tech?  Under education on a resume, all I care about about schools attended and graduated from and personal certifications.  Don’t list all the random crap you’ve studied the past 30 years, especially if its not relevant.

Overall the work history section is the strongest, as it should be.  Although it is convoulted on this resume I can kind of tell what this person did.  Your resume should give a clear picture of what you did at your last jobs.  Don’t use the same resume for all applications.  Cater your resume to the type of work you are applying for.  If you are applying for a service position, highlight the service aspect of your previous jobs.  For management, focus more on your leadership roles, etc.  For any gaps in employment, provide some sort of explanation in the cover letter.

The final (fourth) page of the resume is a list of “special interests.”  Its mostly a collection of one run-on sentence paragraphs that often start with “and” and “but” and describe a bunch of shit that doesn’t pertain to me, my business, and only proves to me even more that this person is an idiot.  Don’t tell your potential employer about your hobbies.  We don’t give a shit.  Instead, you should be using this section to highlight some of the recognition or organizations you have been associated with in the past.  Things like honor societies, scholarships, fraternities, community organizations and the like help to show how involved and committed you are.  Most importantly, KEEP IT TO ONE PAGE!  A complete application should include one page for the cover letter and one for the resume.  The only reason that a resume should go over a page is if you have enough education and work experience that relates DIRECTLY to the position you are applying for.  99.9% of all people can fit it to one page with some proper formatting.

This may seem a bit harsh, but my intention isn’t to be mean.  I’ve left out most everything that could link this back to the writer, but if she did find this, I would hope that she realized that she needed to give her applications some work before sending them off.  If you would like some help writing your resume, google for some other great resources on the web.  Alternatively, you could also brave the storm and ask for help here.  Good luck finding a job in this tough economy.  I really mean it.

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