Re: Resumes - writing your own

[John Posada <jposada -at- NOTES -dot- CC -dot- BELLCORE -dot- COM>]

Sue Ellen Adkins wrote:

>>Each counselor insisted my resume be no longer than one page. That length
>may
>>be fine for new graduates; however, during my twenty years with one
>employer,
>>I had changed jobs every two-three years.  The counselors condensed my
>>experience until I appeared as bland and interesting as distilled water!
>>
>>

And Tom Potter replied...
>I ran into the same problem. After 20+ years in the job market, I had a
>accumulated a varied range of experience. Just summarizing the different
>positions which I was qualified for ran to over five page. The problem is
>that all reviewers (be they harried secretaries or the actual hiring entity)
>looked for buzzwords (a human scanner, I suppose). I was forced to reduce my
>resume to three pages, and I'm sure I lost some positions because of the
>deleted material.


>Sue Gallagher replied back

>I think the best resume advice I ever received was in "What Color
>Is Your Parachute?" Paraphrased, it went sumpthin' like this...

>Use your resume to *raise* questions in the reviewers' minds, not
>answer them. If you tell them everything they'll ever need (or
>want) to know about you, there's no reason for them to contact you.
>If, however, you raise a question or two, they'll call you for the
>answer. Once you have contact, once you've got their attention, you
>can take control... "I'd love to show you that -- when can we meet?"

>And, you know, it *really works*!

John Posada came back with:

About a year ago, I prepared my resume and I thought it was a work of art.  It
gave precise detail on everything I'd done, how well I did it and what the
results of my actions at each job were.  The work of art ran 5 pages.  Lot's of
bullets, formatting, etc.

I sent it to a series of very specific job opportunities.

Guess what...nothing...no replies back, no interest, zippo.  I'd almost thought
that I'd sent it to non-english speaking people overseas for all the response
that I got.  When I followed up with them, it was ..."yeah, we have it, we'll
get back to you".

Then about 6 months later, I figured that I'd resend the resume, but since I
didn't expect much response, I thought I'd send it in a less-costly
manner...I'd fax them automatically from my PC and email those with addresses.
The problem was, since I was incurring long distance charges for the fax and I
wanted to keep my costs down, 5 pages plus cover letter plus fax cover sheet
was way to costly so I re-did the resume, taking out everything except who,
when, where.  I got the 5 pages down to 2 pages...and I just hated to leave out
all the juicy details.

You guessed it.  48 hours later, I'm getting 2-3 callbacks per day, and 3 days
later, I'm on the short list for a writing job doing EXACTLY what I wanted
(proposal writing) for a MAJOR player in it's field, at a rate of $36 per hour.
(BTW...yes, I got the job and I was the most costly person they interviewed.)

Hell....4 months later, I'm still getting calls.

To make a long story short...give the steak on the resume and leave the sizzle
for the interview.

John Posada
Technical Writer
Bell Communications Research, Piscataway, NJ
(908) 699-5839 (W)
jposada -at- notes -dot- cc -dot- bellcore -dot- com  (W)

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