In the past few months, I’ve noticed that the amount of
scrap paper on my shelf has grown exponentially. Scrap paper
already tends to be a creature like clothes hangers and Bic pens,
that breed when left in a dark, cool place. But this one time, at
least, I can tell you the reason for the increase. It’s
job-hunting season, and I’ve been working on my resume.
As a graduating senior, I cannot even begin to count the number
of hours I have spent on my resume: writing, rewriting, rebooting
my computer when Microsoft Windows inevitably crashes. The goal has
been, of course, to make me sound like the ultra-human,
I-can-be-anything-you-want-me-to-be-sir employee hopeful that I am.
The road to creating a successful resume is not easy, and it has
only been through a long, painful learning process that I have now
reached this conclusion: There is no point because most resumes are
full of it.
When I began the task of creating a resume of my own, I picked
up a copy of the UCLA Career Center’s Career Guide. The slim
blue-greenish book seemed to have the writing process knocked down
to a few simple steps, and I used this to construct an outline of
my educational background and work history, complete with concise
bulleted statements describing the duties of each job. How’d
I do?
No no no, shouted the Career Guide. Use bigger words. Change
“use” to “utilize”, “make” to
“develop”, and “copy” to
“reproduce”.
I started again, substituting my banal words for more
sophisticated language.
Now make up some better job descriptions, the Career Guide
said.
Why should I make up job descriptions? I was a library
volunteer. I shelved books.
You were a key member of a team in charge of creating and
maintaining an organizational system for the handling and
distribution of manuscripts, the Career Guide corrected.
Hey, that’s not bad, I thought. I changed it.
But where does that leave us now? If resumes are becoming little
more than exercises in creative writing, they become meaningless
measures for employers to judge applicants. In my quest to create a
successful resume, I’ve made several observations.
A resume must make you stand out. This means using big words to
convey a sense of having accomplished great things for your
previous bosses. Did you counsel, create, or decide anything? Did
you manage, operate, or organize? If you can’t find that
perfect verb the Career Guide has already provided a handy
reference list of Action Words to choose from.
But resumes must not make you stand out too much. Although
companies want to see that you exhibit qualities of leadership,
they don’t want a free-thinking hippie, either. Remember, you
are smart and innovative, but only in the context of furthering the
objectives of the organization. “Originality? Haha, oh no,
sir, I have no originality. I am a lump of clay ready to be molded
by your fine corporation.”
Another resume dictum is “Two is good. More is
better.”
All previous work experience must be given titles, and the rule
of thumb is the longer, the better. For example, “customer
sales representative” (“I worked in retail.”);
petroleum distribution specialist (“Would you like your
windshield squeegeed while you wait?”); engineer in charge of
meat inspection and preparation (“burger flipper”)
““ you get the idea. By simply studying other resumes, anyone
can develop creative titles that will shine up any dull job
description.
A final resume rule is toying with fonts and word processing
tools to make things stand out. Bolding, italicizing, underlining,
and writing in capital letters are key. These tactics are
indispensable to the writer because they automatically draw the eye
to the most important aspects of your resume. Incidentally, they
also provide the readers of your resume with highlights so that
they don’t have to read the entire thing. Clearly a win-win
situation which will make them think you are an intelligent person
who deserves a job immediately. Expensive bond paper is also a
plus.
We would like to assume that human resource representatives
already know the tricks, considering that only a few years ago,
many of them were struggling college graduates. However, creative
resume writing is a rite of passage for students these days.
Everyone is doing it, and you will too. Writing, rewriting,
rebooting, I’ve already had to dump my resume an innumerable
amount of times, and the proof is right there in the scrap paper
pile.
So what is the great lesson to be learned here? Dump your scrap
paper? No, not really. It’s that we must stop this resume
doublespeak and be real people who do real things that can be
explained in uncomplicated language. In the end, we should realize
that great titles do not make us ultra-human, but only “copy
editors of documents pertaining to previous occupational
experience” (resume writers).
Mukai is a fifth-year English and communication studies
student.