Re: resume length

[Erik Harris <ewh -at- PLAZA -dot- DS -dot- ADP -dot- COM>]

David Brown noted, during the resume length/content debate:
>At my first Tech Writing job interview, I was asked about my previous job as
>a youth supervisor for a summer jobs program.  I put it on my resume because
>I didn't have any Tech Writing job experience then, and I thought the job
>taught me good skills, even if they could be seen as unrelated to tech
>writing.

A useful anecdote, though I'd like to observe the following: Mr. Brown may
have felt that the supervisor job position on his resume could have been
"seen as unrelated to tech writing", but I am not so sure. As explainers of
technical topics, we writers definitely need skills that could come out of
Mr. Brown's previous job as a supervisor: verbal deftness, patience, gentle
use of authority, pedagogy, and plenty of other things.

When I sought my first tech writing job out of college, my resume made
pointed reference to my having been a darkroom supervisor--the position was
only for 10 hours a week, none of it spent in front of a computer, but
during those ten hours I repeatedly explained technical subjects to
neophyte art photographers about "fuzzy" darkroom techniques and how to
operate expensive machines. It stayed on the resume long enough to come up
in an interview, where the HR guy said, "Darkroom supervisor? Well, we can
probably skip over that, it's not really job-related." When I explained
that I thought it certainly was, he listened. I got that job, too. Now in
my third job, I have relegated that part of my Job Experience to a Personal
section of the resume, where all it says is "amateur photographer and
college darkroom supervisor". Ms. LaRock's violin talents probably belong
in a Personal section--which section should be just a paragraph of four to
six lines.

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Quod erat demonstrandum
Erik Harris
ewh -at- plaza -dot- ds -dot- adp -dot- com (weekdays)
TrinityPlc -at- aol -dot- com (home)