I’m still in the midst of staffing frenzy at work, though things are looking better than they were. I suppose the impending recession is to the benefit of some. On average, I seriously read about 10-20 resumes per day, and about twice that on Mondays to account for the weekend. Most of these resumes are written fairly well, but there’s one mistake that seems to be consistent – 90% of them are over 5 pages long.
Yes. 5 printed pages. For a resume.
One might think this was limited to folks with 10+ years of experience. One would be dead wrong. From what jobs a person has had for the last four years since college to every internship, co-op, part-time job and paper route, each are glorified with 2-3 “action statements” or, even worse, a paragraph. My favorite example is one that contains something like this (I’m fabricating this example in its entirety):
Dog Walker (self-employed) 5/1996 – 10/1996
- Responsible for complete care of 10-12 canines several times per week
- Created detailed exercise plans for all clients and executed them on a regular basis
- Delvered on-time, consistent service
Ok, first of all… you’re applying to be a software engineer. You’ve been doing something similar for about four, maybe five, years. For what reasons would you possibly want me to know that you spent a summer twelve years ago walking dogs?
WHY IS THAT IMPORTANT?
Had this been from an actual resume, I’d have serious concerns about the level of judgment of this individual. They either sincerely believe that their summer excuse to walk around in nice weather was relevant to the work they’d be doing designing and developing software, or someone else told them to put EVERYTHING they had ever done onto a resume. So perhaps it is relevant. I will allow for the obvious fact that I’m not the world’s greatest hiring manager. I have to give folks like this some benefit of the doubt, but this was a rant, and now that rant is over. </rant>
There’s a serious purpose to this post. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what I like to see in a good resume. To me, a resume has one purpose — to get you an interview. So, you might think it goes without saying that the best way to do this is to design your resume to effectively communicate why YOU are the best candidate for a particular job… and let me tell you, sending a novel when a haiku would do is never, ever going to win you anything.