Career Cube Blog

Last week I talked about resumes that were too “busy,” where people felt the need to put everything including the kitchen sink in there in the hopes that that one magic bullet-point would entice the employer to schedule an interview. This week let’s talk about minimalist resumes.

The best example I have is a client who worked at a small high-end manufacturing company. From reading the resume she sent me, it seemed like she put together sales reports, reported to the CEO of the company, and sent out a few marketing pieces. She listed her college education at the top, but it had nothing to do with what she was doing now, or what she wanted her next job to be. It was pretty ho-hum.

When I talked to her on the phone I got a very different story. She had fallen into this great position where after she started there, the company decided to greatly expand their chain of distribution in the U.S. She went from being hired for a type of marketing assistant role to acting as the brand manager and negotiating the distribution agreements with some major U.S. retailers in such a way that their distribution was expanded, but they maintained their exclusive image. Pretty amazing. She also orchestrated a targeted marketing campaign that showed substantial results. This woman was a superstar!

Her resume did not talk about any of these things. There were about 10 bulletpoints on there, all of them very generic, and none of them more than 10-12 words long. Amazing-and to think that the resume she’d sent me-and had been sending to recruiters-did not discuss any of those achievements.

I rewrote the resume in such a way that it told this story, it gave specifics about what she accomplished and how she did it. It painted a complete picture of the fabulous things she had done. We’re putting the finishing touches on it now, but I can’t wait to see what kind of response she’s going to get.

Another client I worked with was looking for a job in interior design. I received several emails from her before she sent me her resume, and in each email she complained about how she wasn’t getting any interviews, what could she possibly be doing wrong? she had read several books about the job search process but after quite a while of looking, still hadn’t gotten anywhere. She had even had to accept a job at a retail design store to just pay the bills. When I looked at her resume I understood why she was having such a hard time cracking into the interior design companies. Her entire resume described more clerical work she had done (filing,organizing, preparing the other designers materials to meet with clients). Nowhere on there did she talk about what she had designed, what styles she preferred to work with. Just reading the resume did not give me a clue that she was qualified for the positions she was looking for.

What does your resume say about you and your qualifications? What story does it tell? Give it to a friend whom you’ve never shown it to before and who doesn’t know very much about your employment history. Ask them to tell you what it says about your qualifications. If they were to describe you to someone else based solely on what they’re reading on that piece of paper, what would they say?

I also provide a resume critique service where I’ll provide a written and oral commentary about what your resume is telling me as a hiring manager. You can make the changes, or for an additional fee I can make the changes for you.

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