Why I think most resumes SUCK.

Manish Bardolia — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 15:06:48 +0000

I’ve recently been updating my resume, this is something I haven’t done in over 8 years. I’d recommend that you don’t wait as long as I did to get yours current. Let me tell you, it more difficult than I thought it would have been. I think there are a few reasons for this. The first issue is that I don’t think I’m a good writer, anyone see the irony here. The second issue was, it’s really hard for me to remember what I did last week let alone over the past 8 years. The third and most significant problem that I ran into was how the information was being presented. I’ve hired plenty of people over the years and have seen a ton of resumes. So my natural reaction was to copy the style and format of what I had seen in the past. The problem with that approach was that I didn’t like what I was putting together and I couldn’t figure out why. I was having a really hard time trying to articulate what I was really good at and what I wanted to do. I then got a bit of inspiration from Garr Reynolds. After watching a few videos of Garr presenting and reading his book, I realized that my resume was a tool that I should use to present myself to others. It’s really about showing who I am and what I am capable of. Everyone has their own story and you should show off your uniqueness by telling that story. I’ve tried to craft my resume in a way that tells my story. Most resumes are just a bunch of bloated bullet points in which people are trying to cram in as much information as possible. Hence the title of this post. I am not a bullet point person, although my resume does contain them. I am much more comfortable explaining complex ideas visually, drawing out relationships. Why couldn’t I do that for my resume? Why do I have to follow the same format as everyone else? The key thing was to make sure I presented all of the relevant information. The text of my resume now revolves around two diagrams that I created that for the most part capture everything I was trying to articulate in words.

My work history over the past 13 years

In a fairly quick glance someone will get a really good idea of where I worked and what roles I played at each organization and for how long.

My growth as a professional from a technologist to an executive

The second diagram, which I think the more useful, shows the growth in my skill sets and the level of influence as my career evolved.

I am by no means saying that my approach is better than what has been done in the past. I am merely showing there are alternatives than the status quo. I’m always trying to learn so if you have any suggestions on how I can improve my resume please feel free to comment.

As I was putting this post together, a bunch of other questions came to mind. I’ll talk about those in future posts.

Working at the Speed of Life » resume

Why I think most resumes SUCK.