Sorry I have been away for a while, I have been overseas. Spending a week time phased 8 hours causes you to loose your mind. Not as in going insane, as in lost with your luggage and it takes a while to find you again.
Today I was helping my cousin look for a job. She wanted me to take a look at her resume and see what I thought. Hmm, well, its long… and boring… that seems a bad combination. And really, it has none of what makes her unique. My cousin is bold, daring, creative, fierce, intelligent, artistic… Her resume was vanilla. It was the type of resume a recruiter tells you to produce which will be perfectly camouflaged in the pile of other resumes which are tailored to avoid upsetting a single recruiter. You have to be true to yourself:
Are you this?
Or this
Which ever it is, be that. Finding a really great job is counter intuitive, its not about casting your net wide and making sure you will be considered for anything that might fit, its about narrowing your focus and targeting exactly what you want, the exact company, the exact position, a boss that loves you. A great boss wants you because of who you are not in spite of who you are. If they are not actively seeking out your unique traits then when you do start the job you are screwed because over time the real you will come out. And if they don’t appreciate the real you then you will be unhappy, raises will suck, and eventually you will quit or be fired and you will wish it had happened earlier.
My advice to my cousin, go back, and get yourself in the perfect state of mind to let your personality out. That state of mind you have on the first, second and third dates where you are trying to impress. The state of mind where you are cracking great jokes and telling stories, you know the stories about the most interesting parts of your life. That’s the person who has to shine through on your resume. So go back, drink a glass of wine and be yourself as opposed to “ugh, I hate writing my resume, this sucks”. What an epiphany! Exactly. Your mind state when you write your resume will come through loud and clear to the reader whether that is fear, loathing, Las Vegas, whatever, you may as well have screamed it at the recruiter so get in the right state of mind!
Your state of mind always comes out in your writing, even something structured like your resume. For me, I have been writing my blog at night after leaving every ounce of creativity I have at the office. It makes my writing far less conversational and no where near as funny as I would like because I get into the , just get it done as fast as possible, state of mind. That defeats the purpose of my writing. I am writing because I like it, not because its a chore. If I want to write great blogs I have to get in that state of mind that lets out the real me and that is not generally at 10pm after a day of BS.
So, you want that great job? Go back and rewrite your resume, do something completely you. If you are applying for a marketing position then format your resume as a GTM strategy where you are the product. If you area developer build an app that serves as your resume complete with architecture diagrams and code samples right in the app. If you are bold then be bold and if you are introverted then let that shine through and be introverted. As Ty Webb says, be the ball Danny, have the mental state of mind you want reflected in what you are about to do, because if you hate the task then your output is going to suck.
Here is a less irreverent post from a far more famous person than me who postulates a similar philosophy. 10 Resume Mojo Boosters Most People Miss
The Tao of Todd 