Did you ever have a friend who remembers all the ‘funny lines’ from The Simpsons? For a little while, they are fun to be around, but after more than an hour, it gets really boring. Why? Because everything they think of reminds them (and you) of The Simpsons.
I feel the same way about resumes in the job search, most people focus way too much on them – and waste most of their job-search effort as a result.
First lets kill a few myths:
1) there is NO SUCH THING as the perfect resume, everyone will have a different opinion and every resume-writer will say that they can ‘improve it’ (for a fee)
2) a perfect resume will not get you a job (by itself). It wasn’t meant to, it was to qualify you for an ‘in person’ interview. Plus there are too many resumes online, meaning there is a lot of “noise” and finding your perfect resume would be like finding a needle in a haystack.
3) the resume is not a CRITICAL part of an effective job search. Resumes are most commonly used to post on job-boards and to reply to listings on job-boards, but most people do not actually find a job by going through this process. A resume is an important part of the search, but if you manage your search correctly, it is used almost as an ‘afterthought’/..
So why does your resume hurt you? Because you believe that it will find you a job and it is worth spending as much time as necessary to ‘get it perfect’. Since there is no perfect resume you are wasting your time by thinking that re-re-re-writing it will have different results than what it is now having (next to none). By having the resume as a central part to your job-search, you aren’t doing the type of job-search that really works -one that focuses on networking and target lists.
Put another way, most people believe that the resume is “the hammer” in your job-search and that they have to focus on ‘working with the hammer’ even if it is not getting the results you want – maybe a different hammer will work better – different color, shape, weight? But what if the real answer is ‘you should put down the hammer and use something that works better’?
The problem isn’t the resume, but it is the job-search process that you spend most of your time on (when you think the resume is the most important part of your search).
Can you see the forest through the trees?
Good hunting
Barry
