resumes

A reader writes:

I’m over 50 and have been laid off due to my company downsizing. Our HR director was kind enough to present a resume- writing session recently. He said that we should leave our year of graduation off our resumes, so as not to date ourselves. I don’t agree because to me it looks like one is hiding something (which you and others have indicated). Also, won’t HR and hiring managers be able to figure things out if we include dates/years of our jobs?

Yeah, the standard advice on this is to leave your graduation year off of your resume if you’re past a certain age. What that age is is open to debate, but generally I see candidates start to leave it off around 40.

It’s so common to do this that it doesn’t at all come across as if you’re hiding something. (In fact, I notice it more when a candidate in that age range leaves it on, simply because it’s much less common.)

Age discrimination concerns aside, it’s also irrelevant information — no one cares what your exact year of graduation was unless it was recent. If you’re freshly out of school, it’s relevant; if you’re not, it’s irrelevant.

You should, however, include the years that you held your jobs. Those are relevant — and not including those would look like you were hiding something. (Why are those relevant when the date of graduation isn’t? Because while I don’t really care when you wrote that paper on The Odyssey, I do want to know if your experience managing that team that achieved X was recent or if it was 30 years ago, and also whether you did it for seven months or four years. And in addition, education tends to be most relevant in the hiring process when you don’t have much else to sell your candidacy. It doesn’t really matter once you have solid work experience.)

One more point related to that:  I’d recommend not including jobs that are older than 15-20 years back. It’s really unlikely that they’re going to be relevant to your candidacy if they’re that far in the past, and it’s always odd to see a resume of a senior-level candidate with a really impressive last 15 years, who also uses space on her resume to talk about lower-level jobs she had two decades or more ago. A resume doesn’t need to be a comprehensive accounting of everything you’ve ever done; it’s a marketing document, and it’s fine to leave off much older jobs that don’t add anything to your candidacy.

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If you’re sending out lots of resumes without getting many calls for interviews, it’s time to conclude that your resume isn’t doing its job.

Over at U.S. News & World Report today, I list the 10 resume mistakes that I most commonly see — from simply being generic to leading with your education to using subjective terms to describe yourself and more. If you’re like most people, you’re making at least a few of these mistakes, which will put your resume promptly in the “no” pile.

You can read it here.

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A reader writes:

I have a question regarding job or volunteer experience that could be considered sort of embarrassing. I recently took over as a site administrator (or as the site wants to call me “webmistress” but that seems awkward and dominatrix-y to me) of a fan site for a well-known 90s boy band. It was never something I planned to do, but sort of fell into my lap as the original site creator was “retiring” and wanted someone who knew the back end of the website to take over. I was hesitant to take on another volunteer project, but in the end decided to step in when I realized that it could only help build my skills as a social media marketer and content creator.

My question is whether or not it’s appropriate to put this kind of experience on my resume. Obviously, I’m not embarrassed to like the group — how could I be if I curate news about them every day — but it’s not something that has ever come up in a professional setting before, and I don’t know how potential employers might respond. On the one hand, I feel like I’m already working against the “entitled young person” label, and drawing attention to the fact that I have a slight obsession with a boy band from the 90s might reinforce the “young and inexperienced” stereotype. On the other, I’m adding quantifiable achievements to my resume if I can announce that I’ve increased unique page views by 15% in a 2-month period or I’ve successfully run an internet event celebrating an anniversary for the group that resulted in a 50% increase in video views, 12% increase in Facebook followers and 300% increase in interaction. What are your thoughts?

Put it on there.

First, as you point out, it gives you quantifiable achievements, and that’s great. Achievements are achievements, and no amount of soulful crooning or heavily choreographed dance moves can take away from that.

Second, it’s going to jump out to lots of people simply because of its novelty value and they’re going to ask you about it. As long as you have a sense of humor about it, this will be a good thing.

Third, please immediately tell us who it is.

You can read an update to this post here.

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Five-page resumes: common among senior-level candidates.

Two-page resumes: common among senior-level candidates who actually get hired.

And I’m not saying there’s a cause-and-effect — it’s more that strong candidates just don’t write overly long resumes. They know how to edit and they know what matters and what doesn’t.

