Magic Pot of Jobs

An email from a friend-of-a-friend was passed on to me this morning, and I thought I’d share it, and the advice I gave, with you. I’ve covered a lot of this at various times here at the Magic Pot, but it bears repeating:

I want to make an ultrapimp resume. I’m talking about the kinda thing that makes the reader pee their pants, if you know what I mean. I want it to be so pimp that people will not only want to hire me, but they will want to sleep with me too. Sleep with me naked, that is.

Resumes are boring as hell. They make me sleepy.

There is One, and Only One thing that makes a resume interesting- it has to convey that the skills you have are exactly the skills the employer needs. If it doesn’t, there is nothing that will earn your resume a second glance. Nothing. And a resume alone doesn’t make people want to hire you- it makes them want to interview you.

So…

- Customize your resume for EACH AND EVERY job you apply for. I know this is a lot of work, but suck it up because this is your career we’re talking about here.

- When the position comes with a moderately detailed job description, mirror the language of that description in the resume.

- Assume that the HR person screening your resume isn’t even close to an expert in what you do. Yes, ultimately you’re trying to interest the hiring manager in your resume, and you’d hope that person understands your field, but 9 times out of 10, your resume goes through HR first, so when in doubt, SPELL IT OUT so that the HR person understands that your resume is worth passing on to the manager.

- And don’t bitch that the HR people don’t understand what you do. That’s not their job- they can’t possibly be experts in everything.

- Don’t think of your resume as simply a list of skills and accomplishments, though these are certainly important. No one wakes up one day and says, “Hey, I’ve got all this extra money in the budget… I’ll hire someone new!” There’s always a problem to be solved- too much work for too few people, a lack of particular expertise on the existing team, whatever. Think of yourself as a solution to the particular problem and write your resume with that in mind.

Eluta is a great resource for finding jobs in Canada, in places like Toronto and Montreal.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 19th, 2006 at 7:46 am and is filed under Resumes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.