Apparently my resume is extinct

Everything else
1

So says the Globe & Mail, anyway.

When was the last time you reviewed that old résumé in detail? Have you noticed that the success stories that once gave you leverage no longer have the same impact as they did before? How do you plan to manage your career and its advancement when your résumé and skills are becoming extinct?

Well, it’s been five years now and this job had nothing to do with my resume (it’s a resumption of a prior contract), so I can accept that my resume is out of date. And yet…

  1. What are the characteristics that make you relevant in your work today?

a. How do they contribute to your success and significance in the organization you serve? Are you actively investing in these characteristics? Your investment isn’t just about money alone, but how you are developing the right network of people that can help you make the best investment decisions in support of these characteristics.

  1. Are you building your personal employee brand?

a. Ask 20 people to answer the following questions about you:

i. What is your enduring idea?

ii. What is your primary differentiator?

iii. What is the primary experience that you deliver to those around you?

iv. Whom does your personal employee brand serve?

b. If 90 per cent (18 out of 20) give you the same responses, you have a powerful identity that you need to leverage more actively in creating opportunities that matter for your career goals. If that number is below 90 per cent, you have some work to do and I highly recommend that you download my eBook, Why a Personal Employee Brand will Save Your Career and Your Workplace. Having an identity that you can control in the workplace is tremendously important before you get ready to make your next move.

  1. What is your unique Point of View (POV)?

What gets others to talk about your ideas and perspectives in meaningful and purposeful ways? What is your unique point of view (POV) that can cultivate new growth opportunities for your existing employer – or a new one? Your POV must help guide a new type of conversation that broadens your impact and influence and that showcases your skills with other influencers in the organization. In today’s marketplace, you must work to get discovered!

I don’t even know what most of that means. Employee “brand”? God, I hate the bullshit terminology that gets thrown around when it comes to finding a job. I dread my contract ending and having to go through all that crap again.

2

Didn’t read the article, but the quote you posted is mostly just hiding a couple of common sense (play up your strengths and make yourself known) ideas under a mound of HR bullshit. One big indicator that it’s crap is the “I highly recommend that you download my eBook” line, which makes it an ad for the author’s book (even if it’s free). Unfortunately, I’m don’t have any good sources of non-crap (jargon-free and practical) resume and employment advice, but it does exist.

3

I’ve only sat in as an interviewer a handful of times recently, but when I did we still focused a lot on work history as an indicator of skills and a guide for further questions in the interview, and filtered resumes on that basis. I don’t care what your ‘personal employee brand’ is, I want to know if you’re good with C# and databases!

4

Yeah, I read a lot of resumes and the only things I really care about is if your work history indicates that you’ve got relevant skills and are a good employee. Everything else I’ll get from the interview.

5

Are you building your personal employee brand?

What is your enduring idea?

What is your primary differentiator?

Do you want me to deprioritize my current reports until you advise me of a status upgrade?

6

I had no idea branding was so popular.

7

We brand all our employees so that if they escape, they can be returned to us.

8

Clearly you’re in the video game industry.

9

Hm… I’m going to have to reach out to some people to disambiguate this one. Ok if I circle back with you later?

10

I’VE GOT YOUR PRIMARY DIFFERENTIATOR RIGHT HERE, BITCH

11

Man, that Fünke is all anyone’s talking about.

12

fixed

13

Any new action items must not affect the main deliverable.

14

Skimmed until I reached, “I highly recommend that you download my eBook” then laughed.

15

Strip out the corporate gobbledy-gook and I think he makes some sense…

In the employer market, you’re essentially a product that needs to stand out in the marketplace. Your resume is the marketing document for you - and does it tell a concise story about you? In my case, I picked out 3-4 strengths and made sure my whole resume told a supporting story for them. So far it seems to be getting me interviews, which could just be because I think the top half of my resume is pretty good… but in any case its all you can ask a resume to do for you.

16

Working on my resume has eaten up quite few hours of my life the past few weeks since I’m now in business school.

Generally speaking, they recommend framing your work results in a ACR ( Action-Context-Result) format - less job description and more business driven. The idea is to tell a story based on your business successes via your resume to grab the resume screener’s attention.

Coming from a technical background I got creamed the first few times I went through the process but seeing the result after a number of reviews I must admit that it’s a much more compelling resume now than it was before.

17

Don’t you ever want to have fun with that type of bullshit exercise though? Like put down:

Action

Railed your little sister

Context

Bathroom stall

Result

Confirmed rumor of whoreishness

18

It’s funny because it’s incest!

19

But isn’t that much more compelling it than a generic job description like

  • Tested local products and wrote reviews in local paper ?
20

He said YOUR little sister, not his. Unless you guys are brothers…