leave it to the professionals

I have a lot of respect for what Marc Cenedella Founder & CEO of TheLadders.com has created. I love the idea of a niche job search site that focuses on $100k plus jobs. The subscription-based site not only posts exclusive top-earning jobs, but includes valuable career advice as well. Below is an excerpt from Marc's most recent newsletter regarding the art of resume writing. With his typical humor, he recommends leaving your resume to the professionals...

Hey, we've all seen a ton of commercials on the tube, right? So why do we have an advertising department? Why don't we just shoot the TV commercials ourselves? Well, we leave that to the professionals.

And what is a resume? A lot of people view it as a chance to list all the true facts about their work history. But that reminds me of the old joke about HP's very straightforward engineering culture - if they had invented "sushi" they would have named it "cold, raw dead fish on rice wrapped in seaweed." Now, that's true, but it is hardly appetizing :)

Similarly, your resume is advertising copy. A great resume advertises your accomplishments in a way that makes it clear what you've contributed in the past, and by implication, what you are capable of doing in the future.

So it's not "Managed a group of 40 professionals" or "Responsible for a $77 mm budget." Those lines are kind of reminiscent of the old HP way - true, but not particularly appetizing. (And before all you HPers write in, let me just say I am very happy with both the performance and the marketing of the modern HP organization!)

The right way is to point out your capabilities: "Re-organized department, cutting 15 positions and adding 10 new sales staff to increase profitability by $7 mm (17%)" or "Created successful task force that identified 103 efficiency opportunities and implemented 92% of them within 6 months, saving $13 mm in annual costs."

But it's not just what you put, it's what you leave out that really makes a resume. As Jerry Garcia said, "it's not the notes, it's the holes between the notes" that make the music.

Let JOBSLAY turn your resume noise into sweet music with any of our affordable professional resume services.