You Don't Need a Resume – You Need a Few
Posted on: 2010-01-15
by Work Her Way Expert Contributor Emily Bardeen
God invented word processing so that we can create a tailored resume every, single time we apply for a job. I am absolutely certain of it.
In ancient times – B.W.P. – (before word processing) there was no “insert”; no “delete”; no “search and replace”. Imagine…an entire world without “undo”! It was so sloggingly slow to modify a resume that pretty much everybody wrote one resume; end of story.
Inexplicably, even in our modern, A.W.P. times, most job seekers still use just one resume. And it is easy to understand why. The thought of it is just so deliciously, temptingly easy: you write your resume once – and you’re done.
Sadly, easy is one thing; effective is another.
The primary goal of a resume is to get an interview. A tailored resume is almost always more effective at getting an interview than a single, “generic” resume.
To get an interview your resume needs to demonstrate you can do the job. It is hard work to respond to job postings but it is also hard work to read hundreds of applications and decide who are the best candidates to interview.
In a very basic sense, initial resume reviews are about piles: in my corporate life there were ”definite interview”, “maybe” and “floor” piles. Your mission is to get in the” definite interview” pile or at least the ”maybe” pile. To put it another way – stay off the “floor”!
The people or machines reviewing your resume do not have the time, inclination or ability to assume anything about you. If your resume doesn’t clearly show you can do the job, you are headed for the floor.
Tailoring your resume significantly increases your probability of getting an interview. The single resume approach is too generic to demonstrate you can do a specific job. Unless your one resume just happens to be a perfect fit – and what are the chances of that – it is a “maybe” or “floor” strategy at best. Read More...
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