I’ve always been a big fan of Nick Corcodilos of Ask the Headhunter for his iconoclastic opinions and exposes of the dark underbelly of the hiring and job-search arenas.
Now I have even more reason to be a fan; Nick has just published on Fast Company, Toss Your Resume in the Trash and Tell Employers Your Story (thanks to my friend Thomas Clifford for turning me onto this piece). His premise leads to this question and conclusion: “How do you craft a resume that tells a compelling story? Don’t. … Few resumes leave the reader wanting to know more. … Toss your resume in the trash.”
Here’s how he arrives at that conclusion:
After 30 years of reading resumes, I know I’m going to find just one or two nuggets of useful information in any resume. I don’t care about the rest. I know a resume is so over-edited that it’s just a faint representation of the person it’s about. That’s why so few resumes yield interviews.
On the other hand, I love talking with prospective job candidates to find out what their stories are. Few have one to tell, and that makes it easy to move on to the next without hesitation or guilt. The one who has a story—well, now we’re getting somewhere.
A person with a story to tell knows the importance of having a beginning, a middle, and an end. (Can you say, “project management?”) The best of them know it’s also important to have a plot, a conflict, and a resolution. The rare resume has a distinct theme that reveals itself; I don’t have to try to figure it out. That’s the person with insight and motivation. That’s the person whose aspirations I care about. People with credible aspirations will work hard to deliver what a manager needs so they can get what they need.
Nicks says the storied interviews on Fast Company provide superb examples of the kind of stories candidates should be telling but he’s not clear about what communications medium a job-seeker should use to tell this kind of story.
He then confuses the issue. After telling us to trash our resumes, he asks: “So, does your resume tell a story? Notice I said, ‘Tell a story,’ not ‘Hope the manager can piece together a story from all the facts.’”
So how do you write a resume that tells a story? Tomorrow’s entry offers a bit of insight from a resume writer who does that for her clients.
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Kathy,
Thanks for writing about my article.
I don't think I'm "confusing the issue." I think people should dump their resumes because people are very "stuck" on what a resume is. It's taken decades of brainwashing to lock up the format of resumes. Those storied interviews in FastCompany - why aren't they resumes? Why can't a resume be just like that?
Well, HR might freak out. But what can we say about HR, which fails to freak out about the money it spends on services like Monster.com... (over a $billion in 2008) for a piddling return of about 3%?
There's lots to fix about job hunting and hiring.
Can't wait to read your entry about how to put a story in a resume!
Nick, I'm glad you clarified because it wasn't clear to me that you equated the storied interviews in Fast Company to resumes.
You may be disappointed in tomorrow's entry because it doesn't really tell how; it tells of a resume writer who says she knows how.
But the storytelling resume is something I've been writing about for a long time; it's kind of my crusade. The best summary of the various possibilities I've observed is at:
http://astoriedcareer.com/2009/07/add-another-item-to-list-of-po.html
I also write about this topic in my book, Tell Me About Yourself: Storytelling to Get Jobs and Propel Your Career