Thats Really Interesting Now Take it off Your Resume

Thats Really Interesting Now Take it off Your Resume Thats Really Interesting Now Take it off Your Resume As a resume writer you tend to run up against the same issues on a regular basis. One of the most common challenges is working with a client who has a very diverse background, or who has taken a career detour. This is perfectly possible to address, but every now and then, I work with a client who truly believes that all those experiences are equally valuable in getting their next job. Sometimes, its hard for this person to accept that the year they spent teaching scuba diving wont help them in their quest to secure a marketing role. I learned how to deal with adversity, theyll say, and I had to fend for myself in a new culture. Surely thats valuable?Perhaps it should be, but its not.The dirty little secret about recruitingHeres the thing Ive managed recruiting in the past and the truth is that when youre filling a new position, youre not necessarily looking for the best candid ate. Youre looking for the least risky candidate. If youre an HR manager or recruiter working internally, or an external headhunter who has been appointed to fill a specific job, you have been charged with finding someone who fits a certain set of criteria. As you sift through resumes, you are looking for someone who exactly meets what your boss or the hiring manager asked you to find. This is because you want to look good. Ideally, you want each of the resumes you choose to be such a perfect match that the hiring manager slaps you on the back (metaphorically speaking of course) and tells you what a fantastic job youve done and hopefully goes on to say how youre way better than all those deadbeat recruiters who came before you, and by the way why dont you have a raise?That means that that the average HR manager or recruiter is looking for people with a straightforward career chronology that perfectly matches the job theyve posted.What if you dont have that?If you dont have that, bec ause you took a year off after you left your last marketing job and then spent the next year teaching scuba diving and working as a waitress in the evenings, should you just give up?Cmon. You know me better than that. Of course notBut what you do need to do is to sift through those experiences and decide which ones are going to hurt rather than help.Your resume needs to tell a story Have you ever noticed how when someone coughs in a historical TV drama or movie, it always presages death? You hear that cough and you think oh no TB Of course people suffered from normal coughs in the olden days, but a scriptwriter only puts in the things that matter to his story, so he isnt going to show little Timmy getting the flu, spending a week in bed and then feeling better. No, if Timmy coughs, it means that hes going to die. End of story.The same applies to your resume. You must be careful not to include a cough unless its TB. Or to put it another way, dont include a job or details about an e xperience unless it makes a direct contribution to the story youre trying to tell. If you do need to include unrelated experience for example because you spent the last 3 years caring for a sick relative and dont want people to think you were being idle mention the experience briefly and position it as a detour from your real career. The truth is that if you have a varied background, or have taken a detour from your normal career, you will need to disguise that detour as much as possible. Its simply not possible to weave it into your story without veering that story off course and thats true even if you find the very best resume writer in the history of resume writing. We cant do it and, if were honest and ethical, we wont try. Photo Soleilphoto Dreamstime Stock Photos Stock Free Images