An uncomfortable disclosure
You’ve lived your life up until now. You’ve done things. You learnt things. You made Magic.
In the act of making the Magic you’ve most likely traded your time, energy, and expertise for cash (or the digital equivalent) and on the other side of that trade were companies, or groups who paid you for the delivery of a service or a skill (and maybe some Magic if they got lucky).
You most likely need to keep doing that: trading yourself for financial remuneration because, well, life … and around and around we go.
For most folks the professional journey will be a series of associations with companies. And, typically, the start of that association will be a résumé (or CV – I’m going to use these terms as synonyms, even though I know they’re very different instruments).
Maybe you send in your résumé in response to a job opening you found, or you’re sending it to a friend who asked for it, or you’re just sending it because some companies like hearing from ‘accomplished individuals’.
Irrespective, you’ve sent your résumé, and The Company is now aware of you.
Here’s where I slip in my confession. I have always been fascinated by résumés. Know that if I find your résumé online, legitimately in the public domain, I’m grabbing it for my collection. Boy, feels good to have come clean about that … Anyway, why do I find them so intriguing? Think about what I wrote above: You, your life up until now, the things you’ve done, the things you’ve learnt, the Magic you’ve made, and you must write that all down. In a page (or two). You must decide how to present it, what goes in, what doesn’t, the language, the format, and all with the intent of not just *sending* the résumé, but in making sure The Company becomes *aware* of you based on their consumption of it (I have no intention of digging into the complications associated with algorithmic screening as part of this post).
I mean, how can it not be fascinating? In the creation of your résumé, you are making explicit and deliberate choices regarding how you hope this arrangement of things will affect how the reader perceives you.
I don’t know that I have any meaningful guidance to impart I’m afraid – either from my own résumé, or from having looked at hundreds (thousands?) of others. In general, I’ve tried to follow these general guidelines:
I’m a huge fan of honesty – don’t embellish.
Present your work through the lens of outputs and outcomes. An output is a tangible result of your work effort(s), while an outcome is the larger scale impact that may have resulted.
Use the SMART goals or STAR framework to describe these outputs and outcomes. The latter will help if the company uses Behavioural Interviewing (which if they don’t is a massive red flag – I’m going to write more on this in a future post).
Outside of that, it’s all pretty much up to you … As a parting gift, here’s a a Bartleby column, in an uncharacteristically satire-free style, describing some rather practical elements of ‘How to Write the Perfect CV’. It’s an excellent read, with some great – albeit high level – guidance.
I’ll be back soon to make more burblings on what happens next. Let’s say the résumé does catch The Company’s attention … what next? They’re probably going to want to talk to you … and, in my experience, how they do that provides an important signal to you as you think through whether you’d like to spend time working there. More on that soon.