(I posted this on Facebook a few weeks ago but am posting it here now because of the questions about resume length in my last post.)

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What you don’t include on your resume can be as important as what you do include. Over at U.S. News & World Report today, I talk about 10 things that don’t belong on your resume, including your salary history, your photo, an objective, and other such odoriferous things. You can read it here.

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A reader writes:

I saw this post from Randy Cohen (formerly the author of The New York Times’ Ethicist column) on Facebook this morning:

“A tougher one I received at the column: may a job hunter omit a Ph.D. [on his resume] lest a potential employer find him overqualified? No. Some things are not an employer’s business – your religion or erotic proclivities or Facebook password. But a CV is meant to be a full account of your education and work history.”

I commented, making the argument you make about a resume being a marketing document designed to present the potential employee in the best light. To which he responded:

“You may be selective, of course, or some resumes would be 50 pages long, but you may not be deceptive, deliberately concealing work or education history that a potential employer has a legitimate right to know.” 

I commented again with some (made-up) practical examples: What if I have an MFA and am applying for a job in finance? What if I temped while I was unemployed? No response (as of now) from Mr. Cohen.

… so what do you think of this? Do you and he just disagree, or is it that you’re coming at the question from different angles (you as a manager, he as an ethicist)? Or maybe, in some cases, circumstances trump ethics (and in others, ethics trump circumstances)? Anyway, I was just interested in your thoughts on this.

First let me say that I really liked Randy Cohen’s Ethicist column and was disappointed when it ended! However, I think he got this one wrong.

An employer is no more entitled to a comprehensive accounting of your past than anyone else is. Your job as a candidate is to explain what in your past has prepared you to and demonstrates that you will do the job well — to say “here are the reasons I would excel at this job.” That’s what it means to apply for a job; you’re saying “here’s why I’d be the right fit.”

And everyone is basically agreed that this is the nature of a resume; it’s designed to show what you bring to the table. No one expects it to provide details of irrelevant coursework, or the project you worked on that almost ruined your company, or the fact that you were planning to go into the priesthood before you switched to medicine. (In fact, you’d be judged negatively for including those first two — you’d be seen as someone who couldn’t identify what is and isn’t appropriate information.)

And I’m not sure where Randy is coming from with this concept of an employer’s “legitimate right to know” everything in your past. Employers have a legitimate right to expect that you’re not lying (and an obligation to do their own due diligence on you, in the form of reference checks, etc.), but they don’t have any special right to receive every detail about your education and work history on a silver platter, unless you choose to base your candidacy on those.

Overall, I think his response reflects a slightly off-base understanding of what we, as a society, have agreed a resume is … and even what employers want/expect from a resume.  (Which is a reason that I wish non-workplace advice columnists wouldn’t venture into workplace advice. It often results in weirdness.)

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An awful lot of people have internalized the old rule that your resume can only be one page, but it no longer holds true. Times have changed!  Two-page resumes are common now, so if you’re been agonizing over how to stick to one page, agonize no longer.

There is one big exception to this, though, and that’s if you only have a few years of experience. If that’s you, stick to one page.  It looks a little silly to see someone two years out of school with a two-page resume; it’s rarely needed, and you’ll generally come across as a little self-important or unable to edit. There are exceptions to every rule, of course — but in my experience, everyone thinks they’re the exception on this, when only a small minority of people really are. So be brutal about sticking to one if your experience is limited.

I also see a lot of three-page resumes, but I’ve yet to be convinced that anyone is in a situation where they need a third page. (Obviously, if you’re under 30, don’t even think about this. Hell, if you’re under 40, don’t even think about this.) I’m not going to reject someone because they use three pages, but I’m also not sure I’ve ever seen anyone I wanted to hire who used a third page. I suspect there’s a correlation between hireability and the ability to concisely distill your accomplishments down to what matters.

