Resume Includes and Excludes
By Yvonne LaRose, CPC
Certified Personnel Consultant
It's one of the most important calling cards of your career. It's the advertisement that induces managers to talk with you more and consider you for that opportunity. It says things about you both overtly and subtly. It's your resume.
Best practices in constructing the resume abound. I've seen a large number of resumes during my own career, while I had my first business, when I worked for a recruiter, and now as an editor and consultant. Four things stand out as necessary reminders for the
resume:
1. applicability of experience to the opportunity
2. when to send the resume
3. what should accompany it and
4. what to include both in the body of the calling card and the cover letter
Make Certain It's Applicable, Then Send It
What was frustrating for me in the recruiter's office was receiving a resume for which the candidate showed no relevant experience or skills compared with the job description. Worse, there was no cover letter to explain the qualification. There also was no discussion of relevant lateral experience. What was presented didn't qualify the candidate.
What was even more annoying was our ad specifically asked for specific minimum criteria for serious candidates. Many simply did not even come close. The person was still finishing their work in a completely unrelated major. Their work history contained nothing in the industry or a related industry for which we were conducting a search. No internship, volunteer work, or professional society involvement was even hinted at to say the candidate even had exposure to our advertised needs. These resumes were a waste of time.
I was willing to give these people the benefit of the doubt. In the recruiter's office, there is a lot of information that isn't on a resume or job order. It was entirely possible I'd read too fast and was still thinking about the vendor from the last phone call or email message. So I'd re-read the resume wondering how the enumeration of duties tied in with our advertised desires and needs. Some candidates had admirable credentials and histories, but they weren't applicable for a presentable candidate; there was nothing to tell me they had it and why.
If you don't have the minimum qualifications for the opportunity, don't send the resume. Your time will be better spent researching whether there are other situations for which you do have at least the minimum qualifications.
An Accompaniment
Let's say that you do have the minimum qualifications but they just don't stand out in the resume. Let's say there's no easy way to demonstrate the relevance of your experiences to the opportunity without creating a customized resume for each situation. There's a solution and it's called the cover letter.
The cover letter serves many purposes. One of them is to briefly explain some information that doesn't come through on the resume. You may have had a particular title in one of your last jobs but the title did not match the growth of responsibilities or scope of your experiences. Use your cover letter to explain that. Or
