Resume can be complex tool that should be managed with care
With a few tons of resumes circulating, you’d think we’d have uniform resume standards. Instead, we have confusion, driving home the point that it’s time to bury the resume for good.
A human resources manager at an electronics company reported a significant increase in the number of resumes he receives. Quantity and quality, though, don’t go hand in hand. Only 1% are given a thorough read, and the rest are tossed. The problem? “Most stink,” he said. “The resume books aren’t doing their job.”
Most resume readers groaned when the resume objective was mentioned. That’s the line at the top in which you state your reason for seeking employment in the field or at the company you’re addressing. Job searchers struggle in vain to find one cohesive sentence that sums up their career aspirations. It’s time they realized it can’t be done. Yet they keep trying. The result is limp, adjectivedense sentences that say nothing and sound like:
“Searching for a meaningful career that allows me to grow professionally and personally and be the best I can possibly be.”
Line up 5,000 resumes and you’ll get a variation on these objectives. “I’m searching for a high-visibility job that affords me the opportunity to grow with the company.” Or, “A challenging position as a salesperson in a multinational company with opportunities to utilize my extensive knowledge of the fashion business.” And the cliche words flow like water — high-visibility, opportunity, utilize, extensive, challenging.
Even a conservative Robert Half, who devotes a lot of space to resume preparation in his books, admits most resume objectives are stiff and best
You have three or for four variations of your resume, each selling different skills. Rather than one all-purpose resume, each looks like it’s custom designed for a specific job.
omitted. Half is right, and he opens up a monster can of worms by advising job searchers to drop the objective altogether. Several years ago, he wrote an article for Dow Jones’ National Business Employment Weekly saying the problem with resume objectives is that they rule you out for other jobs you might qualify for. A good objective is so targeted that an employer never considers you for anything but the one job you are applying for, according to Half.
So, what do you do if you’re a “Renaissance person” capable of doing many things well? How do you come up with a simple, targeted objective? You don’t. Instead, you do what smart people have been doing for decades.
You have three or for four variations of your resume, each selling different skills. Rather than one all-purpose resume, each looks like it’s custom designed for a specific job. Each one has a different objective, followed by selected job experiences that sell you best. If you can sell or program computers, or you’ve written advertising copy but also developed new clients as an account executive, it pays to have two resumes highlighting each skill.
It can amount to a mountain-size headache keeping track of which version of a resume was sent where.
It’s irrefutable evidence that the resume can be a complex and unwieldy tool that ought to be managed carefully.