If you’re trying to figure out how to get rid of your third page — or if you’re 23 and trying to figure out how to get rid of your second page — here are some things to take out:
* an objective (toxic!)
* that loooonnnng listing of skills (Pare it down to the essentials. And no, Word and Internet Explorer don’t belong there.)
* lengthy descriptions of stuff you did 20 years ago; your more recent accomplishments trump these anyway

Now, these rules aren’t automatic deal-breakers. If anyone is rejecting candidates because of a resume that’s a page longer than they’d prefer, that person probably isn’t very good at hiring. But length does play into the overall perception of you as a candidate — can you convey essential knowledge quickly, do you know what is and isn’t essential, etc.?  – and that overall assessment is hugely important.

And there’s another reason length matters: The longer your resume is, the less likely an employer is to see the parts you want them to see. The initial scan of your resume is about 20 seconds — do you want that divided among three pages, or do you want it focused on the most important things you want to convey? Short and concise means that employers are more likely to read the parts you most care about.

So while there aren’t unbreakable rules here, what we do have is a place for you to demonstrate some good judgment. Which is often harder than just following a rule.

* By the way, keep in mind that we’re talking about resumes here — not CVs, which are used in academia and Europe and which are longer.

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A reader writes:

I was wondering what your opinion is on professional resume writing services. Are they worth it? What about for new grads?

I have 5 years of post0secondary (a degree with a semi-connection to my current field, and a diploma directly connected to my current field) concurrent with 6 years of experience. Some of my experience is directly related to my current field (Early Childhood Intervention) and easily identifiable, some of it not so much (i.e.: admin work) but is still relevant (i.e.: my admin experience helps me keep accurate and detailed records and data for the children I work with.) Also, since I work with so many clients with such varying needs, my experience at my previous and current job reads like a laundry list of accomplishments and skills. It’s hard to be succinct and accurate when my role is kind of all over the map.

I was thinking of having my resume professionally done since I have no idea how to put my experience on paper in an organized way that will make sense to hiring managers. I feel like once I have the basic wording and formatting done I can use what I get from the service to tailor my resume to a job opportunity. Do you think this would be helpful, or is it a waste of money? Every time I sit down to update my resume (which was originally put together in high school and then reviewed by my University’s career center when I graduated — I got hired straight out of school so I never updated it for my current full time position), I get really overwhelmed and give up.

Do I just need to sit down and power through it or could having a set of professionally trained eyes sort it out for me be helpful?

I wish I had a good answer to this, and I don’t.  Actually, I have an answer but it’s unhelpful: If you find a good resume-writing service, it’s probably worth it, but there’s such a large chance of ending up with a bad one that it’s difficult to recommend it wholeheartedly.

I’m sure there must be good resume-writing services out there, but they seem to be rare. When I’ve looked at the example resumes that most of these services have online, I’ve been unimpressed — from the actual substance of their makeovers to just general sloppiness, like spelling errors and inconsistent verb tenses. (Of course, you can fix the latter yourself, but it says something about their overall quality.)

On the other hand, if you’re as stuck as you sound, maybe it’s worth having someone at least give you something to work from. Just make sure you see before and after samples before you commit, and don’t go with the first service you look at; hold out until you find one that seems to genuinely do a good job.

However … I’d at least start by trying to do it yourself. Look at some sample resumes online for inspiration (if any have an objective at the top, move to a new site) and try to do your own first. And don’t be daunted by the process — a resume is really just a reverse-chronological list of where you’ve worked and what you achieved there, with the basics about your education thrown in at the end, written in normal language with a focus on your accomplishments. Everything else is frosting. And as for feeling like your experience is all over the map, stick to the basics when something doesn’t feel relevant to what you want to do now, and add more detail about accomplishments when it is.

Give it a shot. If you do it and you’re convinced it sucks, then maybe it’s time to turn to a professional. Just be really, really picky about who you hire.

(By the way, let’s avoid pushing specific companies in the comments, since some messages are certain to be from those companies themselves and I’d rather not have the job of having to figure out what’s self-promotional and what’s an honest review.)

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Please, for the love of god, do not put large paragraphs of text on your resume.

People looking at your resume are going to skim it on the first pass. They are not going to read it word-for-word, and they are more likely to see what you want them to see if you use bullet points.

When an employer opens a resume and sees large blocks of text under each job, they immediately feel a little more tired than they did a minute before and think about taking a nap instead of trudging through your densely written resume. You want your resume to be coffee, not Ambien.

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