When you consider that first impressions of a resume can convey as much of a message about the job-seeker as his or her personal history, you would think twice about sending out anything but the most professional-looking document possible. Still, less-than-professional resumes arrive daily in executive recruiters' offices and on the desks of prospective bosses.
For the record, here are some of the more common symptoms of non-professionalism that create a negative image of the candidate before one word of his resume is even read:
- Overcrowded pages with next to no margins-looks as if the author was too cheap to run off a second page.
- Difficult-to-read copies that were undoubtedly duplicated in the back office for nothing-and are worth about that much.
- Typographical errors that glare off the page. You've all heard about the person who asked to be "excepted as a candidate" in his cover letter. He was, and he deserved to be!
- Paragraphs and words that don't line up-the probable result of home typing on a beat-up college portable, or pasting and clipping last year's resume to this year's update. Not quite the professional you'd hire to be your next chief engineer.
- Blurred letters. Your reaction has to be: Doesn't this person have any pride? (You wish you had some fluid to clean the keys.)
- Changes in format, spelling, and style between paragraphs. You wonder why the individual doesn't spell the same word the same way twice, why he or she switches margins, indents paragraphs differently with no apparent rhyme or reason. Is the candidate the sort of person who simply can't organize? The kind of person who can't think through a job from first to last?
THE BUFFOON'S RESUME
A remarkable number of job-seekers must believe that if they can devise a way to make their own resumes "jump out" of the pile of resumes submitted in response to ads, it will insure an interview, so they go to great lengths to make their resumes do just this. I've seen resumes printed on heavy poster board stock, on 8" x 14" paper. (They literally stood out until someone folded them in half.) I've come across resumes printed on a rainbow of colored stock, in colored inks, in booklet form, in binders, etc. The prospective boss with any professionalism isn't fooled by this sort of thing. He asks himself: "Did a sincere, businesslike person write such a document, or was it written by a 'promoter' who probably didn't have all that much good to say about himself?" As proof of the pudding, my friends in executive recruiting send me these types of resumes for my collection; rarely do their writers get picked to meet with the prospective employer! Instead, your resume should be well printed on the best-quality white or cream bond that money can buy. After all, it is a reflection of you, and it ought to be the best there is.
The message these less than perfect resumes bring is obvious: Your resume is your calling card. It has to demonstrate your ability to organize your career; to think and present clearly; to be concerned with style; to be produced by someone who is conscious of quality at every point if it is going to create a positive impression with your prospective employers.
Quite possibly you are wondering if there isn't an "ideal" format that does just this-say, margins set at one and one-half inches, triple spaces between jobs, etc. I doubt it. Effective resumes come in a variety of forms, reflecting the personalities of their authors. The one thing they have in common stylistically is that they look (and read) as if the writer is a person who always travels first class.
