written by: Lance Powell © 2001

Little is known about the origins of the resume other than - it exists - and more so, exists as a tool of self worth, and timetable of events.

For good or bad, the resume has become the initial selling piece of the individual. The new ‘foot in the door’, and without it - in the blue-collar world, you are nothing.

In the faster paced world of technology, time is precious, and the loss of a minute could spell doom for the savvy HR folk who operate on the boarder of getting the talent they want, to settling for second best.

So, since resumes are funny monkeys’. I’m going to start off by giving a few hard line rules and wrap up with a few tidy questions.

Your resume is a 15 second add about you
let’s face it, time is precious and the market for supply and demand is staggering in most of the creative markets. Your average HR person get’s about 20 resumes a day, recruiters get about 40 a day. Your resume should tell these folks about you at a glance of about 15 seconds. If it doesn’t, expect your resume to go into the “inbox”, which we all know doesn’t get the attention it deserves.

Sin arte por favor
it’s an ad, not a painting. A resume can have elements of creativity, but limit them to “not distracting”. I’ve seen enough resumes across my desk that has photos of the sender, or pictures of their works of art. All nice. All distractions. Keep it simple, perhaps your logo, perhaps something nice on the edges.

Experience vs. Education
The debate of experience vs. education is a long time battle, and the winners and losers are always a measure of perspective - i.e.: the industry you are targeting. So, without pulling myself into the debate - I’m going to make this a fairly simple equation: Your education is equal to 2-4 years worth of experience. A good example of this is, most jobs posts will say “B.A or 2 + or 2-4 years experience”, so without showing how miserable my math skills are, a B.A takes a student about 4 years, hence “2-4 years”. A certificate or A.A is about 2 years.

Those are the base rules. The rest are tied to structure, and outline.

A typical resume outline is fairly easy to build, the content between the beginning and end are a little more difficult. For example, you typical resume outline will look like this for the experience folk:

• Summary (nice, but not necessary)
• Objective - Experience (or education if your schooling exceeds your experience)
• Education
• Skills
• References

Structuring the resume is a little more difficult because the structure really tells the reader about you. The content and language used is very personal. So I wont go into that too much, but typically, a resumes language will tell the reader where you are (in your life), and where you’re going. So, relevant skills to your career plus one or two jobs outside your focus are nice - especially if they aid in telling the reader about you. A good example of this is the Objective:

Objective: Art Director looking for an innovative mature corporation to help flourish and expand the companies brand and appeal.

Dissecting that sentence is easy:
• “Art Director” - you’re telling the reader your position.
• “looking for an innovative mature corporation…” tells the reader that you are mature, and know what you want.
• “…and expand the companies brand and appeal” tells the reader where you want to go, and what you want to do.

Experience: John Doe, Inc. [1998-2000] As the production supervisor, I handled many client services as well as managed production. In addition:
• Increased production productivity 20% over 2 years
• Executed several successful business development deals
• Secured 2.1 million along with my team for future projects.

Dissecting the experience is also easy.
Putting yourself in the head of the reader tends to be the most difficult aspect of a resume. So, bullet pointing your experiences not only helps move the reader along, but also will call out specific details that could get lost in a long-winded explanation of your position.

Look for next month’s completion of Building a better resume. Questions, or concerns contact: lance@thescratchpost.com