Published Dec 21, 2003
Nobody ever told me that, when I grew up, I’d have to be continually revising my resumé. New jobs, new areas of concentration, and now business school — everybody wants my resumé. And the perpetual topic of conversation and fear of every job-seeker — is my resumé up to snuff? Is it good enough? Does it head straight for the circular file or for the hiring manager’s desk? And, gosh, now I have to figure out how to market myself to business school applications committees.
My resumé has gone through several distinct evolutions, the most recent coming from extensive contact with a tech recruiter. That was a very useful interaction that left me with a very solid and well-expressed list of accomplishments. The downside: boy was it long, designed to detail every single accomplishment for potential employers. So I had to pare it down and tune it for b-school.
I considered putting together a distinct resumé for each school to which I applied, but I was not convinced that approach would add much value. My core set of messages is the same across each application — the goal, after all, is to express who I am. So the main task was to cut redundant information while still showing the wide range of tasks I’d carried out in past jobs. I also had to add in new information to beef up my academic credentials, which I hadn’t had to emphasize for my previous job searches.
Based on all this, I have a two-and-a-half page resumé. That seems a bit longer than ideal, but I’ve really had a wider range of responsibilities than most applicants of the same age.
My next task is to run this resumé past a few people I know, in particular one HR consultant I know. I’d like to make sure it’s impactful and grammatically correct. But, in the spirit of providing a record with which to embarrass myself and, hopefully, help other applicants, here’s draft one of my resumé
The oddest thing to me is that it’s a Word .doc (well only to an extent — I created it using OpenOffice, which can open and save Word .docs). Ever since I was in college I’ve created my resumés in BBEdit, a text editor, and Quark XPress, a page-layout application. Using the two documents has a few big advantages — creating copy in the text editor, which affords no formatting, makes it easier to concentrate just on the copy; then XPress, of course, is the premier page-layout application for a reason, so I can make the document look howsoever I feel will best emphasize the information.
But many schools want me to upload my resumé, and, for best compatibility, it appears that a Word .doc is the best way to store my resumé. So I’ll downgrade both my text-handling and my page-layout capabilities to do what is, after all, really important — communicate.