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Re: I just got one of those resumes

Subject: Re: I just got one of those resumes
From: Kat Nagel <mlists -at- masterworkconsulting -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Fri, 1 Feb 2002 15:12:35 -0500

Kat wrote:
> I've had interviewers sneer at my style-based resume because they
assumed it was prepared by a resume service. The last one said: "I
can always tell when somebody uses a resume service. Real people
don't bother with that stuff. It's a waste of time unless you expect
> to crank out hundreds of resumes assembly-line style."

Paul responded:
I'm beginning to wonder if folks like the interviewer quoted in the above
example are just anti-Word (or anti-style) phobics. They don't understand
it, and to rationalize their ignorance of a basic tool of Word they
characterize those who know how to use it as geeks or people who aren't
"real."

No, in this case the manager was just tired of wading through stacks of spiffy-looking cookie-cutter resumes and listening to people who had been coached on all the 'right' answers to interview questions and STILL ending up with candidates who couldn't do the job. He had started looking for clues that would tell him when he had one of those coached-to-perfection clones in front of him so he wouldn't waste time on them.

The reason he interviewed me even though my style-based resume triggered his clue detector? I listed "Extracting necessary information from elusive clients and cranky developers" as one of my skills. He couldn't believe that a resume service would have let that through. (No, I still didn't get that job, but he's referred me to a couple of colleagues for the odd freelance gig.)


But even given this weird experience, Kit -- did you remove the styles from
your resume to appear more "real" to people like this?

No. I still use a combination of styles and manual tweaking in my Frame and Word resumes, and provide a neat-looking plain text alternative for those agencies and HR departments that insist on slurping my carefully crafted prose into their personnel databases so they can vomit out ugly automated 'standard profiles' for each candidate. And I *always* take along a copy or two of my real printed resume to correct some of the grosser abuses perpetrated by those automated HR bots <snarl>.

Kat Nagel

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References:
RE: I just got one of those resumes: From: Jane Carnall
Re: I just got one of those resumes: From: Paul Strasser
Re: I just got one of those resumes: From: Kat Nagel
Re: I just got one of those resumes: From: Paul Strasser

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