3FE: Lock The Job - Your Resume Is Boring

Last week we talked about how your resume will not get you the job. This week let’s talk briefly about why your resume is boring.  Yes, I called your resume boring.  If you would take a moment to pull out your resume and look at it, ask yourself the critical question.  Is it boring?  Does it stoke your flames?  Do you feel excited when you look at the pages you’ve put together to describe your career up to this point?  For the majority of you the answer is clear.  No.

Your resume is boring.

I’ve mentioned the need for differentiation.  In today’s highly competitive market I’ve mentioned the need for you to brand yourself appropriately.  Your resume is the initial introduction to who you are and what you bring to an employer.  You may have followed all the rules, included all the key words, set it up to pass the recruiter’s filters, done the same thing all the other potential candidates would do to make it over the initial hurdles, and considered for a possible interview.  However, that does not lock the job for you.

Let me be plain.  People who read resumes are people just like you.  They get bored.  They may have an urgent need but they become very frustrated with the interminable stack of papers that show name, address, skill set, professional experience, education and references.  The majority of resumes that managers receive all look the same.  I know this from personal experience.  Take my word for it.

Now, to be sure there are those managers who want to stick to the old tried and true and don’t like differentiation.  They don’t like effective self-branding.  They don’t want you to do anything to your piece of paper that would make it stand out.  They may even enjoy bringing you in on the strength of your eight page resume and put you through five rounds of interviews.  Let’s be clear, you don’t want to work for this person.  That’s a tragedy in the making.

Today’s competitive environment requires clarity, swiftness, effective communication, appropriate brevity, innovation, the creation of demand, and the maximization of the brand.  Not only does the description describe the successful company, but it describes the people who make that company successful.  If you would join them you would need to make sure that you exhibit these qualities.

We start with your resume.  We make sure it’s not boring.   You should strive for the appropriate use of color, font, size, and placement.  You should consider a picture on your resume.  The times are changing and the inclusion of a very professional image breaks your resume out of the mold, and definitely presents you as being bold. 

Besides, understand quite clearly that as you are vetted for a position the employer will scour LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube and everything else in order to determine just what kind of person they might be considering.  Your face will not be a surprise by the time you arrive for the interview … if you’re chosen.

The most important thing I want you to consider in order to break up the monotony of the resume is tell a story.  That’s right.  Write a powerful communicative introductory paragraph about you.  Tell me why I should hire you.  Tell me about your experience.  Tell me where you have done the things that have made you successful and why.  Be brief, but exciting.  Be clear and compelling.  Be motivating.  Make me stoked at the possibility of bringing you in for an interview. 

This brief paragraph should be located in the top third of the first page of your resume.  Make sure all the other important elements are included in your resume.  Just the color alone breaks up the painful monotony.  However, by adding the other elements you have effectively branded yourself radically away from the crowd.  By doing this at first glance your resume will move from the trash pile to the second-glance pile. 

Now, a moment of honesty, some managers will frown on your differentiation.  However, I will say to you now as I have said to others, you can hedge your risk.  First, have no fear of submitting two different resumes.  Second, if you’ve been doing it the plain old boring way and have not met with success, why not try something different?  The point that you must consider critically is if you wish to be competitive and lock the job in an ever changing 21^st century job market, then you must be willing to be different, to stand out from the crowd, prove the case for choosing you, branding yourself appropriately.  It’s entirely up to you.  Consider it critically.     

The Aspiring Critical Thinker,
D.S. Brown