Saying goodbye to the resume, RIP

Posted on January 31, 2012
Filed Under Career Change, Cover Letters and Resumes, Employment, Finding a Job, Social Network | Leave a Comment

It’s the last vestige of our antiquated, analogue past. A symbol of a bygone era. Putting it in really dramatic terms, it’s the last, remaining remnant of an Ancien Régime. You know, Ancien Régime: the old French socio-political order that was upturned by the French revolution. Although “Ancien Régime” may seem like a rather obscure bit of language to folks who have yet to be pulled in French history’s mystical gravity, Ancien Régime is a phrase that has come to embody a very peculiar idea relating to the collapse of an old, established regime—a changing of the guard, if you will, but on a paradigmatic scale. In this context, I am using this term as a way of conveying the seismic shift taking place in the world of hiring, or, Western life in general. How a new establishment—way of thinking—characterized by attaching a lowercase ”i” random nouns, e.g. iPotato, digitization, and (what some might call) digital escapism, has come to replace vestiges of the pre-Information Age: handwritten letters, vinyl records, hardback books, and yes, the almighty resume. The resume, has remained the thing connecting the hiring process of the not-to-distant past from our present. Read more

How saying the wrong thing in your resume could prevent you from landing that job

Posted on December 5, 2011
Filed Under Cover Letters and Resumes, Employment, Finding a Job | Leave a Comment

It’s no surprise that a career services blog would devote significant time and energy to sufficiently treating the issue of how to craft the perfect resume. Though, describing only those things make a resume truly stellar paints half a picture. In the same way the Plato believed it’s impossible to know what anything is unless you first become acquainted with what it is not (e.g. without first experiencing sadness you lack the cognitive ability to properly identify, or comprehend happiness), I believe I have spent too much time explaining what a resume is, instead of focusing on what it is not. The truth is, writing a good resume is a developed skill—something you hone over time. It’s not intuitive. The first time, we all get lost, inevitably and include too much, too little time, or the wrong information. Read more

A woman, a resume, and a balloon, Part II

Posted on November 25, 2011
Filed Under Cover Letters and Resumes, Employment, Finding a Job | Leave a Comment

The story of Ms. Elangwe, a women who recently harnessed the raw power of helium to send her resumes flying (literally) into the hands of recruiters, highlights a few points every job seeker should consider when faced with today’s job market. I think the most important takeaway (there are a number) is that today’s job seeker needs to get creative. Though not every job seeker is willing to stuff balloons with their resume, there are things they can do to get the attention of prospective employers. Read more

A woman, a resume, and a balloon, Part I

Posted on November 22, 2011
Filed Under Cover Letters and Resumes, Employment, Finding a Job | Leave a Comment

Perhaps it was the symbolism that drove Sherell Elangwe to use the power of helium balloon flight to deliver her resumes into the less than eager hands of employers. “Wait, what?” you may be asking. That’s right. A resident of North Carolina, Ms. Elangwe decided balloons were a safer method to deliver her resumes than that tiny “submit” button hanging around the bottom of every vacancy announcement. While her decision to use helium-filled balloons points to an uncomfortable irony, it helps to throw light on a barren job-scape, desperately in need of irrigation and seeding. It also suggests that job seekers faced with a similar predicament might be best served digging a hole in the ground and dropping their resume into it. The absurdity of Ms. Elangwe’s decision underscores an important point: despite economic gains, private sector hiring is still weak and job seekers must pull out all the stops when applying for positions. Read more

How your email address may be undermining your job search

Posted on November 1, 2011
Filed Under Cover Letters and Resumes, Employment, Finding a Job | Leave a Comment

Like any piece of literature, paraphrasing Ralph Waldo Emerson, whose words become those things they denote, a resume is more than an amalgam of individual words describing different facets of your personal and professional life. The words contained within your resume, like individual dots comprising a pointillist painting, combine to form a coherent vivid image in the mind of its reader. Although its language may not be as expressive as that contained within a novel or as colorful as what may appear on the canvas of one of Seurat’s paintings, each word has the potential to alter how your resume is received by recruiters. It could ultimately, like an uninviting blotch of brown and black interrupting a perfectly cheery painting of a summer afternoon in the park, undermine the entire enterprise. The upshot of this is that something that takes up valuable real estate on a resume, such as your email address, could dash any hopes you may have of finding work. Read more

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