InformationWeek

ike many people in this industry, I've read more than a few resumés over the years. Far too frequently, they're sadly lacking in their conveyance of the talents and aspirations of their authors. It's unfortunate; I've known good people who agonize for weeks deciding what to write, revising it over and over, and who still produce a document that doesn't do them justice.

I suspect writing a resumé is difficult because most of us have grown up with the cultural inability to praise ourselves--and when we do, it comes across as stilted and awkward. It somehow seems immodest to say that we do something well, so it isn't easy to put our accomplishments on paper. Besides, and of key importance, we don't know what the potential employer really wants; thus, we have difficulty determining exactly what we should be saying in this most important (in our perspective) of documents.

Occasionally, friends and associates who have suffered through the pangs of trying to write a resumé have asked me to critique their efforts. When Joe told me that he was frustrated with his inability to get his foot in the door of potential employers and asked me for some straight and honest feedback on his resumé, I agreed. What I saw was markedly similar to many of the papers that have crossed my desk and wound up in the reject pile.

Here's some of what I said to Joe:

• Remember that the purpose of a resumé is to get an interview and, in the best of all possible worlds, to have the interviewer predisposed to think you are someone of merit. The resumé is not meant to be a life story, nor even a small chapter from your biography-in-progress. In other words, keep it short. One page is the limit--don't cheat by using small type or narrow margins. Our tendency is to cram in everything about ourselves into a resumé, in the hopes that some of it might be of compelling interest to the reader, but the longer the resumé, the less likely it is to be read. I would guess that most resumés get only a quick skim, perhaps 30 seconds or so. Make the most of that time.
  
  
• Please tell what you've accomplished, not what committees you worked on or what reports you wrote. People aren't very interested that you authored a plan for E-business or a vision for the IT organization. They are interested if your plan was the basis for launching an E-business site that made money or your vision resulted in on-time and on-budget systems implementations. Stick to how you helped your employers increase revenue or save money and your role in making the company more productive and a better place to work. Think of how you helped the bottom line of the companies for which you have worked.
  
  
• Focus on what you can do for potential employers, not what they can do for you. The objectives that start off with, "I'm seeking an organization where I can grow professionally," are of little interest to managers with problems to solve.
  
  
• Use clear language. Personally, I'll always choose to interview the individual who designed the help-desk priority-setting process over the person who was instrumental in facilitating the architectural parameters for help-desk prioritization algorithms.
  
  
• Don't waste space on unnecessary entries such as "references upon request." Obviously, you aren't going to tell the person who may be ready to offer you a job that such information is none of his or her business.
  
  
• Follow up on the resumé with a phone call. If you can't talk to the person to whom you wrote, speak to his or her assistant and summarize in a few sentences your skills and why you'd like an interview.

A resumé is serious business, but don't lose sight of its purpose. Remember that your objective is to make the reader want to meet you and have a positive image of you before you walk in the door.

Write a resumé that you would be willing to read and act on if you didn't know you. Answer on paper the question of why you would be a positive addition to someone's staff. Get the interview. After that, it's all up to you, not that piece of paper.

Herbert W. Lovelace shares his experiences (changing most names, including his own, to protect the guilty) as CIO of a multibillion-dollar international company. Send him E-mail at lovelace@home.com and read his online column at informationweek.com where he'll provide real, and sometimes whimsical, answers to your questions.