November 17, 2011

The diminishing returns of resume tweaking

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Guy Kawasaki. Ever heard of him? He's an influential venture capitalist and thought leader operating out of the Bay Area who authors one of the top blogs in the country.
Several years back, he wrote a blog I'll never forget. In this piece, he informed hundreds of thousands of his readers that they were complete and utter fools if their résumé was longer than a single page.

If memory serves, I believe his quote was: "As a rule of thumb, if you can't pitch your company in 10 slides or pitch yourself in one page, your idea is stupid and you suck, respectively."

While shocking, perhaps, is Mr. Kawasaki's advice on this subject wrong? No. Not if you're trying to get a job with him or one of his companies.

Then again, neither were the top recruiters and HR executives who commented on his article, calling his advice downright ridiculous. These other experts insisted that most people, especially senior professionals, could never possibly get away with limiting their qualifications to a single page.

That friend of yours who works in HR and insists you trim the early years off your résumé to avoid potential age discrimination? She's not wrong. But neither is that other friend of yours who works as an outside recruiter and gives you the opposite advice, saying you should include your complete work history to show you're not "hiding" something.

You get my drift. Nobody offering advice on résumés is inherently wrong, because résumés, at heart, are subjective documents. People are entitled to their own opinions about what they like to see in résumés when they're the ones doing the hiring.

Some like it when job seekers mention their hobbies; others don't. Some people prize brevity; others like to see lots of information packed onto each page. And don't even get me started on the debates around font choices, the use of objective statements or whether "functional" résumé formats could ever possibly land somebody an interview.

Simply put, if you're a job seeker today, your sanity depends on accepting the fact that you're never going to please everybody with your résumé decisions. It's impossible, so don't even try.

Find a template YOU like, list your key facts, flavor it with a few relevant buzzwords and then move on to where the action really happens -- getting down to the business of networking, prospecting and generating leads!

Matt Youngquist is the president and founder of Career Horizons, a career counseling and corporate outplacement firm. Email him at myoungquist@nwjobs.com.

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1 Comments

Jennifer Olsen on November 29, 2011 8:34 AM | Reply

I agree that there is no magic bullet when it comes to resume style but there are some things that will help across the board. The most important aspect of your resume is the content. It must contain information that matters to a potential hiring manager and most hiring managers want to know about your results. While no one font is guaranteed to get the attention of every recruiter, using only one font throughout your resume makes it more visually appealing. I offer more resume writing tips in my recent blog “Distinguish Yourself – Resume Writing Tips for Job Seekers” http://springboard.resourcefulhr.com/?p=1819

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