What Exactly Am I Making a Resume For?

In the course of talking about job hunting with friends, colleagues, and randos in Slack and elsewhere, I end up talking about resumes. A lot. There is, (in my (not so) humble) opinion, a sizable misunderstanding about what resumes are, what they do, how they should look, the effort one should (or shouldn’t) put into creating them, and more.

Given the current period of churn in the tech industry and the resulting uptick in the frequency with which I’m having these types of conversations, I decided to commit to what’s become a standard part of my “so you’re looking for a new job?” spiel to paper (or at least electrons).

So… what, in my (again, not so humble) opinion, are resumes meant to do?

Contrary to popular belief, common use, and what you may have been told in school at some point, a resume is not a loving, insightful, and/or detailed retrospective of your work history. It is not meant to stand as de facto proof of your skills. It is not a biography of your work.

You create (and send) resumes because it’s a required step for the purpose of the application, not because it’s particularly convincing. In the long run, it does very little to make the case for hiring you. After all, people could (and do) write literally ANYTHING on their resume, and there’s no way to validate it until the hiring manager… wait for it now: Sits down and talk with the candidate!

This brings me to my main point: A resume serves EXACTLY one purpose: to entice the recipient to call you for an interview. If you could send a blank page that said “will bring cookies and beer,” and it would result in a phone call, you should do that. (Do not do this. It doesn’t work. Don’t ask me how I know.)

Therefore, your primary goals – which will inform both the format and the content of the information you share – are to:

1. Get past the automated HR filters every company uses these days so that a real human sees your resume.
2. Entice that human to set up an initial call, where the REAL interviewing will begin.

Let’s talk about item #1 first. And I’ll start with a semi-well-known “resume hack”:

White Fonting

The idea behind the buzzword is simple: you take keywords and/or the job description itself and include it in your resume, using the smallest font size possible and coloring the text white, rendering it invisible to the human reading the page; but the text still registers with the automated systems that ingest and auto-scan the resume. The required keywords are detected, and the resume is passed to the next stage.

Sometimes.

Sometimes, the text actually messes up the experience section on the application, causing the resume to be rejected when it might have otherwise passed. In other cases, a human sees what’s happened and rejects the resume because it’s perceived as “cheating”. (My personal feeling is that using software to auto-filter resumes is cheating, and cheating a cheat is basically Kobayashi Maru-ing the thing, and I’m 100% team Kirk on this.)

That said, it’s clear (to me, at least) that white-fonting is neither reliable nor guaranteed but does work in some cases. Use with caution.

Sometimes, it IS Who You Know.

As I’ve already explored, there is a demonstrable value to having someone on the inside to help shepherd your resume along the application journey. Internal referrals often give your resume an automatic pass to the first real (hiring manager) interview stage. Even when it doesn’t, at the very least, it increases the likelihood you’ll get feedback if you don’t make the cut.

If you don’t know anyone at the company in question, it’s time to trot out your LinkedIn skills to find people who know the people you need to know. Get introduced. Offer to buy someone in your targeted group/department/specialty a coffee and pick their brain about the company and work.

Don’t fish for a job. Reach out for a conversation. Once you’ve met and allowed them to understand who you are and what you are about, THEN you can express interest and ask if that person would be willing to give you a referral.

You Get What You Give

Be prepared to customize your resume. Highlight (or, in some cases, re-write) the resume to accentuate the needs expressed in the job description and de-emphasize elements that are less important.

Does that mean more work for each job application? Yes. Should you do it for every single job? OF COURSE NOT. You’d do this for the high-value opportunities, not the “this came up as I was scrolling LinkedIn” jobs. But remember that the effort you put into an application very often reflects the value of the outcome. Not always, but often.

For the second part, I am going to emphasize that in every place you can quantify a result, you need to do so.

It’s Not What You Said; It’s How You Said It

Again, a resume is not just a list of “I did this sh…tuff.” It should convince the reader that you are able to produce results FOR THEM. By measurably quantifying the effects and impacts of your past work, you implicitly state your ability to do the same for them.

Consider the difference:

• “Cultivated a healthy work-life balance culture for both in-office and remote employees by creating groups and events for in and out-of-work activities.”
  …vs…
• Improved employee satisfaction stats by 5% YoY by creating groups and events for in and out-of-work activities, with an average of 65% attendance over two years.

• Increased product visibility by integrating a new records management system to become a more competitive offering for new clients
  …vs…
• $5k revenue increase MoM for the first three months and +30% adoption rate by integrating a new RMS, making the offering more visible, competitive, and valuable.

Obviously, you might not always have numbers for the things you’ve done. This suggests a few things to me:

1. Start making a habit of noting these types of results – not just because they look good on a resume, but because the business you work for now is ALSO interested in these types of results.
2. Challenge managers to provide these types of outcome statistics and question work when no perceivable value can be attained.
3. As you are writing or updating your current resume, note the items where you can offer ranges, where you can stand by terms like “significant increase” or “measurable impact,” and which items simply defy quantification.

For those items that have no measurable outcome, consider why you’re including it. Again, “At my old job, I did stuff” is not a compelling argument to hire you. Sure, you need to show that you have experience with a specific language or technology. But “I know how to do things” or “I can learn how to do things” can be communicated in other ways besides taking up valuable inches of resume space as a laundry list of tasks.

Separate and Elevate

Consider separating the work result from the work history.

Have one section for “Places I Worked” that simply lists dates, company names, and job titles.

Then, disassociate the tasks from the job by grouping them based on technology, results, or some other category. Nobody really cares that you did these things at company X, but those things at company Y. It’s more interesting to see all the ways you’ve used Java to create results or your various improvements to team productivity. By grouping the work you’ve done by category, you create a compelling picture of your skills.

The (mostly) Un-Necessary Summary

You need to trust that the interview(s) will reach out to you and ask for specifics, background, or context. In fact, a well-designed resume will cause the reader to want to do exactly that.

As always, I hope this helps. If you have additional questions, contradictions, or corrections, leave them in the comments.

Also published here.