If you are one of those prone to reminiscing and start
telling an employer about your best bygone years, you may be driving a nail in
your job-prospecting coffin. Jobseekers need to evolve or risk perishing like
analogue (outdated) technology.
Recently, a
plethora of résumés arrived from jobseekers requesting reviews and suggestions
on what could be done to improve their job-hunting prospects. Half projected a
Rip Van Winkle image. Several of their job histories stretched back into the
1980s.
When I
suggested that there was no need to delve into outdated history, several
exploded with anger and dumbfounded bewilderment. The common response followed
this line of rationale: “I was told employers
want to know about all my experience,” or “If I leave anything out, isn’t that being deceptive?”
Whenever you are
invited to a job interview, you have already met or exceeded the basic criteria
for holding the position. Now it becomes a matter of second-tier elimination.
This is where the jobseeker proceeds to eliminate him/herself.
Most
jobseekers, however, never reach this stage in the selection process. They eliminated
themselves during the first-tier screening process. Where did they shoot
themselves in the foot? When they attempted to market outdated experience.
Depending upon
the position and prerequisites, and amount of employment history to include
depends greatly upon what’s relevant to the here and now. Beyond a certain
point, the average employer becomes increasingly less interested.
For example, if
the average employment opportunity requires five- or perhaps eight-years’ of experience
and you attempt to cram 20 or 25 years down their throat—it won’t work.
Now we come to
what most employers deem as their rule of
thumb. Whenever an employer announces they are seeking to fill a position
that requires a specific amount of experience, piling on additional years often
proves counterproductive. Solution: Give them what they need and want to know.
Once you
overreach and send an employer too much information, it might as well serve as
your obituary or epitaph. Naturally, there are always exceptions. These usually
involve organizations that have paid committees to screen applicants.
The academic
communities are idiosyncratic for exhaustive details, followed closely by the
medical community. The government, however, prefers shorter résumés, but often include
lengthy applications. Applications however, rarely reach most interviewers’
desk.
The rest of the
real world is on a quick-time schedule. If the individuals reading the résumé are
not being paid extra to scrutinize and digest the information you provide, they
are not interested in wasting their time. For those markets, brevity and
conciseness carry the day.