Chapter 4 text 4

A RESUME-A BALANCE SHEET TO YOUR CREDENTIALS

A wise old friend once told me, "Too much of anything is bad for you." Too much money fosters greed, too much work can lead to burnout, and too much rich food can cause heart disease.

You won't find a more appropriate philosophy once you begin to develop your resume. Like the famous line from Dragnet, "Just the facts," a resume should provide a snapshot of your background and education, not a detailed description telling how you reached your accomplishments.

The only objective of a resume should be to attract the attention of a potential employer and secure a personal interview.

With this in mind, our next step will not be a dissertation focusing on the correct way to construct a resume. Instead, we will counsel you through the three most significant errors that candidates make on their resumes.

1. Lengthy resumes

2. Unclear listings of education and work experience

3. Too much personal information

Error #1. Lengthy Resumes

The single greatest factor that results in your typical "Dear John" rejection letter has nothing to do with your education, qualifications, or experience. The most damaging action that can provide that immediate knockout punch is a lengthy resume.

Resumes should be limited to two pages even if you've held fifteen positions of increasing responsibility over thirty years. Why the concern with length? First, lengthy resumes are a surefire tip-off to your age. If you are in your late fifties or early sixties but look and act forty, you want the opportunity to get in front of a potential employer to show off your youthful outlook and appearance.

Forget all the EEO laws and preaching about hiring older workers. Many employers still shy away from anyone over fifty because there's a significant pool of younger, qualified candidates who don't command high salaries.

Second, lengthy resumes are difficult to handle and track when they have to be reproduced or faxed. For example, in response to an employment ad, we received a seven-page resume from a senior executive in a food-processing company. Since a great sense of urgency existed, my instructions were to fax all appropriate resumes to my client immediately. To fax the seven-pager, we had to remove the staple, and we continually found ourselves mixing up the pages with other resumes that only had one or two pages. Finally, in frustration, my assistant questioned the necessity of sending the discourse since our fax could only feed ten sheets for each transmission. Her comment: "If we eliminate this short story, I will only have to make one transmission."

After carefully thinking about it and reviewing the resume again, this candidate didn't survive the cut. With the seven-page resume, it was easy to pinpoint at least a few disqualifying factors because there was so much information to choose from. If it takes more than two pages to list your credentials, you are setting yourself up for failure.

The rule is simple. If it takes more than one stamp to mail your resume, you're overselling on first contact.

Error #2. Unclear Listings of Education and Work Experience