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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 771
old hand
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old hand
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 771 |
I hear you, FF ~ when I taught resume workshops to techies, I always told them a list was never enough... they had to qualify their experience or it was just yapping in the wind! And as for your three stacks, I once applied for a position as the resident caretaker for a cemetery. I don't remember how I adapted my resume for that one, but I wrote the best cover letter of my life ~ saying that while I may not be the most qualified applicant, I'm certain to be the most enthusiastic. Then I went on to detail my hobby, having my picture taken at the graves of famous people Hi tsuwm!. I did the follow-up call as a lark, and the woman I spoke to said "OH, you're the one! You're on the top of the definite maybe pile!"  I never got an interview, but it's still a feather in my cap that I got into that pile!
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Joined: Jan 2002
Posts: 1,526
veteran
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veteran
Joined: Jan 2002
Posts: 1,526 |
I always told them a list was never enough... they had to qualify their experience or it was just yapping in the wind!
If one had nothing better to do than make phone calls all day, it might be worthwhile to call each candidate and ask what XYZ means on their resume. Or if one only had a handful of resumes to begin with, it might not be so bad. But when you've got dozens of resumes demanding dozens of calls (and everyone you call is going to want a call back yea or nay), this adds up to real time and lots of it.
I don't mind the shorthand stuff, if they've got a few really specific projects synopsized. This is a case where, if one used a single, big word that would encapsulate a lot of meaning, it would be appropriate on the resume. Can't think of a specific example at the moment, but it's easily conceivable.
About 95% of the prospective candidates for the positions I filled ought to have taken your course. I can't believe how bad some of these things are. Not to pick on them, but the Georgia Tech resumes are particularly useless. I've asked our HR people to say something to GT's intern coordinators, but I don't know if anything came of it. I've asked them to quit sending me resumes that just list this crap, because they're wasting my time, but they continue to do it. I think they must just look for keywords.
It's good that you mention the cover letter, too. This seems to be a lost art. I've only gotten a few cover letters over the years, but I'm guessing, without actually doing any statistics, that those who do them stand a better chance with me.
What I do is make my resume as general as I can and then go on to more targeted stuff in the letter. About half of my jobs have been gotten through the old boy network (the "old boy network" is not a good or bad thing in itself), but when I have gotten at job from scratch:
There were several students who graduated same time I did with 4.0s who sent out 200 or more resumes and got maybe 1 interview and 1 offer. In my wife's last job search, she sent out over 100, with 2 interviews and 2 offers. In my first search, I sent out 7 letters/resumes, got 7 interviews and 2 offers (and my gpa was not near that good). Another time, I sent out, I think maybe 3 resumes and got 2 offers. I deduce the resume should contain general information about abilities and experience with supporting information. The cover letter should contain one or two examples of experience that target the particular company with a little more detail than the resume contains, but not much. In both cases, the language should be clear.
I made my wife crazy on my last job search. When she started her search, she typed her resume up in one day and sent it out the next day, made continual revisions, contained many typos, etc. When I did mine, it took me a week for my first draft. I then got comments from several people whose opinions I value on this subject. Many of the opinions were contradictory. I revised and revised and sent my first copy out a month after I started. I had already turned down a job with the new company that won our contract and was about to be unemployed along with my wife. She took 18 months to find a job. I know lots of people much smarter than me who took 6 or more months. I took a little over a week, I think, possibly two. It's got nothing to do with smarts or ability. It has everything to do with planning and execution. The planning part has nothing to do with words, I guess, but the execution (both the letter and the resume) is a neat intellectual exercise:
1. Figure out what you want to do.
2. List all the projects you've ever done.
3. Figure out what aspects in the list 2 supports the list 1.
4. Figure out what you want to say in the resume, write it, revise, revise, revise.
5. Research the prospective employers: BBB, D&B, former employees (often friend of a friend of a friend).
6. Read the job listing very carefully AND read the other jobs listings AND from these figure out what they *really* need beyond what they're listing. (I don't recall details, but I remember in several cases I lacked "required" experience, but had other abilities.)
7. ONLY SEND RESUMES TO PLACES YOU REALLY WANT TO WORK.
8. Write a targetted cover letter that gets right to the point and provide examples of experience that address the list from point 6. Also, you want to convey the impression that you're familiar with the problem space, or at least have some appreciation of it and interest in it.
I suspect it would be a lot harder today, and take a lot longer, but if it came down to it, I'd use the exact same method today that I used back then. This corresponds to how one would like to write programs, if one had enough time - you spend the bulk of the time thinking very carefully and very deeply about the problem and a relatively small amount of time writing the code. You want the final language to be terse, but neat, clear and easy to read and assimilate. No fluff. No personal stuff. No excruciating details, but support what you said you can do. I understand why my wife was anxious, but I honestly don't think a month is too much time to write a resume. Even two or three months seems quite reasonable to me. Heck, for a big career change, or to land one's dream job, I can even see taking much longer in some cases.
k
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Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803 |
the distinction here
Well, Nancy, someone might say they used MS Excel to do profit and loss spreadsheets but that they utilized it to do some other thing that it wasn't designed for but that worked quite well under the circumstances.
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