The Art of Reading Through The Artful Resume

Over the years, it seems like I had filled up an entire file cabinet drawer of resumes. This is because I ran a franchising company for a number of years, and our brand name was becoming strong in many states, so the resumes kept flooding in. Yes, they came in a lot faster during times of economic downturn, and it is amazing to see how they have changed in style, format, and even the type of paper used over the years. In fact, I opened up an old box of resumes not too long ago, and I read through a few of them.

What I found was at the beginning of the 90s these resumes were becoming quite flowery, a lot of creative writing activity you might say. By the year 2000 they were so sprinkled with adjectives and adverbs that it was hard to tell exactly what the person had done, although it seemed so positive that you might even feel compelled to hire them on the spot without even meeting them. Today, we have LinkedIn, and people put up their work experience with a few paragraphs that make them sound like they are indeed the second coming.

Now that I am in retirement I run a think tank, and I am amazed that people try to break into our think tank using the same artful resumes. However, if you read them very carefully and you take a pen and draw through all the adverbs and adjectives you are left with pretty much nothing. The individual served on a couple of committees here and there, they were not even in charge of the committees, and they had "worked under" a few good companies or strong leaders. They also happen to be in the room at the same time of various people that they often name drop.

In reality though by the time you are done reading through these artful resumes, you see that they belong more in a creative writing class or a public-relations midterm team project than they do in your square filing cabinet and they probably more belong in the round shaped filing system that goes out with the trash each week. I hope you will use this strategy when reading resumes in the future, merely removing all of the positive adverbs and adjectives will instantly reveal if the person is qualified or not.

It appears to me that everyone is now reading the same resume books and they seem to believe this is somehow acceptable. If you have no experience, none should be listed, as pretending only aggravates those who are serious about finding the best candidate. If you aren't the best candidate, you shouldn't be applying at my company, go work for my competition but don't waste my time. Indeed, if you are an employer or someone looking for a job I hope you will please take all of this into consideration and think on it.

Lance Winslow has launched a new provocative eBook on Career Concepts. Lance Winslow is a retired Founder of a Nationwide Franchise Chain, and now runs the Online Think Tank; http://www.worldthinktank.net/