Back to the beginning

I always thought I knew what I was doing when it came to putting together a resume. Maybe not.

I created my latest resume with the intent of hitting on the buzzwords those dreaded resume bots are looking for these days. No buzzwords, no one will look at your resume, no matter how qualified you are. I also wanted it to look nice. I took a template I liked from Microsoft Word and built it from there.

That was, apparently, wrong.

I handed my resume to my uncle this afternoon. He was a vice president for human resources at a pharmaceutical company, so he knows a thing or two about these things. He went right about the process of ripping it to shreds.

Fancy template? Bullet points? Get rid of 'em! The coding will just cause havoc with the dreaded resume bots. And why bother making the resume look nice? No actual person is going to look at these things. It's going to go through a computer program, which is going to pull out the key buzzwords: "staff development," "motivated self-starter" and "blah blah blah." I'd be well-set if "blah blah blah" was an actual keyword.

Hopefully, I'll be done with this revising soon so I can get on with the arduous process of actually sending the damned thing out.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

It's Been a While

Image
Back in college, I got hooked on a delivery place for (usually) late-night post-drinking munchies. D.P. Dough made several different kinds of calzones. My favorite was the Buffalo Zone (later renamed the Buff Zone, for reasons beyond my understanding). It was, unsurprisingly, a calzone stuffed with buffalo chicken. I ordered that much more often than I care to remember. Now, I'm nowhere near a D.P. Dough, and I've yet to find a place that sells a calzone that matches it. One of the upsides of cooking for yourself is you can make something just the way you want it. Back when we were still in Chicago, that's exactly what we did.  Usually, Stacey takes point on the calzones. But Stacey went back to Liverpool today, so I'm left on my own. Helpfully, Stacey left some dough behind from the pumpkin pizza she made last week, so I had all I needed to make a calzone on my own.  Wow, OK, this picture's not as good as I hoped. In front is a ricotta mixture, wi
Read more

Redistricting Battle

My story last week didn't make the paper's website, so I'm posting it here.  Vigilance Called For In Redistricting Battle Panelists at a forum on redistricting Tuesday night, Feb. 21, urged a largely Hispanic crowd in Elmhurst to call on Gov. Andrew Cuomo to veto the proposal as it currently stands.             “The Governor made a campaign promise, if the lines weren’t suitable, he would veto the lines,” Kenneth D. Cohen, regional director of the NAACP NYC Metro Council, said. “If we allow what has been proposed to happen, you won’t be represented fairly.”             The forum, held at the Make The Road New York offices at 92-10 Roosevelt Ave. , was meant to be an educational tool on the redistricting process. It quickly became an indictment of the Legislative Task Force on Demographic Research and Reapportionment – LATFOR – the committee charged with redrawing district lines based on the 2010 Census.             “The idea of independence really is nowhere
Read more

Torture

It's been a long time since I've written anything other than a cover letter. Frankly, while I try to change things up every now and then, there's very little creativity that goes into writing one of those things. "Dear Sir or Madam, as the case may be, I'm awesome. Hire me. I know you won't, it's OK. But I'm trying to pretend that all hope is not lost here, just to save some face. Thanks for pretending to take the time to review stuff, Me." Hmmm. I may use that next time I send something out. Today, I shall try to write, because it's Wednesday and why not? Because I enjoy torturing myself, I will post what I write right here. In fact, I'll just write here. Maybe. It sure beats applying for jobs, but it's not as much fun as playing video games, so I'll do some of that, too. I'm babbling. Good bye.
Read more