How do employers know when you are blowing smoke in your résumé?
Don’t hold my
feet to the fire on this, but allow me to hazard a guess as to how the résumé exaggeration process came
about.
Back in the
1960s, long before most jobseekers were born, I worked for an employment
agency. We did not refer to ourselves an employment
agency, but that’s what the license on the backside of a door said. Except
for staff rah-rah sessions, that door rarely closed.
We billed
ourselves as “professional recruiters” and “talent scouts.” Legally, however,
we were a state-licensed employment agency. The average jobseeker was none the
wiser.
It was during one of those rah-rah, closed-door meetings,
the topic of résumés arose. Out of all the traffic that wandered through, one jobseeker
caught our alpha shark’s attention. The individual’s résumé, however, amounted
to sheets of unreadable gibberish.
The assistant
office manager volunteered to “spruce it up.” Though she had never met the jobseeker,
she dashed into another room, sat down at an IBM Selectric Typewriter and retooled
the individual’s résumé.
Her revamped
version thrilled the alpha shark. He appeared giddy. With a few keystrokes, this
average Joe jobseeker was transformed into a miracle worker with a fabricated
work history of astonishing accomplishments. Our resident talent scout now had something
to market, if nothing more than an employment illusion.
Within a month,
we had a new department devoted solely to retooling résumés. The assistant
office manager’s efforts worked so well, the agency promoted her! It did not
take long before other talent scouts jumped on this bandwagon. The old expression,
“turning sow’s ears into silk purses” regained popularity.
In jimmy-quick
fashion, John Q. Public awoke to the chicanery. Most likely, the new onslaught
of résumé books helped expedite the process. The new books came with
supercharged vocabulary and other superlative buzzwords jobseekers were
encouraged to infuse into their presentation.
You no longer “perform
a specific task” –you transformed or orchestrated it. Overnight, Standard
English grew into a lexicon of obfuscated terminology, pandering platitudes,
and buzzword hysteria. Résumé hyperbole emerged as the new norm.
With
this modicum of insight behind us, let us return to the question: How do employers know when you are blowing
smoke in your résumé? Answer: When you start using 25-word sentences to
state what should be said in 10 words or less.
The problem with
unvarnished truth is that it tends to read dry and unexciting. To project a
livelier image, today’s headhunters recommend you to jazz it up, so that the
material sounds as if you can accomplish the impossible. In reality, agencies are
solely interested in filling an opening where they can earn a fat placement commission.
Thus, instead of
“Manage the Service Department with 18 employees,” they wanted you to,
“Orchestrate the entire Service Department and all customer needs to ensure
viable, high-quality and top-notch services are being met and exceeded, while
inspiring staff personnel during periods of global flexuous demand cycles.”
Oops! Did something get lost in translation? Was
there a nuance that slipped past me? Did the message become shrouded in
hyperbole? Add a few superlatives to that 33-word sentence, and that would garbage
comprehension even more!
Suppose you are
recruiting to fill a position on your staff. You announce the opening. Within a
week, you receive 20 résumés. (If this is
a well-paying position with decent benefits, plan on 200 arriving.) Now
imagine yourself plowing through endless pages of overcharged, heavily infused rhetoric.
(I get exhausted just thinking about it.)
Is what you are
reading true, or hype? Furthermore, if they are so damn marvelous, successful
and otherwise fabulous, why are they in the job market? –Huh? (Trust me; employers ask
themselves this question regularly.)
I shouldn't let
this out, but here’s the secret. State much in few words. When it comes to an
interview-generating résumé—less tends
to be more.
Here is an example
of blowing smoke chancery: A guy shows up needing a résumé to fill an in-house
opening. He hands me his current version. Under education, which filled half a
page, he listed every specialized training sessions, informational seminars,
and individual courses taken at various facilities. The dates stretch into the
1990s.
In a
three-second glance, I replied, “So, you don’t have a degree. Correct?”
He appeared taken
aback. “You haven’t had time to read it yet.”
“Don’t have to.
Anytime someone devotes that much space to education, it usually signals—no degree.” I avoided using blowing smoke, but there it was.
It’s challenging
to write your own résumé without resorting to wishful thinking or pandering to
popular hysteria. The trick is to write tight, remain focused and keep content
relevant. Accomplish that and you have a done deal. Best of all, in these times
of exaggerated amplification, the résumé will sound more believable.