Recently it came time for the age old cycle of cubicles to begin at the great corporate offices of my square job. I observed its passing by performing the traditional scrounging up of that personal documents directory and dusting off the old resume file as an offering to the wise and enlightened souls in that holiest of enclaves, the Human Resources Department. Who among us can know what judgement they may pass on it? Assuming it gets whatever approval it is they've decided it needs before the department I apply to gets to read it, there may be a chance the new gig could pan out. But the hushed whispers by the copier and flurries of email as yet offer no indication of who will go ... and who will stay.
In the meantime I'm trying to bring my self sales pitch up to date with current projects and relevant "truths" about my go-to attitude and never die work ethic. I tend to practice an extremely utilitarian resume regimen, partially due to my pragmatic nature, and partially due to my strong distaste for word processors of any kind. Often I store my resume as nothing more than plain text or in rare cases I'll convert to rich text if needed. I firmly believe in the whole job courting process as a two way street, with both job seeker and interviewer testing and evaluating each others fitness and qualification; and it begins with the resume.
An incident just outside my office last summer helped me reach this way of thinking in a round about way. I was walking back from lunch with some co-workers and we were loudly bitching about some bit of ofiice stupidity and as we passed through groups of fellow cubers one of my friends let a few not so subtle f-bombs fly catching the attention of some nearby do-gooder who decided to address the issue. He walked up and said casually "You may want to watch what you say out here, you never know who some of these folks might be. Could be executives, or someone in a position to give you a job one day." Something occurred to me then that sent him away with a foul look though. I said, "If someone decides they'd rather not hire me because I throw the occasional 'fuck' around when I'm angry, I'd really rather not work for that person."
The same holds true for the flashy / eye-catching (but still professional of course) resume theories. In some fields such as design, marketing, or the arts I can see an argument for it, but then perhaps a portfolio would be the more appropriate showcase? However in the technology industry I expect to work for someone with an eye for details, a respect for efficiency, and a keen sense of their staff's abilities. If some snappy fonts and a dusting of power words are all it takes to sway your judgement of me, I doubt you and I will work well together. Better for both of us to just move along.
The other theory I often hear regurgitated without thought or personal insight is that a potential resume reviewer may have a great many applicants to asses, and some moderate flair to draw their eyes to your best qualities helps them to make a quick and favorable decision about you over others. Now my pragmatic nature abhors time wasted, mine or otherwise; but is it really so unreasonable to expect someone who's hiring new staff as part of their chosen profession to not go about it half assed? If I said in an interview that I hadn't fully read the job description I was applying for, but the bullet points really caught my eye what would that say to the interviewer?
I'm sorry but if I'm expected me to work under the direction of someone who simply can't be bothered to examine all the relevant facts before making a key business decision I can all but guarantee that I will not only be unhappy working with them, its very likely they'll soon be hiring unqualified or incompetent individuals as my coworkers as well. Pretty shortly I'd be right back at square one, dusting off the resume and telling the "truth" all over again.
4 comments:
There are a few different things to consider I suppose, which tend to dictate how much effort you want to put in to your CV polishing effort. There are two very different audiences and cases to consider, one being the application to a new job (when you are primarily dealing with hiring managers , who in turn deal with HR), and the other being dealing with HR directly. The latter case crops up when doing intra-company transfers, negotiations of an initial employment contract, and so on. The key difference here is that while the hiring managers are interested in what you bring to the table on a technical level, the HR folks only want a quick check list to gauge your relative worth based on their existing conventions. Even if you can get your hiring manager to go to bat for you and try to apply pressure to HR for your benefit, they have very little impact in the actual process. A good reason to consider contracting.
It's very difficult to write a CV that's geared at HR folks directly, and when you do, you obviously want to focus more on your accomplishments and relative paper worth than concentrating on skills and abilities which HR folks are neither able to weigh on their own, nor have any interest in trying to do.
HR folks (like headhunters) are generally small stunted troll-like creatures that are only ever involved in getting you in to the company as cheaply as possible and getting you out as quickly as possible, the rest of the time they're usually bent on intra-company politics, petty scheming, and so on, in a feeble attempt at offering meaning to their otherwise meaningless lives.
The conventional wisdom about pretty CVs and things of that nature is purely a convenience factor. If you're trying to apply for one position through a floodgate of mediocre applications, things like the cosmetic appearance of the CV itself can help folks to pick it out of the pile. In practice, applying for a job through someone solely interested in cosmetic appearance and filling quotas is not the way you want to go. Most of the conventional wisdom surrounding CV production seems to focus on the fact that 100% of the time you will be cold-calling, and so you need some sort of gimmick to give you a sporting chance. Finding any sort of meaningful work through this sort of approach is simply futile. Maybe for your first job or so, but once that's out of the way, you should be focused purely on cultivating your most important asset -- networking, and subsequently, options. To HR employees are simply a commodity, to the extent that showing utter indifference or that you're a sought after commodity outside of the existing workplace already bumps your paper-worth up exponentially, even if you're not seriously considering going anywhere else. It's tedious to have to play these sorts of games, but fortunately it's not something you have to do very often. I'd worry less about appeasing HR and more about putting them on the defensive side. They tend to be a lot more pliable when it's obvious you don't need to stay in your current job, and you'd need some sort of compelling reason to even bother. These are people that are utterly focused on image and appearances, making them incredibly easy to pander to on purely superficial grounds, as well as guaranteeing utterly predictable behaviour.
If HR folks can't be bothered seeing people as something other than pure commodities, there's no reason to view or treat them as people in turn. The human factor goes both ways, and you already have a one up in that you know what you have to deal with.
If someone asks you for a pretty resume or whatever else, chances are their company is just not worth working for, and if you think it is, then it's a clear sign that you're talking to the completely wrong person. Make it obvious that you'll consider employment with their company on your own terms, and let them work for your attention, rather than the other way around. Is it any surprise that most of the "conventional wisdom" about CV authoring is put out by HR muppets themselves? You should always pre-process this sort of data with the appropriate filters, which in these cases more often than not result in no content whatsoever.
Fuck 'em.
I should point out here that I gleaned MUCH of my modern view on resume style, HR, and work in general from the commenter above. Paul's had much wider experience in the gloabal headhunting game than me, and his opinions reflect that. Of course his deep affection and respect for all things HR is reflected as well :)
Do we need to talk?
Hahah, fear not Brian. I'll still wear a tie on interview day :) But after hearing the same stuff from so many people who's opinions I respect (yours included) I had to reconsider why I disagreed so strongly. And as usual, when I rethink my opinion I like to write about it!
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